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Tag: leisure and lifestyle

  • Powerball Jackpot soars to $1 billion after no winner in Monday’s drawing | CNN

    Powerball Jackpot soars to $1 billion after no winner in Monday’s drawing | CNN

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    CNN
     — 

    The Powerball jackpot soared to $1 billion for the third time in the game’s history after no ticket matched all six numbers in Monday night’s drawing.

    The mammoth grand prize ranks as the seventh largest US lottery jackpot and third largest Powerball jackpot, behind the world record $2.04 billion Powerball jackpot won last year in California, and the $1.586 billion Powerball jackpot won in 2016, according to the lottery.

    If a lucky winner nabs the jackpot in the next drawing Wednesday night, they will have the choice between an annuitized prize worth an estimated $1 billion or a lump sum payment estimated at $516.8 million, both before taxes, according to Powerball.

    The Powerball jackpot rolled Monday night after no ticket matched all numbers drawn for the estimated $900 million grand prize – white balls 5, 8, 9, 17, 41 and red Powerball 21.

    There have been 38 consecutive drawings without a jackpot winner since its April 19 drawing, when a ticket in Ohio matched all six numbers to win a grand prize worth $252.6 million.

    While no one scored the grand prize Monday night, five tickets sold in Connecticut, Florida, Kentucky, New York and Pennsylvania matched all five white balls to win $1 million prizes.

    Another three tickets, in Arkansas, Georgia and Texas, won $2 million by including the Power Play option for an additional $1 per play, according to Powerball.

    The odds of winning the jackpot are 1 in 292.2 million, Powerball says on its website.

    The Powerball isn’t the only massive lottery prize this week. The Mega Millions jackpot winnings grew to an estimated $640 million after there were no winners Friday, according to its website.

    The next Mega Millions drawing will be Tuesday at 11 pm ET.

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  • Mario Vargas Llosa, Nobel-winning novelist, hospitalized with Covid-19 | CNN

    Mario Vargas Llosa, Nobel-winning novelist, hospitalized with Covid-19 | CNN

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    CNN
     — 

    Peruvian novelist and Nobel laureate Mario Vargas Llosa has been hospitalized in Madrid with Covid-19, his son said Monday.

    “In light of the interest by the news media in our father’s health, we make public that he has been hospitalized since Saturday after being diagnosed with Covid-19,” Alvaro Vargas Llosa tweeted on behalf of himself and his siblings, Gonzalo and Morgana Vargas Llosa.

    The 87-year-old has been in hospital since July 1, surrounded by family, and is being treated by “excellent” professionals, the tweet added.

    Vargas Llosa lives in Madrid and holds Spanish as well as Peruvian citizenship.

    Born in Arequipa, Peru in 1936, Vargas Llosa was brought up by his mother until his father reappeared and brought an authoritarian change to his life.

    As well as the hostile environment at home, Vargas Llosa lived through Peru’s political turmoil, which saw the rise of dictator Manuel Odría in 1948.

    In 1963, he published his first novel, “The Time of the Hero,” a tale based on his own experience, about adolescents struggling to survive in a brutal military academy.

    Social change has been a key theme in his literary works, and in 1990 he ran unsuccessfully for President of Peru. Three years after this defeat, he became a Spanish citizen.

    In 2010, the Nobel Prize committee awarded him the Literature Prize, writing in its citation that he was receiving the prize “for his cartography of structures of power and his trenchant images of the individual’s resistance, revolt and defeat.”

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  • A Maryland woman played her lottery numbers for over a year. A simple switch turned her into a $50,000 winner | CNN

    A Maryland woman played her lottery numbers for over a year. A simple switch turned her into a $50,000 winner | CNN

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    CNN
     — 

    A Maryland woman who’d played the same lottery numbers for a year won big after getting some inspiration from a previous winner, she told lottery officials.

    The unidentified woman from Forestville, which is about 10 miles east of Washington, DC, won $50,000 in a Pick 5 game, according to the Maryland Lottery.

    She’s calling herself “Grateful Winner,” which is what appears on her winning lottery check from the June 23 midday drawing.

    The woman said she’d read a Maryland Lottery story about a player “who decided to play one of his Pick 5 number combinations after seeing variations of his numbers drawn,” a news release stated.

    Using the technique to her own benefit, the federal government worker said she began seeking out patterns in the Pick 5 winning numbers.

    Between June 5 to June 21, the woman saw that the number six was the first Pick 5 digit that was drawn in four games, so she tried an experiment, the Maryland Lottery said in the news release.

    Normally, she’d play the numbers 56389, but this time, she switched the first two numbers in the sequence and placed a $1 straight bet at a 7-Eleven in Prince George’s County.

    It paid off.

    “I just started playing that number last week and I couldn’t believe it,” the winner said in the news release.

    She said she found out she’d won while checking her phone during a manicure appointment.

    “My eyes started to water, I was shaking and I couldn’t see,” the woman recalled.

    The winner said she planned to use the funds to pay off bills.

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  • Federal judge defends Clarence Thomas in new book, rejects ‘pot shots’ at Supreme Court | CNN Politics

    Federal judge defends Clarence Thomas in new book, rejects ‘pot shots’ at Supreme Court | CNN Politics

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    CNN
     — 

    A federal appeals court judge previously on short lists for the Supreme Court is taking the rare step to broadly and publicly reject allegations that Justice Clarence Thomas has been improperly influenced by lavish gifts provided by a conservative billionaire, dismissing “pot shots” at the Supreme Court in general.

    “Judges are just like every other human being. We have a diverse group of friends, and those friends don’t influence the way we do our job,” Judge Amul Thapar, who sits on a Cincinnati-based appeals court, told CNN in an interview.

    Thapar this past week released a new book about Thomas entitled “The People’s Justice,” in which he explores the justice’s favored judicial philosophy of originalism. Thapar posits that the theory is wrongly described as always favoring the “rich over the poor, the strong over the weak, the corporation over the consumer.”

    He walks through Thomas’ reasoning in a handful of cases dealing with affirmative action, the Second Amendment, school vouchers, a cross burning law and public takings of private property, among others, and contends that Thomas’ originalism “more often favors the ordinary people who come before the court – because the core idea behind originalism is honoring the will of the people.”

    RELATED: Supreme Court limits federal prisoners’ ability to bring some post-conviction challenges

    President Donald Trump nominated Thapar in to serve on the 6th US Circuit Court of Appeals in 2017, and he was also on Trump’s short list for Supreme Court vacancies. Thapar, 54, is a favorite of Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, who handpicked him to serve as the US attorney for the Eastern District of Kentucky in 2006.

    Thapar declined to talk about specifics regarding real estate magnate Harlan Crow’s hospitality to Thomas that included rides on private jets and luxury yachts. But he said that any determination about whether judges or justices have been improperly influenced must begin with a look at the body of their work.

    “You can judge their works, and what they do, against what they’ve done in the past,” Thapar told CNN. “And if it’s consistent, then it’s hard to say anything influenced them.”

    Thapar added that he finds it “disheartening that people who know better are taking pot shots at the court.”

    And while Thomas speaks often about his cross-country travels with his wife, Ginni, in their RV every summer, he never publicly detailed the extent of luxury travel associated with Crow until the news was fleshed out by ProPublica in April.

    Thapar, however, said the media has ignored Thomas’ other friends.

    “What they don’t tell you,” Thapar said, “is that he also has friends who are homeless, friends he meets in RV parks across the nation.”

    In his book, the judge wrote: “It makes sense that a justice who would rather spend his time in Walmart parking lots than at cocktail parties is an originalist.”

    Virginia Canter, chief ethics counsel at the Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, said the title of Thapar’s book is “completely disingenuous.”

    “Given the hundreds of thousands of dollars in private jet travel, luxurious vacations and other extravagant gifts he has accepted from his wealthy benefactor, Thomas represents anything but a justice for the people,” Canter said.

    Thapar rejects suggestions that Thomas should have disclosed the hospitality provided by Crow on annual financial disclosure forms.

    In April, Thomas released a statement saying he hadn’t disclosed the hospitality because the ethics rules – that have since changed – didn’t require disclosure at the time. The Crow dispute has been referred to the Administrative Office of the US Courts, the policy arm of the federal judiciary.

    “As judges, we try not to disclose more than is required under the rules because otherwise it becomes a game of ‘gotcha’ – you disclosed ‘x,’ why didn’t you disclose ‘y’?” Thapar said.

    “So, what the Administrative Office has recommended is we disclose what is required by the rules, and I think it’s important we do that,” Thapar said. “I wish the rules were crystal clear, and when they are, we disclose whatever is required, or we should, and if we make a mistake ,we should own up to it.”

    But when it comes to recusing themselves from cases when there’s a possible conflict of interest with a party to the case, Thapar said it’s easier for a lower court judge – who often sits on multimember panels – to make that choice.

    “I’m one of 16,” Thapar said. “Another judge can step in my shoes.”

    But the Supreme Court, on the other hand, only has nine members, Thapar pointed out, “and they have no provision – if they recuse – for someone to take their spot, so it’s a lot harder for them.”

    Thapar’s book is a ringing endorsement of originalism, a judicial theory that requires the Constitution to be interpreted based on its original public meaning.

    “Originalists believe that the American people, not nine unelected judges, are the source of the law that governs us – through the Constitution and statutes enacted by our elected representatives,” the judge writes.

    He says Thomas has been misunderstood over his career.

    “By cherry-picking his opinions or misrepresenting them, Justice Thomas’s critics claim that his originalism favors the rich over the poor, the strong over the weak, and corporations over consumers. They have called Justice Thomas ‘the cruelest justice,’ ‘stupid,’ and even an ‘Uncle Tom’ a traitor to his race,” Thapar writes.

    Elizabeth Wydra, president of the liberal Constitutional Accountability Center, which supports what it calls a progressive view of originalism, believes the text and history of the entire Constitution, as amended, is “remarkably progressive.”

    She rejects the views taken by Thapar and Thomas.

    “While it is true that originalism can lead to wins for the ‘little guy,’ it only works that way if you give sufficient weight to the amendments that have, over time, pushed our Constitution along an arc of progress and made it a more inclusive and equality-focused document,” Wydra said.

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  • A winning combination: Man who played same lottery numbers for a decade finally nets a big payday | CNN

    A winning combination: Man who played same lottery numbers for a decade finally nets a big payday | CNN

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    CNN
     — 

    After nearly 10 years of playing the same lottery number combination, a $50,000 payday has finally arrived for a man in Maryland, lottery officials said.

    The winner from Prince George’s County, who remained anonymous, won the big prize on May 28 after playing the Maryland Lottery’s Bonus Match 5 game, according to a news release.

    “I play the same numbers all the time, I’ve been doing so for years,” the man told officials from the Maryland Lottery’s headquarters in Baltimore.

    He visited a liquor store in Temple Hills and bought a $4 ticket containing six lines – one of which included his usual combination of the numbers 5, 6, 8, 23 and 30, he said.

    The winner, who is a retired printing press operator, says he chose four of the lines himself while the computer system randomly generated the remaining two lines.

    He learned in disbelief the following day that he’d won the top prize using his special set of five digits, the Maryland Lottery reported.

    As a bonus, the anonymous winner also won an additional $15 off of three numbers from another line that he’d selected himself.

    He called his wife of 22 years immediately to share the good news, the news release said.

    “Many lottery players tell us that they have certain combinations of numbers that they use on a regular basis,” Seth Elkin, a spokesman for Maryland Lottery and Gaming, told CNN in an email.

    “Sometimes it’s birthdates or house numbers or uniform numbers of their favorite athletes, and sometimes they’ve just decided certain numbers feel ‘lucky’ to them,” Elkin said.

    The winner says he plans to use the prize to pay bills and put the rest into savings.

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  • Cormac McCarthy, among America’s greatest authors, dies at 89 | CNN

    Cormac McCarthy, among America’s greatest authors, dies at 89 | CNN

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    CNN
     — 

    Cormac McCarthy, long considered one of America’s greatest writers for his violent and bleak depictions of the United States and its borderlands in novels like “Blood Meridian,” “The Road” and “All the Pretty Horses,” died on Tuesday, according to his Penguin Random House publisher Alfred A. Knopf. He was 89.

    McCarthy died of natural causes at his home in Santa Fe, New Mexico, Knopf said.

    Over a nearly 60-year career, McCarthy – hailed by the late literary critic Howard Bloom as the “true heir” of Herman Melville and William Faulkner – wrote a dozen novels, many of them critically celebrated if not commercial hits, though he would eventually achieve both. For years, he wrote while living on grants, most notably the MacArthur “genius grant,” which he was awarded in 1981.

    Despite accolades, McCarthy remained relatively obscure for much of his career; as recently as 1992, 27 years after his first book was published, the New York Times Book Review said he “may be the best unknown novelist in America.”

    Both before and since, McCarthy was seen and portrayed in the media as reclusive, eschewing the kind of book tours, signings, interviews and lectures other renowned writers would see as professional obligations. But McCarthy famously abhorred talking about his books, which principally featured male characters and profuse violence, as well as sparse punctuation.

    Still, he was a “writer’s writer,” the Times reported, with a cult following and a reputation “far out of proportion to his name recognition or sales.”

    “I never had any doubts about my abilities,” McCarthy told the Times in one of his few interviews. “I knew I could write. I just had to figure out how to eat while doing this.”

    That obscurity changed with “All the Pretty Horses,” the first installment of his “Border Trilogy,” which became a bestseller and won the 1992 National Book Award, at last marrying the critical acclaim he’d enjoyed with mainstream success.

    His Pulitzer Prize-winning novel “The Road,” which followed a father and son traveling through a post-apocalyptic America, further catapulted McCarthy to popularity, thanks in part to Oprah Winfrey selecting the novel for her book club. McCarthy, in turn, granted Oprah his first and only television interview.

    “The Road” was also one of several of McCarthy’s books adapted for film, most notably the Coen Brothers’ adaptation of “No Country for Old Men,” which won four Academy Awards, including best picture.

    The author was born Charles McCarthy Jr. on July 20, 1933, in Providence, Rhode Island. His family moved when he was still young to Knoxville, Tennessee, where his father was an attorney for the Tennessee Valley Authority. His was a relatively comfortable childhood, one that played out on a plot of wooded land in a large white house with maids.

    “We were considered rich,” he told the Times, “because all the people around us were living in one- or two-room shacks.”

    For all his later literary achievements, McCarthy was not a voracious reader in his childhood or adolescence. It wasn’t until he served in the US Air Force after dropping out of the University of Tennessee that McCarthy began reading extensively, in his barracks while stationed in Alaska, he told the Times.

    He would later move to Chicago, where he finished his first novel and in 1961 married his first wife, Lee Holleman, with whom he had a son. They soon divorced.

    That novel, “The Orchard Keeper,” was published in 1965, after shepherding by the famous Random House editor Albert Erskine, who also edited Faulkner. Erskine, who died in 1993, would go on to edit McCarthy for two decades despite the fact, Erskine admitted to the Times, that McCarthy’s books never sold.

    “Outer Dark” followed in 1968 and “Child of God” in 1973, after a stint in Ibiza and McCarthy’s subsequent return to Tennessee with his second wife, Annie DeLisle. But still, they lived in “total poverty,” DeLisle once said, “bathing in the lake.”

    “Someone would call up and offer him $2,000 to come speak at a university about his books,” DeLisle told the New York Times. “And he would tell them that everything he had to say was there on the page. So we would eat beans for another week.”

    But McCarthy didn’t become a writer to make money, instead “maybe simply, because I can do it,” he told the Maryville-Alcoa Times, a Tennessee newspaper, in 1971. “There are a lot of easier ways to make money. I could sell tickets to people and let them watch while I was run over by a truck.”

    His next novel, “Suttree,” was published in 1979. McCarthy was awarded the MacArthur Fellowship two years later, giving him financial security to focus on writing. McCarthy left DeLisle and used the money to abscond to the Southwest, where he spent the next several years steeped in research for “Blood Meridian, or the Evening Redness in the West,” published in 1985.

    The historically based novel – widely regarded as McCarthy’s masterpiece – follows a brutal gang of scalp hunters as they journey across the Southwest, massacring Apache and members of the Mexican Army.

    “All the Pretty Horses” was published in 1992 and was followed over years by “The Crossing” and “Cities of the Plain,” which together comprise “The Border Trilogy” – in all a more idyllic ode to the region that recounted the adventures of two young cowboys.

    “No Country for Old Men” in 2005 received a less positive critical reception than McCarthy’s earlier novels, though its standing improved with time. The book, which the author began as a screenplay, did well as a movie under the direction of Joel and Ethan Coen, with the talents of Tommy Lee Jones and Josh Brolin, as well as Javier Bardem as the fearsome but unforgettable killer Anton Chigurh, a role that won Bardem Academy Award for best supporting actor.

    McCarthy’s attention turned away from the American West for 2006’s “The Road.” The book, dedicated to his then-young son – he had by then divorced and remarried again – was conceived on a trip to El Paso, Texas, he told Winfrey, as he looked out the hotel window one night.

    “I just had this image of these fires up on the hill and everything being laid waste, and I thought a lot about my little boy,” he said, and wrote a couple pages. Revisiting the idea several years later, he realized those pages were the beginning of a book about a man and his son traveling through that ashen landscape while staving off the threat of cannibals.

    The book wrote itself, he said, in a few weeks’ time.

    The ensuing years were quiet ones, with little in the way of new material. By this time, McCarthy was spending much of his time at the Santa Fe Institute in New Mexico, an independent research group of mostly scientists where he eventually became a lifetime trustee.

    McCarthy, whose interest in the sciences was well-documented, enjoyed the company of the physicists, biologists and geologists at the institute, and it was there he was often seen writing on his Olivetti typewriter, working on his next novels, “The Passenger” and “Stella Maris,” released just six weeks apart in 2022.

    The books dealt with the same story from different perspectives and featured a female main character as McCarthy’s dearth of well-developed women protagonists in his writing had long been a point of criticism. After being married three times, he told Oprah, “I don’t pretend to understand women.”

    But he alluded to the twin novels and their story’s female protagonist in an interview with the Wall Street Journal in 2009, saying, “I was planning on writing about a woman for 50 years. I will never be competent enough to do so, but at some point you have to try.”

    As for the lavish amounts of violence in his work, McCarthy told Vanity Fair in 2005 he didn’t know what resonated with him about that theme, only that he felt death was the principal motif at the heart of all our lives.

    “Death is the major issue in the world. For you, for me, for all of us,” he said. “It just is. To not be able to talk about it is very odd.”

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  • New details emerge about the alleged search history of the Utah mom charged with her husband’s murder | CNN

    New details emerge about the alleged search history of the Utah mom charged with her husband’s murder | CNN

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    CNN
     — 

    “What is a lethal dose of fentanyl” is one of many phone searches that investigators say were made by Kouri Richins, a Utah widow accused of killing her husband before she authored a children’s book about grief.

    The new details on the widow’s alleged search history emerged as part of the prosecution’s case against Richins, 33, who will be in a Park City, Utah, court Monday for a detention hearing. A judge is expected to decide if she should be released or remain in custody pending the outcome of her trial.

    Prosecutors allege she killed Eric Richins, her husband of nine years, with a lethal dose of fentanyl. She faces charges of criminal homicide, aggravated murder and three counts of possession of a controlled substance with intent to distribute. She has not yet entered a plea.

    The documents released Friday also give insight into Richins’ defense. Her attorneys argue “there is no substantial evidence to support the charges” and say she should be released as she awaits trial.

    Among the details released in the documents are internet searches investigators say were found on Richins’ phone that were described by prosecutors as “incriminating.”

    Some of the articles pulled up through her searches focused on fentanyl, life insurance payments and others relating to police investigations and how data is collected from electronic devices.

    The searches found on Richins’ iPhone include the phrases: “can cops force you to do a lie detector test?” “Luxury prisons for the rich in America,” “death certificate says pending, will life insurance still pay?” “If someone is poisoned what does it go down on the death certificate as,” and “How to permanently delete information from an iPhone remotely.”

    Eric Richins was found dead at the foot of the couple’s bed in March 2022. His wife told investigators at the time that she brought her husband a Moscow Mule cocktail in the bedroom of their Kamas, Utah, home, then left to sleep with their son in his room and returned around 3 a.m. to find her husband lying on the floor cold to the touch.

    About a year to the day after her husband died, Richins published a children’s book, “Are You With Me?” about navigating grief after the loss of a loved one.

    Prosecutors say Richins withdrew money from bank accounts without her husband’s knowledge and tried to change a life insurance policy to make herself the sole beneficiary. They also point to various incidents where she allegedly may have attempted to poison him.

    Meanwhile, her lawyers argue in filings made Friday that Richins had the right to withdraw money from their joint accounts, claim “there is no evidence identifying the computer from which the login was initiated” when the life insurance policy change was attempted, and say she did not attempt to poison him.

    Investigators also detailed a series of illicit fentanyl purchases in the months leading up to her husband’s death, according to the documents. His death was six days after the latest alleged pill delivery, investigators say.

    An autopsy and toxicology report revealed that Eric Richins, 39, had about five times the lethal dosage of fentanyl in his system, according to a medical examiner.

    The defense insists there is no proof their client gave her husband the lethal dose.

    “Law enforcement never identified or seized any fentanyl or other illicit drugs from the Family Home,” her defense lawyers wrote in a motion. Also, “the State has provided no evidence that there was fentanyl found in the home. Nor have they provided any evidence that Kouri gave Eric the fentanyl at issue.”

    Eric Richins is described as a “partier” and someone who “loved a good time,” in the defense motion. “He would consume alcohol and THC in any form,” the document said.

    The defense motion also points to discrepancies in witness testimony, adding that law enforcement told one witness that “if she gave them what they wanted, it would constitute her ‘get out of jail free card,’” the document says.

    Potentially previewing what may be presented in trial, another filing in the case includes allegations that some of Eric Richins’ financial documents may have been forged.

    The professional opinion of Matt Throckmorton – a forensic document examiner who looked at three specific documents relating to durable power of attorney and life insurance – is included in the filings.

    After comparing those documents with dozens of other documents Eric Richins authored, Throckmorton indicated that signatures on the three items in question appear to have been forged.

    “The forgeries in this case are ‘simulated forgeries.’ That is when someone tries to copy, draw or duplicate another person’s characteristics and habits and tries to create a fraudulent signature or set of initials with enough similarities they might get passed off as genuine,” Throckmorton explained.

    “Eric made and requested several unusual to highly unusual choices and provisions to his estate plan,” said attorney Kristal Bowman-Carter, who counseled Eric on estate planning, according to the documents.

    Those unusual requests included that his wife not be designated as his health care agent should one be needed and that his wife and children be provided for, but with the caveat that she should be unable to control the financials. Eric chose his father and sister to be trustees on his family’s behalf, according to the documents.

    Eric sought to “protect the three young sons he and Kouri had together in the long-term by ensuring that Kouri would never be in a position to manage his property after his death,” Bowman-Carter said.

    In a phone conversation the day after Eric’s death, Bowman-Carter explained the trust to Kouri. She said Kouri “became extremely upset. Her behavior (led) me to believe she was learning this for the first time.”

    In an email included in the filings, Richins wrote to police clarifying information about her previous testimony, including a reference to an affair her husband previously had. “Eric’s affair was the same year I ‘moved out,’ the trust was created as well as him looking into a divorce,” she wrote. “Eric and I figured things out like most couples do,” she added.

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  • Indianapolis Colts player Isaiah Rodgers Sr. says he takes ‘full responsibility’ amid reports of NFL probe into gambling violations | CNN

    Indianapolis Colts player Isaiah Rodgers Sr. says he takes ‘full responsibility’ amid reports of NFL probe into gambling violations | CNN

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    CNN
     — 

    Indianapolis Colts player Isaiah Rodgers Sr. said he takes “full responsibility” while adding that he made an “error in judgment” after reports that he is being investigated by the NFL for possibly breaching the league’s gambling policy.

    ESPN and SportsHandle.com, citing unnamed sources, reported that a sportsbook account was opened under the name of one of Rodger’s associates, where approximately 100 bets were placed over an undisclosed amount of times.

    “Addressing the current reports, I want to take full responsibility for my actions,” Rodgers said in a statement on Twitter on Monday. “I know I have made mistakes and I am willing to do whatever it takes to repair the situation.

    “The last thing I ever wanted to do was to be a distraction to the Colts organization, my coaches and my teammates. I’ve let people down that I care about. I made an error in judgment and I am going to work hard to make sure that those mistakes are rectified through this process. It’s an honor to play in the NFL and I have never taken that lightly. I am very sorry for all of this.”

    Most of the bets placed were in the $25-$50 range, with some of them being on Colts games, according to ESPN.

    In a statement to CNN, the Colts acknowledged the team was aware of the NFL’s investigation but provided no further comment. Meanwhile, an NFL spokesperson told CNN the league did not have a comment, when asked about the report.

    Rodgers, who was selected by the Colts in the sixth-round of the 2020 NFL Draft, played in 15 games for the team last season and was expected to be a starter this upcoming season.

    The 25-year-old Rodgers, who is on the final year of his four-year contract with the team, is the latest player in the NFL to be investigated for breaching the league’s gambling policy.

    In April, the NFL suspended five players for violating the league’s gambling policy. Quintez Cephus and C.J. Moore of the Detroit Lions and Shaka Toney of the Washington Commanders were suspended indefinitely for betting on NFL games during the 2022 season. Meanwhile, Stanley Berryhill and Jameson Williams of the Lions received a six-game suspension for placing bets on non-NFL games from NFL facilities.

    Jacksonville Jaguars wide receiver Calvin Ridley was reinstated by the league in March, after a year-long suspension for gambling on NFL games while he was a member with the Atlanta Falcons.

    The NFL’s gambling policy, which is annually reviewed with all league personnel, including players, prohibits anyone in the NFL from engaging in any form of gambling in any team or league facility or venue.

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  • Amanda Gorman is ‘gutted’ by school district’s decision to restrict her poem after a parent complained it contained ‘hate messages’ | CNN

    Amanda Gorman is ‘gutted’ by school district’s decision to restrict her poem after a parent complained it contained ‘hate messages’ | CNN

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    CNN
     — 

    The acclaimed poem written by Amanda Gorman for President Joe Biden’s inauguration was moved from the elementary section of a Miami-Dade County public school after a parent complaint and school review, the district confirmed Tuesday.

    A parent of a student at Bob Graham Education Center – a kindergarten through eighth grade school in Miami Lakes – objected to Gorman’s poem “The Hill We Climb,” for which they erroneously listed Oprah Winfrey as the author/publisher, according to documents obtained by the Florida Freedom to Read Project.

    It “is not educational and have (sic) indirectly hate messages,” the complaint said, adding that the poem would “cause confusion and indoctrinate students.”

    The same parent made similar complaints about “Love to Langston,” a poetry-based biography of Black poet Langston Hughes; “The ABCs of Black History” and two books about Cuba, complaints obtained by the nonprofit group show.

    A materials-review panel at the school declined to remove the books from the school entirely but did decide to move the Gorman poem and two other disputed items to the library’s middle school section, which is for grades six through eight, according to minutes of an April meeting of the committee that were obtained by the nonprofit.

    The poem’s removal is the latest consequence of a Florida law that requires the approval of books in classrooms and grants any parent the power to complain about specific works. Under Gov. Ron DeSantis, a Republican set to run for president, Florida has used this and other “parental rights” laws to ban works on LGBTQ issues, social justice and even math textbooks.

    Gorman, the nation’s first-ever Youth Poet Laureate, was 22 when she performed “The Hill We Climb” at Biden’s inauguration in 2021. Inspired by the Capitol insurrection two weeks earlier, the 700-word poem criticized the “force that would shatter our nation rather than share it” and spoke about the need for justice and social change.

    “The new dawn blooms as we free it,” she concluded the poem. “For there is always light, if only we’re brave enough to see it, if only we’re brave enough to be it.”

    The poem and performance launched her to national stardom, including appearances at the Super Bowl, on the cover of Time and Vogue and atop bestseller’s lists.

    Gorman was “gutted” by the district’s decision, she said in a statement on Tuesday.

    “I wrote ‘The Hill We Climb’ so that all young people could see themselves in a historical moment. Ever since, I’ve received countless letters and videos from children inspired by ‘The Hill We Climb’ to write their own poems,” she wrote. “Robbing children of the chance to find their voices in literature is a violation of their right to free thought and free speech.”

    Miami-Dade County’s mayor on Wednesday invited Gorman to visit for a reading.

    “Your poem inspired our youth to become active participants in their government and to help shape the future. We want you to come to Miami-Dade to do a reading of your poem. If you’re in, we will coordinate,” Daniella Levine Cava wrote on Twitter.

    In a statement to CNN Tuesday evening, Miami-Dade County Public Schools spokesperson Elmo Lugo said, “No literature (books or poem) has been banned or removed.”

    “It was determined at the school that ‘The Hill We Climb’ is better suited for middle school students and, it was shelved in the middle school section of the media center. The book remains available in the media center,” he said.

    Lugo did not respond to a request to verify the authenticity of the complaint documents released by the Florida Freedom to Read Project, instead saying the district would process CNN’s inquiry as a formal public records request.

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  • 3 people killed, 1 critically injured in Kansas City nightclub shooting | CNN

    3 people killed, 1 critically injured in Kansas City nightclub shooting | CNN

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    CNN
     — 

    Three people were killed and one is in critical condition after a nightclub shooting early Sunday morning in Kansas City, Missouri, police say.

    At least five people were shot at Klymax Lounge on Indiana Ave., the police department in Kansas City, Missouri, confirmed.

    Officers responded to the lounge just before 1:30 a.m. local time, “located multiple victims upon their arrival and began providing medical aid,” police said.

    “Officers located five victims all believed to be adults,” the department said in an email to CNN. “Three of the victims were transported by EMS to the hospital. Two victims were pronounced deceased at the scene. One of those victims was located outside the lounge and the second was located inside the business.”

    One of the victims died later at the hospital, police said.

    Two victims remain in the hospital, according to police, with one in critical condition and the other in stable condition.

    Authorities are asking those with information on the shooting to come forward, as “there is a reward of up to $25,000 for information provided.”

    CNN has reached out to Klymax Lounge for comment.

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  • 20 classic French dishes everyone needs to try | CNN

    20 classic French dishes everyone needs to try | CNN

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    CNN
     — 

    The roots of French cooking run deep.

    The foundations of the country’s culinary empire were laid as early as the mid-1600s when chef François Pierre La Varenne penned his hugely influential “Le Cuisinier François” recipe book, which emphasized regional and seasonal ingredients and highlighted complementary flavors.

    “French cooking is, at its core, about making beautiful, refined food out of simple ingredients,” said Maryann Tebben, author of “Savoir-Faire: A History of Food in France.”

    “There is some mystery and magic to French cuisine that still draws people in. Even the basics – a perfect baguette, flaky pastry, potatoes simmered in cream – are astonishingly good even if we can’t quite figure out what makes them so delicious.”

    The cuisine of France “keeps inspiring people. It is entertaining. It is delicious. It is accessible. It is possible,” said Michelin-starred chef Daniel Boulud.

    Whether it’s country fare or haute cuisine that inspires, take a look at 20 classic French dishes:

    Is there possibly a more French way to prepare beef than to marinate it in red wine? Named boeuf Bourguignon after the famed red wine from the Burgundy region of France, this dish combines a nice, fatty cut of beef with a dry pinot noir and plenty of fresh vegetables to create a hearty and indulgent stew.

    It has been the focus of many discussions over which cuts of beef and types of wine create the best flavor profiles. But the most important ingredient for success is patience – like any good stew, boeuf Bourguignon is best when left overnight before serving.

    Not a fan of beef? Another French favorite, coq au vin, takes the Burgundian preparation and gives chicken the leading role instead.

    Bouillabaisse: This dish is an elevated take on the catch of the day.

    With a long name and an even longer list of ingredients, bouillabaisse is Marseille’s gift to France’s culinary canon. The soup, once a poor man’s dish and now a mainstay on many a Michelin-starred menu, elevates the catch of the day beyond your standard soupe de poisson.

    According to the Mediterranean port’s bouillabaisse charter, in an attempt to standardize the ingredients and preparation of the classic dish, the soup must include at least four of six specific fish selections that are cut up in front of the diners.

    Alongside optional crustaceans and a spicy broth, no self-respecting bouillabaisse is complete without a topper of croutons dipped in rouille, a peppery garlic sauce.

    Tarte Tatin: The rustic upside-down caramelized apple tart has deep, buttery flavor.

    This list of classic French dishes would be incomplete without the inclusion of something from the country’s extensive repertoire of patisserie. Though not as refined or architectural as some treats seen in the windows of French sweet shops, the buttery, simmering tarte Tatin, essentially an upside-down caramelized apple tart, is famous around the world for its rich flavor and unique history.

    Legend has it that sisters Stéphanie and Caroline Tatin were working in a restaurant in the Loire Valley of France in the late 19th century when Stéphanie was overwhelmed in the kitchen by the influx of customers during hunting season.

    She accidentally left the apples in her apple pie cooking too long and tried to salvage it by covering the apples in pastry and baking. The resulting dish – steaming apples under caramelized sugar with a flaky crust – was so popular it was eventually named after the sisters: la tarte des demoiselles Tatin.

    Though tarte Tatin is sure to be delicious anywhere you try it, it might be best sampled where it originated.

    “Northern France is very known for its apples,” said David Lebovitz, author of “The Sweet Life in Paris.” “They have spectacularly good cooking apples.”

    French onion soup: The cozy, brothy soup is topped with bread and melted cheese.

    Onion soup is not a new invention or even a dish that can be directly tied to France. Some of the earliest iterations of it can be traced back to ancient Rome. But the most famous version? The version you think of when you think “onion soup”? The version you order to start off your meal made with beef stock, onions, toasted bread and ooey-gooey Gruyère cheese?

    That’s all France.

    The element that really sets this soup apart from other, less indulgent onion-based options is the layer of cheese that tops the steaming broth. That comes from baking the soup in a broiler to melt the cheese and produce what the French call au gratin.

    The gratin “technique (is) about making something in a shallow dish that will bake and get croûte on top – which means creating a crust – and that crust can be cheese, can be bread, can be all kinds of things. But a nice crust,” explained Boulud, who opened Le Gratin, an entire restaurant dedicated to highlighting the technique, in New York.

    The most popular dish at the restaurant is another cheesy French favorite, gratin Dauphinois, or gratin potatoes.

    Escargot: Snails with parsley and garlic butter are a French delicacy.

    Escargot is perhaps one of the most famous – or infamous, depending on who you ask – French dishes around. The delicacy, which can be traced all the way back to the Roman Empire, might not be for everyone, but it’s definitely worth a try for the adventurous eater.

    The classic recipe involves snails with parsley and garlic butter. The snails are served warm either inside their shells or in a specific dish fashioned with six to 12 small compartments. Often the dish comes with some bread to help soak up the rich, buttery flavor.

    These aren’t your average backyard snails either. The most popular snail species for escargot are the particularly well-regarded Burgundy snail, which is highly protected in France.

    Chocolate soufflé: This rich yet lightweight dessert is a challenge to master but well worth the effort.

    Aptly named after the French term souffler, meaning “to puff up,” the experience of eating a chocolate soufflé or one of its savory counterparts is a bit like biting into a cloud. The rich yet lightweight dessert has been gracing French tables since the 18th century, but was really perfected by esteemed chef and arbiter of haute cuisine Marie-Antoine Carême in the mid-1800s.

    Though notoriously difficult to prepare, the soufflé has a relatively simple ingredient list.

    The distinctive airy texture comes from separating the egg whites from the yolk and whipping them into a stiff meringue before folding them back into the chocolate batter. The baking time and cooking temperature is specific, and easy to get wrong, but the payoff is immediate – soufflés are served hot and fresh from the oven.

    Crepes: Ultrathin pancakes can be filled with sweet or savory ingredients.

    Not every French dish can be served all day, but then again, the crepe isn’t just any French dish.

    As France’s biggest-hitting entry to the global pancake catalog, crepes have a uniquely versatile quality. They can be served for breakfast, lunch or dinner. They can be made with buckwheat flour, the tradition of the Brittany region’s savory galettes, or with more widely used white flour. They can be folded into triangles or rolled into logs.

    The paper-thin pancake is prepared rather theatrically on large griddles at crêperies. You can now find crepes made with any combination of sweet or savory ingredients, but crêpes suzette are still a popular iteration, consisting of caramelized sugar, orange juice and, for a flash of drama, flambeed liqueur.

    Salade Niçoise: This dish is a celebration of fresh, colorful produce at its peak.

    Salade Niçoise is a celebration of the fresh, colorful produce available throughout the French Riviera, where the dish originated. Elegantly plated on a tray or large platter, the salad features a bed of lettuce and a simple olive oil dressing or vinaigrette that lets the real star of the dish truly shine – the crudités, or raw vegetables.

    A purist’s salade Niçoise might feature a seasonal selection of fresh tomatoes, black olives, capers and green beans, all served cold, with the optional addition of anchovies or tuna. But as the salad’s popularity has grown outside of Nice, a number of ingredients have become common additions, such as hard-boiled eggs, potatoes, red bell peppers, fava beans and cucumbers.

    The sandwich version of this salad, pan bagnat, is also worth a try. Picture all the delicious ingredients of a Niçoise salad tucked into pain de campagne, or French sourdough.

    Crème brûlée: Fire is required for this caramelized dessert.

    Every bite of a crème brûlée is an exercise in opposites. The sweet vanilla custard flavor contrasted with the almost bitter flavor of the bruléed topping; the crunch of the caramelized sugar against the smooth, creamy texture of the custard underneath; the gentle water bath used to bake the custard compared with the dramatic blowtorch flame used to melt the sugar – in this dish opposites definitely attract.

    It’s hard to pinpoint when and even where the first crème brûlée might have been made. There were similar recipes floating around France, Spain and England dating back as early as the fifth century. But one thing for sure is that humans throughout history have always loved a good, creamy dessert. And who are we to disagree with 1,500 years of good reviews?

    Cassoulet: The earthy stew is the heartiest of hearty French dishes.

    Perhaps the heartiest of hearty French dishes is the cassoulet.

    A bean-centric ragout that originated in the southern town of Castelnaudary, the cassoulet can have different ingredients, depending on the region. In Castelnaudary, the white beans are prepared with duck confit, pork and sausage. Carcassonne features gamey meat such as mutton. Toulouse adds a bread crumb topping.

    The general and historical premise is the same – take all the hearty and edible ingredients available and put them in a pot or, more specifically, an earthenware cassole.

    This dish is so beloved by the French, Castelnaudary has its own brotherhood to defend it – the Grande Confrérie du Cassoulet.

    “The purpose of the Grande Confrérie is to honor, disseminate and defend the reputation of Cassoulet de Castelnaudary, ensuring respect for traditions and quality,” a statement on the brotherhood’s website explains.

    Quiche Lorraine: A butter crust and savory egg custard make this a winning dish.

    Creamy eggs, smoky bacon, flaky pastry crust – the quiche Lorraine is the quintessential French brunch item. But what has become a staple item at any decent French bistro or boulangerie had a rather tumultuous start.

    The term quiche originates from the German word for cake – kuchen. This is because the first quiches were made in the Lotharingia kingdom of Germany which, during the Middle Ages, spanned several modern Western European countries.

    The egg-and-cream custard pie was beloved in the Lothringen region, which was later annexed by France to become, you guessed it, Lorraine. The borders changed, but the dish stuck around. Now, quiches are served worldwide with any number of delicious and inventive flavor combinations.

    Confit de canard: The slow-cooked duck will have meat so tender it falls off the bone.

    What was once a method of preserving meat or vegetables before the existence of refrigerators has become one of the most famous French food preparation methods. The confit process produces juicy, tender meat with crispy skin that’s been enriched with the flavors of salt, herbs and its own fat. What’s not to love?

    Confit certainly isn’t the easiest process, but it’s hard to conceive of a more delicious way to prepare duck. First, the raw meat is cured with salt and aromatics such as thyme or garlic, then it’s poached at a low temperature for several hours until the fat is fully rendered. The meat can then be stored with the fat in an airtight container for weeks or even months until you’re ready to fry it up and eat it.

    This technique can easily go awry, but when done right, it produces a cut of duck that’s nutty in flavor and fall-off-the-bone tender.

    Ratatouille: The colorful, tangy vegetable dish is a Provençal specialty (and also a great movie).

    Among so many heavy hitters featuring beef and poultry in the French culinary tradition, there is still one famous entrée suitable for vegetarians: ratatouille. From the French word touille, meaning “to toss,” ratatouille originated in the Provence region but quickly gained popularity throughout France for its use of fresh summer vegetables.

    Featuring a colorful collection of eggplant, zucchini, peppers, onion and tomatoes, ratatouille can be prepared by either baking all the vegetables like a casserole or sautéing them with olive oil, garlic, salt and pepper. The resulting stew can be served hot or cold.

    It pairs great with a crusty baguette topped with an egg, Parmesan, or both, according to the James Beard Foundation.

    Profiteroles: What's better than a cream puff? A cream puff covered with chocolate.

    Beautiful, sweet and small enough to eat more than is probably advisable, profiteroles come in any assortment of flavors. Filled with vanilla custard, cream or even ice cream, these little cream puffs can be topped with chocolate sauce, fruit or just served plain.

    The airy, delicate pastry is pâte à choux, or choux pastry. One of the backbones of French patisserie, choux is the dough used for éclairs, beignets, the Paris-Brest and more. It’s made by cooking flour with water, milk and butter before mixing in the eggs. The resulting dough is wet and pipable and puffs up when baked.

    Because of their simplicity, profiteroles are a common dessert taught young in French homes, David Lebovitz explained. “French cooking is very technique oriented and pâte à choux is a very easy technique to master.”

    Sole meunière: This fish dish showcases one of France's most iconic ingredients: butter.

    This fish dish is fit for a king – literally. Sole meunière is said to have been a favorite of King Louis XIV during the late 1600s. The deceptively simple dish has few ingredients, but the flavor profiles are complex due to the specific techniques used to cook the fish.

    For the most classic preparation, the Dover sole is the fish of choice because of its firm flesh and fresh flavor. The sole is breaded with flour and sautéed in butter until delicately crisp and golden, then topped with parsley and sizzling brown butter, or beurre noisette, which has a rich, nutty flavor.

    “The flesh is transparent. It’s absolutely delicate. It’s one of the finest things in life,” said chef Danièle Mazet-Delpeuch, former personal chef to French President François Mitterrand, in “Julia,” the CNN Film documentary about Julia Child. “Perfect fish in butter. It’s perfect!”

    Terrine: A loaflike shape defines this dish, but you can experiment with many flavor combinations.

    A terrine is the great dish for the most creative of chefs. Named after the earthenware pot used to mold its distinctive, loaflike shape, this dish has a specific look, but the flavor combinations are almost limitless. Make a terrine rustic with ingredients such as pork and beans or go lavish with ingredients such as rare game and truffles. The dish can be made with poultry or fish, or even entirely of vegetables.

    The most important feature for any ingredient? Big flavor.

    Not to be confused with other popular charcuterie elements such as paté or rillettes, a terrine is made by layering forcemeat with any combination of additional ingredients in a terrine mold to cook slowly in a water bath. This dish can be dense enough to serve as an entrée or makes a great hors d’oeuvre with crusty bread and cornichons, which are tiny crisp pickles.

    Steak frites: This simple and universally loved meal of steak and fries pairs well with red wine.

    Try to name a more classic combination than steak and potatoes. Since its origins in France and Belgium, steak frites has been a centerpiece of brasserie and bistro menus throughout Europe – and for good reason. The elements are simple and universally loved: a sizzling cut of beefsteak with a side of piping-hot, crispy fries.

    The steak is often served with a side of creamy béarnaise. Made from clarified butter, herbs and egg yolks, the sauce creates a rich accompaniment to the juicy cut of rib eye or porterhouse.

    Paired with a nice red wine to cut through the heavy flavors, this dish becomes the ultimate casual dinner entrée.

    Jambon-beurre: Assemble good-quality ham, butter and a baguette -- nothing more and nothing less.

    The jambon-beurre is exactly what it claims to be: jambon, or ham, layered on a coating of beurre – butter – between two slices of bread, nothing more and nothing less. The simplicity of this sandwich forces its maker to use only the best ingredients because every element is as important as the last.

    The bread, always a baguette sliced neatly down the center, must be freshly baked to perfection with a crunchy crust and a chewy interior. The ham is best if it’s jambon de Paris, sourced directly from the French capital, sliced thin and free from additives and preservatives. The butter, ideally directly from the northwestern Normandy region, should be lightly salted and spread generously.

    Also known as the Parisien, the jambon-beurre is used as a marker of sorts for the popularity of classic French cuisine among the country’s residents. According to Maryann Tebben, an annual index measures the number of jambon-beurres purchased compared with the annual number of hamburgers, lest the country stray too far from its roots.

    Blanquette de veau: Tender meat in a creamy, comforting sauce is a go-to dish for French home cooks.

    A favorite of home cooks across France, blanquette de veau is a veal stew prepared en blanquette, meaning neither the meat or the butter is browned during cooking. This process produces a dish of tender meat and mellow flavors with a creamy, comforting sauce coating it all.

    The white sauce is made using one of France’s biggest contributions to cooking techniques worldwide – combining melted butter with flour to create a roux. The flour acts as a thickening agent, creating a denser base, and also acts as a bonding agent between the roux and other ingredients such as cheese or cream.

    You can thank this technique for creating the base of dishes such as gumbo, some curries and creamy mac and cheese.

    Pot-au-feu: The beef and vegetable stew is the perfect cold-weather dish.

    Move over chicken noodle soup. There’s another dish that makes a strong claim for the perfect cold-weather dish. Pot-au-feu (meaning “pot on fire”) is a warm, simple and flavorful slow-cooked meal.

    Considered a national dish of France, pot-au-feu has no definitive recipe, and many regions of France have their own versions.

    It’s generally made with meat, root vegetables, herbs, spices and bone marrow, which are prepared together but served in separate courses: the marrow starter, followed by the broth and then finally the meat and vegetables.

    A large helping of pot-au-feu is thought to epitomize the spirit of French cooking – that sharing food, wine and conversation with a table full of loved ones is what makes life worth living.

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  • Where to travel in 2023: The best destinations to visit | CNN

    Where to travel in 2023: The best destinations to visit | CNN

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    CNN
     — 

    As peak vacation season sails into view and the world shakes off the last shackles of the pandemic, it feels like the appetite for hitting the road has never been greater.

    International tourism reached 80% of pre-pandemic levels in the first quarter of 2023, according to the United Nations World Tourism Organization, with an estimated 235 million tourists traveling internationally in January, February and March. And experts are cautiously optimistic about a continued travel rebound.

    Demand is high, with many popular destinations booking out earlier in the year.

    Thankfully, there’s so much out there still to see and do.

    Travel expert explains why you should book your dream vacation now

    Here are 23 destination ideas from CNN Travel to get you started:

    From the main square in Krakow, pictured, to forests, lakes and mountains, Poland invites exploration.

    We could list new openings in Poland – such as Hotel Verte, the new Autograph Collection property in Warsaw, which threw open its gilded doors (it’s in a humongous Baroque palace) last August. But the reason you should visit Poland in 2023 isn’t for the chance to stay in a place fit for royalty. It’s to show solidarity with a country which has, in turn, shown solidarity to the people of Ukraine.

    Sharing a 300-plus-mile border with a country under attack has meant that Poland has taken in more Ukrainian refugees than anywhere else. Add to that plummeting tourist numbers (though they’re on the rise again), and you have a tricky situation.

    So whether you fancy that Warsaw palace, a city break to the likes of Krakow, Gdansk, Wrocław or Poznań – all hundreds of miles from the Ukrainian border – or to get away from it all in the forests, lakes and mountains of the countryside – now’s your chance to do some good by taking a vacation. – Julia Buckley

    A full solar eclipse will be visible in April in Exmouth, Western Australia. The landscape is worth a long look, too.

    Back in April, thousands of people descended on the town of Exmouth and the greater Ningaloo Peninsula, to witness a rare total solar eclipse as it became visible over the northwestern edge of Australia.

    Organizers spent more than a year planning for the event, which lasted about a minute, and featured musical performances, educational opportunities to learn about science and astronomy, and a three-day festival.

    But the state of Western Australia offers much more than some 60 seconds of wonder.

    Spanning one-third of the entire continent of Australia, it stretches from the lively, growing state capital of Perth across deserts including the Great Victoria and Great Sandy to the wine country of Margaret River, the dramatic clifftops of the Kimberley and the quokka-covered Rottnest Island. – Lilit Marcus

    Mersey paradise: Liverpool.

    England’s port city of Liverpool, best known around the world as the birthplace of The Beatles, has added another chapter to its musical legacy.

    It’s the host city of Eurovision 2023, the spangly extravaganza of song that brings an influx of thousands of flag-waving fans from across the continent. The annual event is an opportunity for the city to bounce back after the ignominy of being stripped of its UNESCO World Heritage status in 2021.

    In June, the city will celebrate 25 years of the Liverpool Biennial contemporary visual arts festival, as more than 30 international artists and collectives take over spaces in the city until September.

    England is also marking the Year of the Coast in 2023, with food festivals and beach cleans taking place along the country’s shores. Just a half hour from Liverpool city center by train, Crosby Beach is the permanent home of sculptor Antony Gormley’s “Another Place,” where 100 cast-iron figures stand facing out to sea. – Maureen O’Hare

    Charleston, a city of undeniable refined, historic beauty, is also looking more closely at its troubled past.

    Charleston parades its past like no other US city, but it often glossed over the history of its Black residents. It’s been taking steps to fix that.

    Enter the much-delayed International African American Museum, which is now expected to open in late June.

    Located on the shoreline of the Cooper River in the spot where many Africans first set foot in North America, it will explore the lives of slaves and their descendants.

    Visitors in late May and early June can enjoy the world-renowned Spoleto Festival featuring opera, theater, dance, musical acts and artist talks.

    In March, foodies headed to the Charleston Wine and Food Festival to sample Lowcountry favorites.

    For fancy Southern fare, try Magnolias. Opened in 1990, it helped spur the city’s culinary renaissance. For something informal, try Bertha’s Kitchen in North Charleston, where red rice with sausage, fried chicken and lima beans rule. The eatery even caught attention of “Roadfood” author Michael Stern. – Forrest Brown

    Self-effacing Vilnius admitted in an ad campaign this year that nobody really knows where it is. If their brilliant video didn’t make you want to book a trip there immediately, perhaps this will: the capital of Lithuania celebrated its 700th anniversary on January 25, 2023.

    To mark the milestone, a packed program of events, including music festivals and exhibitions, are being held throughout the year. But use the anniversary as a push to visit rather than following a program religiously.

    The entire city center is a UNESCO World Heritage Site – putting it up there with its fellow V-cities, Venice and Vienna. Vilnius makes it on the list thanks to its Gothic, Renaissance and Baroque buildings, all sitting on a medieval street plan, but it’s best known for its Baroque architecture.

    Don’t miss the frothy bell tower of St. John’s church (you can climb it for sweeping city views) or the church of St. Casimir, topped by a giant crown. Got an eye for social media? This is Europe’s only capital city that allows hot air balloons to cruise over the city skyline. – JB

    Scenes like this await visitors to Fiji.

    Brilliant blue waters, expansive coral reefs and hundreds of peaceful islands: Fiji is not a hard sell. But why go there in 2023? For one, the country only reopened post-Covid at the end of 2021, meaning that visitor numbers to the South Pacific paradise have yet to fully rebound.

    While the country is spoiled for underwater beauty, take an opportunity to explore its above-ground treasures, too. The country’s lone UNESCO World Heritage site is the town of Levuka, a former capital and an important port, which is studded with British colonial-era buildings amid coconut and mango trees.

    To learn about the local Indigenous communities, travelers can take part in a kava welcoming ceremony – named for the traditional drink at its center – or enjoy a lovo, a meal cooked by hot coals in an underground pit covered with banana leaves.

    Fiji Airways now has direct flights from Los Angeles and San Francisco, making it relatively easy to get to the islands. As the Fijians say, bula! – LM

    As the fate of the Amazon rainforest hangs in the balance, two eco-lodges around Manaus – the capital of Brazil’s Amazonas state, and gateway to the river – have used their pandemic pause to get even more environmentally friendly.

    Juma Amazon Lodge, about 50 miles south of the city, is now fully powered by a new $400,000 solar plant, whose 268 double panels swagger nearly 40 feet into the air above the canopy (meaning no trees had to be cut). They’ve also built a biogas system to increase the efficiency of organic waste treatment, reducing annual carbon emissions by eight tons.

    Meanwhile, Anavilhanas Jungle Lodge, northwest of Manaus on the Rio Negro river, opened an off-grid “advanced base” during the pandemic that’s 30 miles from the main lodge and accessible only via river.

    Guests can take long jungle hikes through territory home to jaguars, pumas and giant armadillos in what’s one of the Amazon region’s most remote hotel facilities, then spend the afternoon in a hammock or by the pool. For 2023, the lodge is planning overnight stays in a creekside tent for small groups.

    Don’t miss Manaus itself – eating behemoth Amazonian fish outside the pink 1896 opera house is a bucket list experience. – JB

    Enticing flavors, history and proximity to beaches and mountains are just a few factors working in this Greek city's favor.

    There’s been no shortage of reasons to visit Greece’s second city in recent times, with a UNESCO-endorsed local food scene that recently celebrated the refurb and reopening of its century-old Modiano food market.

    Throw in a popular waterfront and proximity to beautiful beaches and inland mountains, Thessaloniki is surely a contender for one of Europe’s best city-break destinations.

    What could make it even better? How about a gleaming new metro system? All being well, November 2023 should see the opening of the main line of an infrastructure megaproject that will eventually connect the city’s downtown to its international airport. Driverless trains will whisk passengers through tunnels whose excavation has added to Thessaloniki’s already rich catalog of archeological discoveries, many of which will be on display in specially created museum stations. – Barry Neild

    January 2023 saw the official opening of Rwanda’s most exciting hotel yet: Sextantio Rwanda, a collection of traditionally crafted huts on an island on Lake Kivu, one of Africa’s largest lakes.

    It’s the first project outside Italy for Daniele Kihlgren, whose part-hotel, part-living history projects keep local tradition alive. A nonprofit delivering money straight to local communities, Sextantio sees guests fishing on the 1,000-square-mile lake, paddling in dug-out canoes, trying local banana beer and wildlife-spotting – and not just the chickens, cows, pigs and goats that roam around the property.

    Of course, you’ll want to see gorillas. Adjoining Volcanoes National Park, the Dian Fossey Gorilla Fund opened the 4,500-square meter Ellen DeGeneres Campus in 2022. Its visitor center includes exhibits, virtual reality gorilla “encounters” and nature trails.

    Over in Akagera National Park, white rhinos – transferred from South Africa in 2021 to aid conservation – are already calving. It’s easier to get there, too. A new route from London joins Brussels, Dubai, Guangzhou and Mumbai as the only direct flights to Kigali from outside the African continent. – JB

    Voted the world’s most sustainable destination in the world for six years running, Sweden’s second-biggest city is finally emerging from the shadow of Stockholm.

    Once a major trading and shipping town, Gothenburg is now considered to be one of the greenest destinations in Europe, with 274 square meters (2,950 square feet) of green space per citizen, while 95% of its hotels are certified as eco-friendly.

    Although Gothenburg officially turned 400 in 2021, the celebrations were put on ice because of the global pandemic. But they’re finally taking place in 2023, so it’s a great time to visit.

    Sweden’s King Carl XVI Gustav, who celebrates 50 years on the throne this year, will be in town on June 4, Gothenburg’s official birthday, and the city’s major anniversary festival is being held in the Frihamnen port district from June 2 to 5, with concerts and art events among the activities on offer.

    The festivities will continue throughout the summer until the September 3 kick off of Göteborgsvarvet Marathon, a new 26-mile race following on from the city’s popular half marathon on May 13. – Tamara Hardingham-Gill

    The Dhayah Fort in Ras al-Khaimah is one of the few remaining hill forts in the United Arab Emirates.

    When travelers think of the United Arab Emirates, the dazzling skyline of Dubai is usually what springs to mind.

    But the UAE has a lot to offer nature lovers too – particularly the northernmost emirate Ras al-Khaimah, which is aiming to become the Middle East’s most sustainable destination by 2025 thanks to a new “Balanced Tourism” strategy.

    Just 45 minutes from Dubai, it’s often called the “adventure Emirate,” and for good reason. Offering beaches, deserts and mountains, outdoor attractions abound, such as sand boarding, trekking, wakeboarding, skydiving, scuba diving and even the world’s longest zipline.

    But it’s not all about the adrenaline rush. Ras Al Khaimah is where you’ll find the highest restaurant in the United Arab Emirates, 1484 by Puro, which sits in the emirate’s Jebel Jais Mountains. Culture seekers can head for the historic Dhayah Fort, which dates back to the Late Bronze Age (1600-1300 BC).

    Where to stay? Luxury hospitality brand Anantara is opening a fabulous new resort there later this year that will offer 174 guestrooms, suites and overwater villas along with specialty restaurants and a spa. – Karla Cripps

    Three-tiered Kuang Si Falls is just south of UNESCO-listed Luang Prabang.

    Sharing borders with Thailand, Cambodia, Vietnam, China and Myanmar, landlocked Laos has long been a must-hit spot for time-rich travelers making their way through the Southeast Asia circuit.

    But now, thanks to the 2021 opening of a semi-high-speed railway, it’s easier than ever to get around the country at a quicker pace, shaving hours off journeys that previously took full days to travel.

    You’re still going to have to make some hard choices – there’s a lot to see in Laos.

    Towering karst peaks await visitors to adventure-haven Vang Vieng, while UNESCO-listed Luang Prabang is filled with French-colonial heritage, Buddhist ritual and natural beauty. (Luxury seekers will want to check into the Rosewood Luang Prabang, with its stylish hilltop tents)

    The mysterious Plain of Jars, a megalithic archaeological site, can be found in the Xiangkhoang Plateau. For a once-in-a-lifetime experience that makes a difference, head for Bokeo Province and join one of the Gibbon Experience’s overnight treks. Guests of this tourism-based conservation project spend the night in the world’s tallest treehouses – only accessible by zipline – among wild, black-crested gibbons. – KC

    Rolling hills, medieval buildings – and the officially crowned world’s best cheese. Welcome to Gruyères, Switzerland.

    Everywhere you look in this tiny, hilltop town, there’s a different picture-perfect view – from the medieval market square to the turreted 13th-century castle. A doable day trip from Geneva, summer promises hiking opportunities aplenty, while winter allows for venturing to the nearby Moléson-sur-Gruyères ski resort.

    To taste Gruyères’ namesake fromage, stop off at the wood-lined Chalet de Gruyères. And to learn how cheesemakers perfect this creamy goodness, head to La Maison du Gruyère factory. For further foodie delights, there’s the Maison Cailler chocolate factory – from the outside it looks like something from a Wes Anderson movie, inside it offers a glimpse into the secrets of Swiss chocolate making.

    Gruyères is also home to the surreal HR Giger Museum, celebrating the work of the acclaimed Swiss artist behind the eponymous alien in the 1979 movie “Alien.” A drink at the museum’s bar, designed by Giger in an eerie skeletal aesthetic, offers an antidote to Gruyères’ fairytale vibe. – Francesca Street

    A modern Indigenous restaurant in Minneapolis has earned one of the culinary world’s highest honors, and it’s not alone in shining light on Native communities in the area.

    At Owamni, a James Beard Award winner for best new restaurant, Indigenous ingredients – trout, bison, sweet potatoes and more – make up “decolonized” menus where ingredients such as wheat flour and beef are absent. The restaurant is a partnership between chef Sean Sherman, Oglala Lakota and Dana Thompson, who is a lineal descendant of the Wahpeton-Sisseton and Mdewakanton Dakota tribes.

    Earlier this year, one of the pair’s community-owned initiatives, Indigenous Food Lab, opened a market in Minneapolis’ Midtown Global Market, a former Sears building housing businesses that represent more than 22 cultures.

    The open-air Four Sisters Farmers Market (Thursdays June through October) also focuses on Indigenous products. And at the Minnesota History Center in neighboring St. Paul, the exhibit “Our Home: Native Minnesota” looks at thousands of years of Native history in the state. – Marnie Hunter

    While Colomia's busy capital can be congested, it's also home to the historic neighborhood of La Candelaria.

    Caribbean coast destinations such as the Rosario archipelago or the UNESCO heritage list city of Cartagena are rightly top of most Colombia travel wish lists, but also deserving a look-in is the country’s somewhat unsung capital of Bogotá.

    Yes, it’s a messy, traffic-snarled urban sprawl, but it’s also a high-altitude crucible of culture and cuisine. There are tours that chart the city’s transformation from graffiti wild west to incredible street art gallery.

    Equally colorful are the restaurants that make the most of Colombia’s diverse natural larder of flora on menus that range from delicious peasant dishes to mind-blowing Michelin-level gastronomy. And then there’s the coffee!

    The congestion (except on regular cycle-only days) thins quickly on its outskirts, allowing day trips to see historic and modern treasures. Itineraries include Lake Guatavita, where conquistadors once plundered sunken gold offerings left by indigenous Muisca people, or the majestic subterranean Zipaquirá salt cathedral. – BN

    Famed for its mountain treks through ancient trails that once facilitated trade between the Himalayas and India, Nepal’s stunning Mustang Valley sits on the doorstep of Tibet.

    Expect to hear a lot more about this remote destination in the coming months thanks to the arrival of the soon-to-open Shinta Mani Mustang. Part of the Bensley Collection, this all-inclusive resort perched above the small town of Jomsom in the Lower Mustang will offer luxury seekers 29 suites inspired by traditional Tibetan homes.

    In addition to trekking, Mustang visitors can explore ancient villages and Buddhist monasteries. Also not to be missed, the man-made Mustang Caves sit above the Gandaki River and are filled with 2,000-year-old Buddhist sculptures and paintings.

    Getting to the Mustang Valley is part of the adventure. Travelers will need to take a 25-minute flight from capital Kathmandu to Pokhara then hop on another plane for the 20-minute journey to Jomsom. The views alone might make this option more pleasing to some than the alternative – a 12-hour drive from Kathmandu. – KC

    From the spectacular wildlife to the beautiful national parks and beaches, Tanzania is absolutely bursting with visual splendor.

    The East African country holds a seemingly endless list of incredible sights, with Mount Kilimanjaro, Africa’s highest mountain, UNESCO world heritage site Serengeti National Park, and the Zanzibar Archipelago, among its many highlights.

    This year, flag carrier Air Tanzania will launch new routes to West and Central Africa, along with the UK, in a bid to transform the country’s largest airport in Dar es Salaam into a transport and logistics hub, while construction on the country’s first toll expressway is also scheduled to begin.

    Meanwhile, the Delta Hotels by Marriott brand made its Africa debut with the opening of its Dar es Salaam Oyster Bay property earlier this year. –– THG

    Cairo is pulsing with life and a rich blend of cultures.

    Could this finally be the year tourists can see the Grand Egyptian Museum? After delay upon delay, the museum is expecting a 2023 opening.

    GEM will be the largest museum dedicated to a single civilization, costing around $1 billion and holding the entire King Tut collection. See video here of a CNN insider visit.

    If you arrive in Cairo before it opens, the Egyptian Museum in Tahrir Square can still scratch your antiquity itch.

    While the Pyramids of Giza are the city’s tour-de-force, there’s still more to see. Start with Islamic Cairo. This area has one of the largest collections of historic Islamic architecture in the world. While there, visit the Al-Azhar mosque, which dates back to 970.

    The city also has a rich Christian tradition. Coptic Cairo, part of Old Cairo, has a concentration of Christian sites that pre-date the arrival of Islam.

    If you need a respite from Cairo’s cacophony, Al Azhar Park has a nice expanse of greenery and a design inspired by historic Islamic gardens. And the affluent neighborhood of Zamalek, which sits on an island in the Nile River, serves up restaurants, antique stores and swanky hotels. – FB

    Yayoi Kusama has the distinction of being the best-selling living female artist on the planet. In particular, she has become a global icon for her sculptures of giant polka-dotted pumpkins, one of which was reinstalled at the pier of Naoshima, one of Japan’s “art islands,” in 2022 after being swept into the sea the year before.

    However, Naoshima is so much more than its famous yellow gourd or its works by Kusama.

    There are five small, walkable “art islands” in the Seto Inland Sea, which is located between the main islands of Honshu, Kyushu and Shikoku in southeastern Japan. The largest collection of things to see – not to mention the only hotel – is on Naoshima. Together, the five champion modern and contemporary art, with emphasis on Japanese artists.

    Don’t come here expecting calligraphy and other classical forms. Instead, be awed by Tadao Ando’s massive stone monoliths, a tiny gallery where patrons can listen to nothing but the beats of human hearts, a makeshift thunderstorm created inside a wooden house and an exhibit where jumping in and taking a bath is intended to be part of the artistic experience. – LM

    With direct flights to Belize City from about a dozen North American airports, this Central American country is a low-hassle hop for many travelers during the November to April high season.

    Most visitors head directly to Belize’s Caribbean coastline. The country’s largest island, Ambergris Caye, sits next to Belize Barrier Reef – the world’s second largest coral reef system. Margaritaville Beach Resort opened on the island in March, and “eco-luxury” resort Alaia Belize opened in 2021.

    Farther south, the Great Blue Hole – a massive underwater sinkhole – is an aquatic magnet for both scuba divers and aerial photographers.

    But Belize offers way more than its enticing islands.

    Lush rainforests, cave networks, winding rivers and rich Mayan archaeological sites invite exploration in a country that’s had an evolving sustainable tourism master plan since 2012. Ruins of the Mayan city of Altun Ha are just about an hour north of Belize City. Or farther west, Lamanai is one of Belize’s largest and most fascinating Mayan sites. – MH

    Mexico is arguably as rich in culinary heritage as it is in Mesoamerican archaeological treasures, and Eva Longoria explores many distinctive flavors in her series “Searching for Mexico,” which aired on CNN this year.

    The state of Oaxaca, which Longoria visits, has an especially deep well of culinary traditions. Plus, Oaxaca produces most of the world’s mezcal.

    Tlayudas, known as Oaxacan pizzas, are a street food staple. A large corn tortilla is typically layered with lard, beans, traditional Oaxacan cheese, pork and other toppings such as avocado and tomato. The state is also renowned for its seven mole sauces, with recipes that may call for dozens of ingredients from chiles and sesame seeds to chocolate and dried fruit.

    In the city of Oaxaca, Mercado Benito Juárez is one of many markets across the state selling items such as dried chiles, fresh produce, handicrafts and crunchy grasshoppers. To sample the state’s increasingly popular beverage, the town of Santiago Matatlán is the place for mezcal distillery tours and tastings. – MH

    In the winter, the frozen Rideau Canal in Ottawa becomes the world's largest skaing rink.

    It doesn’t have Montreal’s French flair or Toronto’s international oomph, so the Canadian capital can get overlooked. That would be a mistake. Graceful and understated, Ottawa has its own draws.

    Music lovers should take note of two Ottawa Jazz Festivals. The winter edition took place in February, and the summer edition will run from June 23-30.

    If you love hockey, watch the Ottawa Senators do their NHL thing at the Canadian Tire Centre in the western suburbs. If that ticket is too pricey, check out the Ottawa 67’s, a more affordable option of junior men’s hockey games at downtown’s TD Place Arena.

    The Rideau Canal turns into the world’s largest skating rink from sometime in January to late February or early March, depending on ice thickness. It’s free and accessible 24/7. When it’s warmer, it’s a great spot for people and boat watching.

    A don’t-miss is Parliament Hill, home to Canada’s federal government and the visually striking Parliament buildings on a promontory overlooking the Ottawa River. – FB

    Treks through the Bwindi Impenetrable Forest are among Uganda's highlights.

    There’s considerable change brewing in Uganda’s travel offerings at the moment with the East African country looking beyond the traditional staples of safari and wildlife spotting to appeal to both regional and international visitors.

    Keen to revitalize post-Covid tourism in all corners of the country, not just the big-ticket businesses offering wealthy visitors a glimpse of the Big Five beasts or mountain gorillas, it’s turned to marketing its other attributes.

    And why not? From the expansive shores of Lake Victoria to the snowy Rwenzori Mountains, Uganda is a beautiful wilderness playground, with opportunities for adventure including treks through the Bwindi Impenetrable Forest or up to the craters of the Virunga volcano chain or whitewater rafting along the Victoria Nile.

    There’s also an emphasis on connecting visitors with Ugandan communities – promising tastes of Ugandan food, music and culture. Last year saw the launch of the Uganda Cycling Trail, a 1,600-kilometer mainly unpaved 22-stage route designed to appeal to all levels of cyclist from hardcore solo bikepackers to fully-guided easy riders. – BN

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  • Video: Panelist’s reaction to DeSantis’ threat against Disney has guests in stitches | CNN Business

    Video: Panelist’s reaction to DeSantis’ threat against Disney has guests in stitches | CNN Business

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    ‘My stomach is hurting from laughing’: Hear panelist’s reaction to DeSantis’ threat to Disney

    CNN panelists react to Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis floating the idea of building a competing theme park next to Disney World in Orlando.

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  • A Florida woman spent her life savings on her daughter’s cancer treatment — then she won millions in the lottery | CNN

    A Florida woman spent her life savings on her daughter’s cancer treatment — then she won millions in the lottery | CNN

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    CNN
     — 

    A Florida mother won $2 million in the lottery, just days after she finished paying off her daughter’s cancer treatment.

    Geraldine Gimblet, a resident of Lakeland, Florida, won $2 million from a $10 scratch-off lottery ticket, according to a news release from the Florida Lottery. She claimed her winnings as a one-time lump-sum payment of $1,645,000 last Friday, the April 7th news release says.

    Gimblet told the Florida Lottery she bought the last lottery ticket at her local gas station.

    “At first, the gas station clerk thought there were no tickets left,” she recalled, according to the news release. “But I asked him to double check because I like the crossword games the best. He found the last one!”

    Her daughter, who isn’t identified in the news release, spoke about the significance of her mother’s win through tears, the lottery said. Her mother paid for her treatment for breast cancer, she said.

    “The day before my mom bought this ticket, I rang the bell and walked out of the hospital after completing my last treatment for breast cancer,” said Gimblet’s daughter in the release. “My mom had taken out her life savings to take care of me when I was sick. I’m just so happy for her!”

    Gimblet purchased her lucky ticket at Pipkin Road Beverage Castle in Lakeland, according to the release. The retailer will also receive a $2,000 commission for selling the ticket.

    The chances of winning the $2 million prize in the “Bonus Cashword” game are just 1 in 3,921,270, according to the Florida Lottery’s website.

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  • Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez reiterates call to impeach Justice Clarence Thomas over trips with GOP donor | CNN Politics

    Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez reiterates call to impeach Justice Clarence Thomas over trips with GOP donor | CNN Politics

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    CNN
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    Democratic Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York reiterated on Sunday her call for the impeachment of Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas following revelations that he didn’t disclose several luxury trips subsidized by a Republican megadonor.

    In an interview with CNN’s Dana Bash on “State of the Union,” Ocasio-Cortez called for an inquiry into the matter, saying it was “the House’s responsibility to pursue that investigation in the form of impeachment.”

    “I believe that we should pursue the course. And if it is Republicans that decide to protect those who are breaking the law, then they are the ones who then are responsible for that decision,” she said of the House GOP majority, which would be unlikely to pursue such an investigation. “But we should not be complicit in that.”

    Ocasio-Cortez first called for Thomas’ impeachment on Twitter on Thursday following a bombshell ProPublica report that detailed his travel paid for by Republican donor Harlan Crow, which included trips on the donor’s yacht and private jet.

    Thomas said Friday that he did not disclose the luxury travel because he was advised at the time that he did not have to report it.

    In a rare statement sent via the Supreme Court’s public information office, Thomas said that the trips he and his wife, conservative activist Ginni Thomas, took with the Crows were the “sort of personal hospitality from close personal friends” that he was advised did not require disclosure.

    Two dozen Democratic lawmakers from both chambers sent a letter to Chief Justice John Roberts on Friday, calling for a “swift, thorough, independent and transparent investigation” into whether ethics rules and laws were violated by Thomas’ trips.

    But Ocasio-Cortez said she did not have faith in the Supreme Court to conduct an internal investigation, saying, “what we are seeing right now is a breaking of the law.”

    The ProPublica report describes Thomas accepting travel hospitality from Crow that included lavish trips to Indonesia, New Zealand, California, Texas and Georgia. Some of the trips reportedly included travel on Crow’s super yacht or stays at properties owned by Crow or his company.

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  • Virginia man wins $100,000 after purchasing 20 winning lottery tickets with the same numbers | CNN

    Virginia man wins $100,000 after purchasing 20 winning lottery tickets with the same numbers | CNN

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    CNN
     — 

    Putting his eggs in one basket proved fruitful for one Virginia man who purchased not one, but 20 winning lottery tickets with the same numbers.

    Alexandria resident Fekru Hirpo purchased 20 identical tickets, all with the four-digit combination of 2-5-2-7, from a gas station in Arlington, according to a Wednesday news release from the Virginia Lottery.

    The lucky winner told lottery officials he made a spur-of-the-moment decision to go all in on the same ticket for the “Pick 4” game.

    Hirpo said “he doesn’t usually play with so many tickets containing identical numbers, but something just told him to do it,” according to the news release.

    Each ticket won him a prize of $5,000 for a total of $100,000, according to the release.

    Hirpo has “no immediate plans” for his winnings, says the lottery.

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  • Before Las Vegas mass shooting, a friend of the gunman implored him not to ‘shoot or kill innocent people,’ newspaper reports | CNN

    Before Las Vegas mass shooting, a friend of the gunman implored him not to ‘shoot or kill innocent people,’ newspaper reports | CNN

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    CNN
     — 

    A friend of Stephen Paddock, who carried out the deadliest mass shooting in modern US history in Las Vegas in 2017, said in letters that he was concerned about Paddock committing a shooting and asked him not to “shoot or kill innocent people,” according to writings obtained by the Las Vegas Review-Journal.

    Ten letters, which were obtained through a public records request, were “found in late November 2017 by the new owners of an abandoned office building in Mesquite, Texas,” according to FBI records, the newspaper reported. CNN has requested the records.

    “I can get someone for you who can help you,” Jim Nixon, Paddock’s friend, wrote in a letter dated May 27, 2017, according to the newspaper. “Please don’t go out shooting or hurting people who did nothing to you. I am concern [sic] about the way you are talking and believe you are going to do something very bad. Steve please please don’t do what I think you are going to do.”

    In October 2017, Paddock opened fire on a massive crowd of concertgoers from a window of the Mandalay Bay Resort and Casino, killing 58 people in the initial shooting and injuring about 500 others. In the years after the massacre, two more victims have /died of shooting-related injuries.

    Paddock sent nine of the letters to Nixon between 2013 and June 2017, according to the report.None were shared in their entirety by the Review-Journal.

    Nixon told CNN he exchanged letters with Paddock about two or three times a year.

    They first met “around 2010 or 2011” in Virginia and developed a “good relationship,” he said. Nixon said after they became acquainted, he invited Paddock to Nevada to go fishing at Lake Mead and off-road biking in the desert.

    Nixon said there were never any problems with their relationship, but later Paddock became “bitter at the system” and started “talking a lot about death.” Paddock mentioned “going postal,” which made Nixon concerned about Paddock’s well-being, Nixon told CNN.

    Nixon asked in a letter from August 2014 about a statement Paddock allegedly made about executing an upcoming plan, the Review-Journal said.

    “You said in (3) years you would be ready and that your plan would show up in Nevada, California, Illinois, Texas, New York and other cities,” the Review-Journal reported one letter said. “What do you mean?”

    In another letter dated March 2, 2017, Nixon wrote: “You must going [sic] on a hunting trip with all those guns you are stockpiling,” according to the newspaper.

    “You are a good person and I want you to know that I am concern [sic] about you and your wellbeing,” Nixon wrote in the letter dated May 27, 2017, the Review-Journal reported. “I believe you are lying to me and you are going to hurt someone or kill someone. You sound like a real mad man on the phone tonight.”

    Nixon told CNN that he never conveyed his concerns about Paddock to authorities because “he didn’t know [Paddock] was going to do anything” and “couldn’t read [Paddock’s] mind.”

    Nixon said he didn’t believe Paddock did it when the first reports identifying the suspect surfaced. But when authorities was confirmed it was Paddock, he said he thought, “Damn, that fool.”

    About 22,000 people were attending a country music festival across the street from the Mandalay Bay on October 1, 2017, when Paddock opened fire. Witnesses said the gunfire last 10 to 15 minutes. Paddock, 64, took his own life before law enforcement officers knocked down his door, officials said.

    Authorities at the time said they found 23 guns in the room, and 24 more at his two homes.

    Investigators have for years searched for a motive. Recently, the FBI released a trove of documents that indicate he may have harbored resentment over how casinos treated him and other high rollers.

    The heavily redacted documents – which include hundreds of pages of investigation records, evidence inventories and interviews with people who knew Paddock – also provide a fuller picture of the gunman’s obsessive gambling habits.

    Still, the investigative documents never arrive at a definitive motive.

    The FBI opened its investigation the day after the massacre at the Route 91 Harvest music festival and closed it more than a year later, announcing it had found no clear motive for Paddock’s attack.

    Though the FBI said in 2019 that Paddock’s actions were not driven by a grievance against any particular casino or hotel, one fellow gambler interviewed by investigators after the attack said Paddock had become angry about how casinos generally dealt with VIP players.

    The gambler, whose name is redacted, told the FBI that Paddock was “upset at the way casinos were treating him and other high rollers” and that he believed the frustration could have caused the gunman to “snap,” according to the documents.

    The gambler said that while casinos typically treated high rollers to perks like free cruises and flights, he believed the venues’ approach to such players had changed in the years leading up to the shooting, including banning them from some hotels or casinos, the documents said.

    Paddock had been banned from three casinos he frequented in Reno, Nevada, the gambler said.

    The gambler also believed the Mandalay Bay “was not treating Paddock well because a player of his status should have been in a higher floor in a penthouse suite.”

    Due to the redactions, it is unclear how the gambler knew Paddock.

    In order to become the priority player he believed he was, Paddock had spent – and lost – exorbitant amounts of money at casinos, according to people interviewed by the FBI.

    The fellow gambler told investigators that Paddock had a bankroll of about $2 million to $3 million, the documents said.

    He would regularly play for six to eight hours a day at casinos, and sometimes as many as 18 hours a day, the gambler said.

    Investigators also spoke with a woman who worked at the Tropicana Las Vegas casino and resort – just down the Strip from the Mandalay Bay – who said Paddock would visit about every three months, according to the documents.

    She described Paddock as a “prolific video poker player” who would only want to discuss gambling when they talked, the documents said.

    During a three-day stay at the casino in September 2017, Paddock lost $38,000, she told the FBI.

    Real estate agents told CNN in 2017 that Paddock said his income came from gambling and that he gambled about $1 million a year. He paid $369,022 in cash for the home they sold him in 2014, the agents said.

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  • Amsterdam Schiphol Airport proposes a ban on private jets | CNN

    Amsterdam Schiphol Airport proposes a ban on private jets | CNN

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    Editor’s Note: Sign up for Unlocking the World, CNN Travel’s weekly newsletter. Get the latest news in aviation, food and drink, where to stay and other travel developments.



    CNN
     — 

    High flyers hoping to hop to the Netherlands in a private jet might be forced to rethink their travel plans, as Amsterdam’s Schiphol Airport is proposing a private jet ban.

    The notoriously busy airport has suggested a series of measures to reduce its air traffic and create a “quieter, cleaner and better” system, according to a Schiphol airport statement.

    Under new proposals the airport hopes will come into effect “no later than 2025-26,” private jets will “no longer be welcome” at Schiphol. There will also be no aircraft landing between midnight and 5 a.m. local time or taking off between midnight and 6 a.m. local time. Plans for a new runway have also been scrapped.

    Schiphol says it’s targeting private jets because they cause “a disproportionate amount of noise nuisance and CO2 emissions per passenger.” Private jets produce up to 14 times more planet-warming pollution than commercial planes, and 50 times more than trains, according to European clean transport organization, Transport & Environment.

    When these small, swanky aircraft depart from Schiphol, 30% to 50% of them are heading to vacation hot spots like Ibiza in Spain, Cannes in France or Innsbruck in Austria, according to Schiphol. The airport argues there are plenty of airplanes flying from Amsterdam to those destinations, and suggests private passengers should go commercial instead.

    “Sufficient scheduled services are available to the most popular destinations flown to by private jets,” says Schiphol Airport in a statement, adding that small police and ambulance aircraft will be permitted to take off and land as they do currently under the new system.

    Last month, the Dutch government announced plans to restrict international aircraft departures in a quest to cut the country’s carbon emissions.

    The Dutch government’s “Preliminary Scheme Schiphol,” published in January, proposed slashing flight numbers from 500,000 to 460,000 between winter 2023-2024 and summer 2024.

    Airlines including Dutch flagship carrier KLM, as well as Delta and EasyJet, pushed back on this proposed flight cap, launching a legal challenge against the Dutch government.

    The airport’s recent statement suggests limiting nighttime air traffic would mean 10,000 fewer night flights each year, and therefore could help get Schiphol to its target.

    Cutting down on overnight landings and departures should also reduce noise pollution for local residents, with airport data suggesting the number of local residents experiencing severe sleep disturbance will fall by approximately 54%.

    It’s not uncommon for even the busiest airports to implement nighttime curfews – take London Heathrow Airport, for example, which restricts overnight operations.

    “Around 80% of the night flights at Heathrow are between 04:30 – 06:00 with an average of 16 aircraft arriving each day between these hours under normal pre-Covid conditions,” reads Heathrow’s website, which adds that flights are never scheduled to depart between 11 p.m. and 6 a.m.

    Frankfurt Airport and Zurich Airport are among the other travel hubs with limitations on overnight air traffic.

    Concerns about noise are also reflected in Amsterdam’s proposed “stricter approach regarding noisier aircraft,” with Schiphol suggesting it will gradually tighten “existing standards for aircraft that are allowed to take off from and land at Schiphol.”

    The airport also pledged to put aside 10 million euros a year for an “environmental fund for the local area,” in a bid to be a friendlier neighbor to its surrounding residents.

    In these new measures, Schiphol also promises to safeguard cargo flights, reserving 2.5% of the available takeoff and landing slots for cargo.

    “However, cargo flights will have to adhere to new, tighter rules for noisier aircraft and the new night closure will also apply to cargo,” reads the airport’s statement.

    Ruud Sondag, the CEO of the Royal Schiphol Group, which manages Amsterdam’s airport, says the Schiphol proposals demonstrate that “we mean business.”

    “We have thought about growth but too little about its impact for too long,” he said in a statement. “We need to be sustainable for our employees, the local environment and the world. I realise that our choices may have significant implications for the aviation industry, but they are necessary.”

    Many of the currently scheduled Schiphol night flights are operated by KLM or its subsidiary Transavia. In response to Schiphol suggestions, KLM said in a statement that the airline was “astonished,” and planned to put forward alternative proposals later this year.

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  • North Carolina man wins $2 million lottery after winning $1 million years before | CNN

    North Carolina man wins $2 million lottery after winning $1 million years before | CNN

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    CNN
     — 

    They say lightning doesn’t strike the same place twice, but a winning lottery ticket just might.

    A man in North Carolina got a sizeable return on his investment when he scratched off a $20 ticket for a $2 million prize, the North Carolina Education Lottery announced Tuesday. Less than two years ago, he collected a $1 million jackpot playing a different game in the same lottery.

    Pharris Frank told the lottery he was out of town for work when he bought the ticket.

    “It’s cool because the first time I won it was two miles from my house and this time I was four and a half hours away,” he said. “What are the chances of me being down there at that exact moment in time?”

    According to the lottery, the odds of winning the top prize on the $2,000,000 Diamond Dazzler game like Frank did are about one in 1.5 million.

    Despite those odds, Frank predicted the win. “It’s crazy because the day before I won, my buddy was asking me how it felt to win $1 million,” he said. “And I told him that I was going to double it.”

    He opted to collect a lump sum of $855,006 after federal tax withholdings rather than take an annual $100,000 over the next 20 years, the lottery said.

    After his first big win in July 2021, Frank said he spent his jackpot on a dream wedding. This time, he’s planning a vacation with his wife.

    The Diamond Dazzler game was launched last January. There are now two jackpot tickets remaining.

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  • How these mice navigating a virtual reality game may help Alzheimer’s patients | CNN

    How these mice navigating a virtual reality game may help Alzheimer’s patients | CNN

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    Sign up for CNN’s Wonder Theory science newsletter. Explore the universe with news on fascinating discoveries, scientific advancements and more.



    CNN
     — 

    Researchers in New York developed a virtual reality maze for mice in an attempt to demystify a question that’s been plaguing neuroscientists for decades: How are long-term memories stored?

    What they found surprised them. After forming in the hippocampus, a curved structure that lies deep within the brain, the mice’s memories were actually rooted through what’s called the anterior thalamus, an area of the brain that scientists haven’t typically associated with memory processing at all.

    “The thalamus being a clear winner here was very interesting for us, and unexpected,” said Priya Rajasethupathy, an associate professor at Rockefeller University and one of the coauthors of a peer-reviewed study published in the journal Cell this week. The thalamus “has often been thought of as a sensory relay, not very cognitive, not very important in memory.”

    This new research, however, indicates that it could play a vital role in converting short-term memories to long-term memories. And Rajasethupathy said that should make the thalamus a key area of study for researchers attempting to help patients who suffer from conditions such as Alzheimer’s, who are able to recall old memories but may have trouble remembering new information.

    “it implicates a part of the brain — the thalamus — in the long-term storage of memories in a way that wasn’t even hypothesized by anyone else,” said Loren Frank, a professor of physiology at the University of California San Francisco, who was not involved in the study.

    Rajasethupathy noted that neuroscientists have long known that memories take shape in the hippocampus, and is the focus of the vast majority of research around conditions like amnesia and Alzheimer’s.

    Past research has “led to this model where memories are formed in the hippocampus but then become independent over time and slowly stabilized in the cortex,” the wrinkled, outermost portion of the brain. The question has been exactly how memories travel from one area to another, Rajasethupathy said.

    “That process has been mysterious, I would say, for more than 50 years,” Rajasethupathy said.

    It was the right time for her lab to attempt to pinpoint an answer, she added, thanks to new technology that allowed the researchers to track activity in multiple parts of each subject’s brain. The innovations enabled the team to trace how memories are traveling as the mice learned to navigate a maze.

    “I think what they did was technically very challenging,” Frank said. “Particularly where they were trying to (observe) activity from multiple neurons in three different areas at once, using this sort of fiber microscopes. That’s a pretty state of the art thing.”

    The study — led by Rockefeller graduate students Andrew Toader and Josue Regalado, working inside Rajasethupathy’s lab — involved strapping the mice into a headpiece designed to hold them steady while a machine used optical fibers to record their brain activity.

    The maze took them into various “rooms” that offered either incentives, such as sugar water, or deterrents, like a puff of air to the face.

    The mice returned to the maze for days, enough time for them to create long-term memories.

    “The analogy would be your birthday dinner versus the dinner you had three Tuesdays ago,” Toader said in a statement. “You’re more likely to remember what you had on your birthday because it’s more rewarding for you—all your friends are there, it’s exciting—versus just a typical dinner, which you might remember the next day but probably not a month later.”

    Meanwhile, the researchers used chemicals to inhibit parts of the mice’s brains to determine how it affected their ability to create and store memories.

    Not only did they find that the anterior thalamus was a crucial waypoint for these memories — they also found that by stimulating that area in the rodents’ brains, the researchers were “able to help mice retain memories that they would usually forget,” according to a news release about the study.

    Rajasethupathy added, “Some memories are more important to us than others. We found that, not only do mice need the anterior thalamus to consolidate memories, but that by activating it, we could enhance consolidation of a memory that mice would usually forget.”

    Rajasethupathy noted that there were some limitations to the study. It does not, for example, indicate that traveling through the anterior thalamus is the only route memories can take on their way to long-term storage.

    “I want to be clear that this is not the end all be all,” she said. “Maybe everything isn’t consolidated through this pathway. But I’m very confident this is one very important circuit.”

    This study also relied on mice, who don’t have identical brains to humans but have proven to be extremely useful models for discovering how our own brains function. The long-term memory storage process takes weeks in rodents, whereas it can take months for humans, Rajasethupathy added.

    It’s also possible that different types of memory take different highways, she noted. There are explicit memories, which focus on facts, figures and specific data points, and implicit memories are typically tied to emotion and can form without a person realizing it. The thalamus may not be involved in the same manner for both types of information.

    But Frank, the UCSF professor, said the study will have broad implications for future research, spurring more investigations into the thalamus’ role in memory storage.

    “It’s nice for the field to getting to the point where we can think about the long-term evolution of memories and really try to understand how that works,” he said. “And the study is definitely a step in that direction.”

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