LONDON (AP) — King Charles III, who is 75 and battling cancer, will travel halfway around the world to Samoa this month to take his seat as the head of the Commonwealth and highlight the existential threat that climate change poses for Pacific island nations.
He will also return to Australia, a country that played a key role in Charles’ adolescence — giving him the chance to be an almost normal teenager during the six months he spent at Timbertop school outside Melbourne in the 1960s. The visit marks the first time since he assumed the throne that Charles will visit one of the 14 countries outside the United Kingdom where the monarch is head of state.
The tour, from Friday to Oct. 26, is a watershed moment for Charles, who is slowly returning to public duties after a hiatus following his cancer diagnosis in early February. The decision to undertake such a long journey is seen as a reflection of his workaholic tendencies and his wish to put his stamp on the monarchy after waiting some seven decades to become king.
“He doesn’t just want to be a sort of caretaker king, waiting in a sense for his own death and the accession of William,’’ said Anna Whitelock, a professor of the history of the monarchy at City University, London, referring to Prince William. “He wants to be active in the world.’’
Charles’ globetrotting itinerary comes as he works to shore up support for the monarchy at home and abroad two years after ascending the throne.
It’s a challenge the king will face in Australia, a country with a strong anti-monarchy movement.
Charles and Queen Camilla arrive in Australia with a schedule that includes a visit to Parliament House in Canberra, the Australian War Memorial and the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander memorial. The king will also meet with professors Georgina Long and Richard Scolyer to learn about their work on melanoma, one of Australia’s most common cancers, while the queen’s program will include joining a discussion on domestic violence.
Charles first visited Australia as a 17-year-old, when he spent two terms at Timbertop, chopping wood, going on long hikes and meeting boys who welcomed him, unlike his classmates at Gordonstoun in Scotland. The future king returned to the U.K. a more confident, disciplined young man, according to his biographer, Jonathan Dimbleby.
“Part of this change was in the nature of adolescence, but some of it lay in the opportunity he had been given in Australia to find himself — free from Gordonstoun, away from his parents, away from the British press, away from the suffocating certainties of royal life,” Dimbleby wrote in 1994.
Charles later toured the country as a young prince and visited again soon after he married his first wife, the late Princess Diana.
But this time he returns as king not only of the United Kingdom, but also of Australia. That’s not an easy thing to be.
Around 45% of Australians voted to ditch the monarchy in 1999, and Prime Minister Anthony Albanese’s Labour Party has long aimed to hold a second referendum on the issue. But those plans were put on hold after Australians overwhelmingly rejected a plan to give greater political rights to Indigenous people in a referendum held last year.
While many Australians still favor becoming a republic, it isn’t central to the national debate these days, said Ian Kemish, a former Australian diplomat. People are more focused on the economy, the rising cost of living and the ascendance of China.
The king’s visit helps to bolster ties between Australia and the U.K., which recently signed a tripartite security agreement with the United States. The pact, known as AUKUS, will equip the Australian navy with nuclear-powered submarines for the first time, while also increasing military cooperation and information sharing in other areas.
“In my view, we have bigger fish to fry here in Australia right now than the question of whether we should continue as part of a constitutional monarchy or become a republic,” Kemish said.
As important as Australia is to Charles, his lifelong passion is the environment, and climate change is at the top of the agenda for the Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting in Samoa. The Commonwealth is a voluntary association of 56 independent nations, most of which have historic ties to the U.K.
Charles has built a reputation as an outspoken environmental campaigner, calling on world leaders to work together to curb the carbon emissions that cause global warming. He will attend the summit for the first time as head of the Commonwealth, a role first championed by his mother, the late Queen Elizabeth II.
Island nations like Samoa are on the front lines of the climate emergency, with the United Nations saying they are already feeling the effects of rising sea levels, ocean acidification and more intense tropical storms.
Charles is a “genuine eco-warrior” who has earned the respect of people around the world for his stance on climate change, Whitelock said.
“Focusing specifically around environmental issues, I think, will really play to his strengths and show that actually he has a really meaningful role he could play in the Commonwealth,” she said. “And I think he knows that and will absolutely relish that.”
Charles’ presence in Samoa may help focus international attention on the threat faced by Pacific island nations, said Kemish, who once served as Australia’s ambassador to Papua New Guinea.
“These are the countries that will go below the surface of the ocean first and where the impact can be seen most dramatically,’’ Kemish said. “And I think it’s important for global attention to be brought to this part of the world. So, yes, I think a bit more than a photo opportunity. We certainly hope so.”
Alex Salmond, the former first minister of Scotland who for decades championed Scotland’s independence from the U.K., has died. He was 69.
U.K. Prime Minister Keir Starmer paid tribute to Salmond, calling him a “monumental figure” of both Scottish and British politics.
“He leaves behind a lasting legacy,” Starmer said in a statement shared on X. “As first minister of Scotland, he cared deeply about Scotland’s heritage, history and culture, as well as the communities he represented.”
Alba Party leader Alex Salmond on the last day of campaigning in the UK General Election on July 3, 2024, in Dalgety Bay, Scotland.
KEN JACK / Getty Images
Salmond served as first minister of Scotland from 2007 to 2014, and was leader of the Scottish National Party on two occasions, from 1990 to 2000, and from 2004 to 2014. Salmond, as then leader of the Scottish National Party, led the independence campaign in the referendum in 2014, but lost, gaining 45% of the vote.
Salmond resigned from the SNP in 2018 in the wake of sexual harassment allegations. He subsequently formed a new party called Alba.
Former U.K. Conservative Prime Minister Rishi Sunak said that Salmond was a “huge figure in our politics.”
“While I disagreed with him on the constitutional question, there was no denying his skill in debate or his passion for politics,” Sunak said on X. “May he rest in peace.”
This year’s Frieze Masters offered a beautiful juxtaposition of the natural and mechanic. Photo by Hugo Glendinning. Courtesy of Frieze and Hugo Glendinning.
London’s art world has come alive once more for Frieze week. The Big Smoke is glittering with new shows, drinks receptions and VIP dinners and along with thousands, I went to pray at the feet of art and commerce at Frieze London 2024. The habitual hum of excitement bordered on anxiety this year as a depressed art market and an expanded Art Basel Paris (due to start in a few days) invited talk about London’s rivalry with the City of Lights. Is this the beginning of Brexit’s wrestling of the European art crown from London’s hands? Frieze director Eva Langret, showcasing a vibrant and varied London art scene, seemed to successfully make the case for why not.
“Frieze was never just a trade fair,” Langret told The Art Newspaper this week, but also an opportunity for “the many conversations that you can anchor around the galleries and the many ways in which they work for the artists.” Indeed, I found much to enjoy—particularly, as is always the case with art fairs, the opportunity to discover exciting artists and galleries I had never heard of. Of course, I would be remiss not to snark that if Frieze truly wishes to be more than a trade fair, they will need to consider adjusting ticket prices to encourage wider participation.
A redesigned floor plan by A Studio Between prioritized the new and emerging galleries in the Focus section, who, rather than sulking somewhere near the back of the tent, were able to greet visitors immediately. Like last year, they impressed with innovative booths. The Focus section is known for being experimental—the galleries in this section are looking to make a name for themselves. Placed along a central corridor, we were able to interact with them repeatedly whilst navigating the fair. I was particularly excited to see Xxijra Hii steal focus with Hannah Morgan’s alabaster carvings, steelwork, pewter casts, frogged clay and soundscape. I’d previously seen a very small show in Xxijra Hii’s boxy garage-like space in Deptford, their strong showing at Frieze is a testament to the breadth and depth of the London art scene even in a struggling art market and amongst omnipresent funding cuts.
Other standouts in the Focus section included Eva Gold’s sensitive text-based work at Rose Easton (You were disgusting and that’s why I followed you, 2024), Sands Murray-Wassink’s tongue-in-cheek illustrations at Diez (Culture is not a competition, 2024) and Nils Alix-Tabeling’s camp insectile sculptures at Public Gallery. Further into the fair, the blue-chip galleries presented solid, predictable booths, showing off big names—Georg Baselitz held the fort at the White Cube and Chris Ofili at David Zwirner.
Harlesden High Street’s booth at Frieze London. Photo by Linda Nylind. Courtesy Linda Nylind / Frieze.
For all the talk about Paris and London, Mumbai and New Delhi were the cities at the top of my mind this Frieze London. Indian galleries took pride of place at this year’s fair and ran with breathtaking displays. Vadehra Art Gallery from New Delhi showcased an incredible cabinet of curiosity and banality by Atul Dodiya (Cabinet VI and Cabinet VIII), including pipes, photographs and vaguely animist figurines. Jhaveri Contemporary showcased the textile work of Sayan Chanda (Dwarapalika II, 2024) and Gidree Bawlee (Kaal (Pala) 2023), which blended together into a sublimely sensate and textural experience.
Outside the tent, there were great improvements in the sculpture park this year. Arresting, thoughtful pieces responded deftly to their environment, working with organic forms and pagan imagery to transform a jubilantly sunny Regent’s Park into an other-worldly spectacle. Visitors were greeted by Leonora Carrington’s bronze sculpture The Dancer (2011) upon entering, the figure (half-bird, half-man) melted into bucolic surroundings. Carrington‘s Dancer was swiftly followed by two bronze pillars by Theaster Gates, The Duet (2023). The works in the park were so well integrated into the grounds that the trees that littered the lawn felt like sculptures themselves, blurring the line between the natural and the man-made; one work actually hung from a tree. My favorite by far was Albany Hernandez’s Shadow (2024). This was a shadow painted under a tree in the park using water-based grass paint. The paint marked the tree’s 10:30 a.m. shade; when I arrived around 3 p.m., the tree had two delicate shadows.
Gagosian’s booth at Frieze Masters. Photo by Hugo Glendinning. Courtesy of Frieze and Hugo Glendinning.
At the other end of the sculpture park, Frieze Masters opened with a beautiful juxtaposition of the natural and mechanic. Gagosian’s slick booth of metallic sculpture by John Chamberlain and furniture by Marc Newson stood next to a wooden booth with work much softer in feel at Hauser & Wirth, with broad-ranging paintings from the 19th and 20th Centuries, including Philip Guston and Édouard Manet. In typical showman style, David Aaron followed up last year’s towering T-Rex “Chomper” with an enormous Egyptian sarcophagus from the 7th Century BCE. Thaddeus Mosley at Karma in the ‘Studio’ section—which featured solo shows of living artists and considered their studio practice—seemed like an anchor point in the fair. This is due to the booth’s central placement but also its visual impact. The booth was vast and striking; Mosley’s robust wooden towers, pulling from modernist abstraction and African sculpture, made an imposing statement.
One prominent theme with Masters was the rediscovery of important female artists, with lengthy biographies getting ample space in numerous galleries: Eva Švankmajerová was spotlighted by The Gallery of Everything, Feliza Bursztyn at The Mayor Gallery and Alice Baber at Luxembourg + Co.
All in all, the Frieze fairs were good this year—fun, even. Frieze London celebrated the contemporary art scene in London whilst showcasing talents from across the globe, particularly works by Indian stars. Frieze Masters returned to its rightful place as Frieze London’s drab older sister whilst also reintroducing some unsung talents. The sculpture park, for once, held its own and felt like a destination in and of itself. The stark October sun was shining over an overexcited city, and London, it seemed, was well and truly alive.
LUCKNOW, India (AP) — American and British climbers have been rescued after being stranded for three days on a mountain in India’s Himalayan north.
Fay Jane Manners from the United Kingdom and Michelle Theresa Dvorak from the United States were ascending a rocky section of the Chaukhamba-3 peak in India’s Uttarakhand state when they got stranded there, said Sandeep Tiwari, a senior administrative officer of Uttarakhand’s Chamoli district. The climbers were rescued on Sunday, he said.
The climbers were first reported stranded on Thursday when a rockfall severed their rope, sending their bags — along with crucial supplies like food, tent and climbing gear — into a gorge. The climbers also lost most of their communication equipment, but managed to send out an emergency message the same day.
“We were pulling up my bag and she (Dvorak) had her bag on her. And the rockfall came, cut the rope with the other bag, and it just went down the entire mountain,” Manners told local reporters on Sunday.
The rescue operation took 80 hours to complete and involved the Indian air force and the Uttarakhand State Disaster Management Authority.
Rajkumar Negi, a spokesperson for India’s disaster management agency, said that two Indian Air Force helicopters dispatched on Friday to help with the search were unable to locate the climbers. But on Saturday, a French mountaineering team, which was also attempting to climb the Chaukhamba-3 peak, located the stranded climbers and relayed their coordinates to the rescue authorities.
The Indian air force said in a statement on social platform X that it airlifted the climbers on Sunday “from 17,400 feet, showcasing remarkable coordination in extreme conditions.”
Chaukhamba-3 is a mountain peak in the Garhwal Himalaya in northern India.
Frieze Art Week has officially kicked off in London with its first openings, as the local community and international visitors gear up for the launch of Frieze London and Frieze Masters tomorrow (October 9). Despite the buzz that some global collectors might skip London in favor of Paris due to the challenge of committing to a full two-week marathon of fairs, the city’s art scene—through its galleries and institutions—has once again curated an impressive lineup that makes a stop in the British capital worthwhile, even if just for a few extra days before heading to the next art week or fair. To help you navigate this year’s Frieze offerings, Observer has compiled a list of the top show openings to check out in London.
Mire Lee’s Hyundai Commission at Tate Modern
Visceral and uncanny, Mire Lee’s art probes the boundaries between the technological and the human. Selected for the prestigious annual Hyundai Commission at Tate Modern, she has transformed the Turbine Hall into a surreal landscape of hanging fabric sculptures and epic mechanical installations, reimagining the space as a living factory populated by alien forms and mysterious processes.
Drawing on the building’s history as a power station, Lee reflects on its monumental scale and how it mirrors humanity’s relentless drive for dominance and control over nature. She has reconfigured the hall into an industrial womb—an environment where human desires and ambitions echo through sprawling mechanical systems. Crafted from industrial materials like silicone, chains, and eerie fluids, her “skin” installations stir a complex interplay of emotions, provoking awe and disgust, desire and repulsion. The work explores horror not merely as fear, but as a gateway to alternative possibilities and future potentialities, as once theorized by Foucault. As Lee expressed in a statement, “Ultimately, I am interested in how behind all human actions there is something soft and vulnerable, such as sincerity, hope, compassion, love and wanting to be loved.”
Exploring a non-human concept of the body, the Korean artist’s intricate installations challenge the technological illusion of solidity and permanence, confronting viewers with the inevitable decay and deformation of all subjects over time. By staging this perpetual state of transformation and metamorphosis within a post-apocalyptic setting, the artist engages with a new notion of hybridity—one that blurs the line between the products of the Anthropocene and the unknown entities and processes that will ultimately supersede them.
Mire Lee’s “Open Wound” opens tomorrow (October 9) and is on view at Tate Modern through March 16.
“Hockney and Piero: A Longer Look” at the National Gallery
Detail from David Hockney’s My Parents (1977). Courtesy London’s National Gallery
Don’t miss this rare conversation at the National Gallery, which explores the inspiration David Hockney drew from the enigmatic paintings of Renaissance master Piero Della Francesca. This one-room capsule project creates a space for slow contemplation, juxtaposing two of Hockney’s works—one portraying his mother and father, and the other depicting his friend, curator Henry Geldzahler, alongside the thread that connects them: Piero della Francesca’s The Baptism of Christ. Part of the National Gallery’s Bicentenary celebrations, the project illuminates the connections that weave through art history, highlighting how it’s been a continuous journey of confrontations, inspirations and exchanges, where artists revisit and reinterpret recurring themes and archetypes according to the aesthetics and sensibilities of their own era.
Opening just ahead of Frieze Art Week, Whitechapel Gallery has set up a compelling dialogue between two artists who, despite distinct geographical and cultural backgrounds, have similarly sought to redefine the relationship between artist and audience by fostering greater interaction and a more participatory approach.
Brazilian artist Lygia Clark, a pioneer of the “Neo-Concrete Movement” (1959-1961), anticipated the notion of Relational Art by developing a new, organic concept of the artwork—one that could fluidly respond to the phenomenological space of the senses. Her creations evolved into “social sculptures” designed to engage and transform through direct interaction, unfolding within the temporal space of community and social cohesion. “Lygia Clark: The I and the You” traces her artistic journey from the mid-1950s to the early 1970s, exploring how her radical approach emerged in response to a turbulent period in Brazil’s history.
In parallel, Venice Golden Lion-winner Sonia Boyce explores similar themes of manipulation and inhabitation, inviting viewers to engage, touch and experience her work in unscripted, immersive ways. “Sonia Boyce: An Awkward Relation” is conceived specifically to resonate with Lygia Clark’s exhibition, showcasing the strong synergies between the British and Brazilian artists’ experiential, participatory practices.
George Rouy’s debut solo exhibition at Hauser & Wirth London, “The Bleed, Part I.” Courtesy the artist and Hauser & Wirth
Following the announcement of his representation just a few months ago, the highly sought-after George Rouy is making his debut with Hauser & Wirth in London. The painter’s meteoric rise stems from his ability to resonate with a new generation of collectors, offering a visual language that captures the tensions and contradictions of the body and psyche as they navigate the physical and digital realms.
“The Bleed, Part I” showcases Rouy’s latest body of work, where he delves further into themes of collective mass, multiplicities, and human movement across different modes of existence. Playing between the “void,” where the psyche expands and projects itself, and the “surrounding,” where the physical body is in constant negotiation with external forces, Rouy’s paintings depict the push-and-pull between these realms, producing figures that are simultaneously fragmented and whole. This tension suggests the potential for a new hybrid human experience, oscillating between the linear constraints of the body and the quantum possibilities it can access.
The exhibition will continue with “Part II” at Hauser & Wirth Los Angeles, launching during Frieze L.A. and underscoring the gallery’s commitment to positioning Rouy as “a leading figure of the new generation of painters.”
George Rouy’s “The Bleed, Part 1” is on view at Hauser & Wirth London through December 21.
Suspended between a dreamlike world, a sentimental dimension, and a poetic space of literary references, Dominic Chambers’s paintings capture moments of joy, leisure, love, and life. His vibrant canvases are defined by intentionally surreal palettes that heighten the emotions and atmosphere of each scene. Since graduating from Yale, the young artist has swiftly risen to prominence, making his debut at Lehmann Maupin in New York soon after. Now, for his first solo show at the gallery’s London location—his U.K. debut—Chambers presents an expansive new body of work, including paintings, works on paper and color studies. His visual language has already evolved into something more allegorical, shifting from human-centered scenes to lyrical or oneiric landscapes where figures often float, yet the mood and feeling remain the true protagonists.
Drawing its title from the Greek word meraki, meaning “to pour one’s soul into one’s work,” the exhibition takes this notion as a springboard to explore how the concept of the soul—or one’s interiority—intersects with devotion and creativity. Rich in both art historical and religious references, the works tap into a more spiritual dimension, expanding beyond the sentimental intimacy that defined his earlier pieces. Deeply influenced by Magic Realism, Chambers’s paintings detach themselves from material reality, moving fluidly between inner, outer and otherworldly realms, exploring symbols, signals and intermediaries that guide us in navigating the layers of human experience.
Dominic Chambers’s “Meraki” is on view at Lehmann Maupin through November 9.
Rirkrit Tiravanija at Pilar Corrias
“A MILLION RABBIT HOLES” marks Rirkrit Tiravanija’s fourth solo exhibition with the gallery. Courtesy of the artist and Pilar Corrias
As a pioneer of Relational Art, Rirkrit Tiravanija’s work carries an inherently political charge, as demonstrated by his latest show at Pilar Corrias London. In “A MILLION RABBIT HOLES,” Tiravanija explores the deepening polarization and disillusionment surrounding the U.S. election, touching on globally pervasive sentiments as the world’s balance grows increasingly fragile. Transforming the gallery walls with forest-like wallpaper, he creates an immersive environment reflecting the charged atmosphere of American politics in the lead-up to the election, inspired by his experiences in Upstate New York.
Known for his groundbreaking installations centered around cooking and communal sharing, Tiravanija’s practice emphasizes human connections over traditional notions of art as static objects. His works often subvert societal hierarchies and behavioral norms, inviting audiences to participate actively—whether through interactions with others or through the artist’s facilitation. In his London exhibition, visitors are plunged into a world of paradoxical propaganda, surrounded by an intentionally illusory, pastoral setting that underscores the fiction of contemporary politics and the false promises of a better future.
Rirkrit Tiravanija’s “A MILLION RABBIT HOLES” is on view at Pilar Corrias, London, through November 9.
Tracey Emin at White Cube
Tracey Emin’s “I followed you to the end” at White Cube, London. Courtesy of teh Artist and White Cube.
Since her rise to fame as the queen of the Young British Artists with her unforgettable My Bed (1998), Tracey Emin has captivated international audiences with her provocatively raw yet deeply human art, addressing the peaks and valleys of existence—love, desire, grief and loss—with an unflinching honesty. Her autobiographical approach has laid bare the intensely personal yet universal experience of being a woman, capturing everything from the awakening of sexual desire and the claiming of one’s pleasure to the visceral trials of violence, shame, illness, abortion and menopause. This turbulent inner world of emotions, passions, and sensations is instinctively translated onto Emin’s canvases through bold, unplanned strokes that channel her emotional energy directly onto the surface.
Emin has never hesitated to confront the most profound physical and psychological challenges, chronicling the unique struggles of the female condition in today’s world. Her latest show in London continues the journey she began with her recent exhibition at White Cube New York last year, presenting a powerful new series of paintings and sculptures that delve into themes of love and loss, mortality and rebirth.
Every time Anna Weyant stages an exhibition, it becomes evident that beneath the buzz surrounding her private life, there’s an undeniable technical mastery that continues to evolve while remaining deeply engaged in a dialogue with art history. Drawing as much from the refined elegance of Flemish portraiture as from the dramatic chiaroscuro of Caravaggio, Weyant’s paintings are not only visually captivating but also deeply intriguing. They meticulously uphold the Western canons of beauty and “good painting”—executed with precision—but simultaneously disrupt this perfection with uncanny elements that provoke the viewer to question these very ideals.
Rendered in somber tones and pale hues, her figures often play tragicomic roles, suspended in a dreamlike, timeless space. These doll-like girls move through her canvases with a fierce presence, yet subtly reveal a concealed inner struggle—suggesting a fragile, unspoken vulnerability. They project an image of strength, wielding their allure with confidence, but betray an underlying trauma or insecurity that compels them to seek validation and admiration externally. This tension resonates perfectly with the exhibition’s title, “Who’s Afraid of the Big Bad Wolf?” Marking her London debut, the show makes these dynamics of concealment and performance even more apparent. The feminine attributes of her meticulously rendered classical bodies are only glimpsed through small windows, partially obscured by a fabric blind or a newspaper—introducing a fresh psychological layer to her latest body of work.
“Calder: Extreme Cantilever” at Ben Brown London. Courtesy of Ben Brown.
Opening on Frieze Masters Night at Ben Brown Fine Arts, this exhibition reunites Alexander Calder’s three unique cantilever sculptures for the first time, presented alongside a curated selection of oil paintings, works on paper and historically significant artifacts. The centerpiece sculptures—Extreme Cantilever, More Extreme Cantilever and Extrême porte à faux III—are on loan from the Calder Foundation and distinguished private collections, showcasing the artist’s boundless imagination and intuitive genius that firmly position him as one of the 20th Century’s leading innovators. More importantly, this grouping captures a pivotal evolution in Calder’s formal and conceptual approach to spatial abstraction, shaped by the seismic impact of the Second World War. Confronted with a world grappling with collective trauma, Calder responded with sculptures that became strikingly evocative, featuring increasingly complex forms that seem to encapsulate the anxieties of an era—a resonance that remains poignant amid today’s renewed geopolitical uncertainties.
“Calder: Extreme Cantilever” opens tomorrow (October 9) and runs on November 22 at Ben Brown Fine Arts in London.
“Enchanted Alchemies: Magic, Mysticism, and the Occult in Art” at Lévy Gorvy Dayan
Geltrude Abercrombie, Lady with Black Braid; Oil on Masonite, 8 × 10 inches (20.3 × 25.4 cm). Courtesy of Lévi Gorvy Dayan
As interest in Surrealism, now 100 years old, continues to rise, Lévy Gorvy Dayan’s latest exhibition in London delves into themes of magic, mysticism, and the occult through a collection of masterpieces primarily by Surrealist women artists such as Gertrude Abercrombie, Eileen Agar, Leonora Carrington, Elda Cerrato, Ithell Colquhoun, Leonor Fini and Monica Sjöö, placed in dialogue with contemporary figures like Francesco Clemente, Chitra Ganesh, Alejandro Jodorowsky, Bharti Kher, Linder and Goshka Macuga. Blurring the boundaries between spirituality, mysticism, and hallucination, the show provides a sweeping exploration of the human imagination across cultures and eras.
Organized into three thematic chapters—“Occultism and Dreams,” “Magic and Mysticism” and “Alchemy: Enchantment and Transformations”—the exhibition examines how artists over the past century have engaged with occult and esoteric traditions to shape and reshape their personal, cultural and historical narratives. The timing feels particularly relevant as society experiences a renewed fascination with alternative knowledge and spirituality in an era that has “killed its idols” yet still searches for new belief systems amid a pervasive sense of irrationality and uncertainty.
Genesis Belanger’s work is coming to Pace London. Fine art documentation for Perrotin, photographed and edited by Claire Dorn
New York-based artist Genesis Belanger has made a name for herself exploring the uncanny and unconscious meanings of everyday objects, crafting mysterious handmade tableaux vivants that blend mass-production aesthetics with exquisite craftsmanship across a range of materials, from wood to porcelain. She’s currently preparing for her upcoming show, “In the Right Conditions We are Indistinguishable” at Pace Gallery’s Hanover Square location, which opens on October 9 to coincide with London Art Week, but hit pause to speak with Observer about the themes shaping her new body of work.
Belanger describes the exhibition as a series of vignettes that challenge our relationships with material objects and the desires, needs and emotions we project onto them. “This idea that something or someone could all be the same, except for the context that makes one different. The context is what changes the person,” she explains. In our conversation, Belanger reflects on America’s polarized state and suggests that many of these perceived differences are actually shaped by external circumstances. In her work, she captures the tension between the homogenization of cultural habits driven by global mass production and the deeply personal stories we attach to the objects that surround us.
Underlying Belanger’s practice is a fascination with how advertising and popular culture shape our perceptions and the value we assign to material goods. Her meticulously crafted replicas of ordinary objects serve as eerie anthropological artifacts of mass consumption, revealing the layered associations and emotional weight we impart onto inanimate items. By inviting us to examine these items as symbols of our collective desires and anxieties, not to mention our deepest fears, Belanger’s installations offer a commentary on the complex interplay between consumerism and personal identity.
The surreal quality of Belanger’s art is intrinsically linked to her interest in human psychology, a fascination that both Surrealism and advertising share. “I feel like the surreal character in my work is because Surrealism is interested in human psychology and the subconscious, and so is advertising,” the artist told us. “I came to the surreal or uncanny elements through an interest in the tools advertisement uses to manipulate.” At the heart of her research lies a deep focus on psychology, which then intersects with sociology and semiotics. She’s not necessarily intentionally making work thinking about Surrealism, but she very much is thinking about human psychology.
Belanger’s practice stages scenes that hover between dreamscapes and studio sets, where miniature versions of human daily dramas are enacted through the objects that define those interactions. She examines how these items transform into symbols, becoming part of more intricate narratives. Yet, her characters (the objects) appear transient, embodying a sense of impermanence—as if they are worn-out replicas of a once-meaningful original, shadows of the objective referent drained of value and meaning through repeated remediation.
As for contrasts, Belanger’s ghostly, malleable cartoonist avatars of the real subjects have hilarious yet poetic titles, which transport them into another symbolic universe, already detached from the materialism that characterizes the capitalistic mass production and consumption from which they originate—and by which they would otherwise be condemned to rapid obsolescence. Occasionally, these objects become so malleable that they metamorphose entirely, adopting human-like features and transforming into eerie fantasies or unsettling creatures, evoking a blend of attraction and repulsion. Through synesthetic play, her sculptural creations evoke psychological responses that blur the boundaries between senses, unlocking a surreal, nonsensical realm of expression beyond any conventional linguistic code.
It’s no wonder that some of her pieces are reminiscent of characters from animation, such as those in Disney’s Fantasia. They tap into similar Surrealist imaginings, unveiling hidden aspects of the collective unconscious and conjuring a vibrant symbolic universe that resists the rigid societal frameworks of productivity and rationality.
“I’m always interested in the element of time and how, if you create a scene or an image that alludes to the presence of a person who’s no longer there, it’s like all the objects left behind are just evidence,” Belanger explains. “The viewer can access and then enter a narrative.” In this way, her works become relics—remnants that evoke human presence and their stories without depicting the actual subjects. By blending beauty, nostalgia and humor with motifs of capitalist consumerism, Belanger provokes specific psychological responses, allowing us to connect with the objects’ narratives and emotional associations. In this sense, they also serve as reminders after the loss and absence, contrasting the restless circle of consumption and destruction by freezing in time and eternalizing the emotional values associated with the original products.
The artist acknowledges that it’s impossible to escape the consumer-driven reality surrounding us. Thus, her primary source of inspiration is the overwhelming flood of products and images she encounters daily. “I live in New York, and I travel mostly by bike,” she says. “I feel like I’m just moving through this center of capitalism and seeing so much all the time. I don’t think you could exist today and not be inundated with a type of delicious image or images made to touch our desires. I’m a visual sponge; I’m absorbing every single thing that interests me.”
During this appropriation, Belanger creates critical friction between the readily available and reproducible mass-produced objects and the laborious craftsmanship behind her version of those objects. Using ceramics, wood and other natural and traditional materials, she highlights the handmade, tactile nature of her sculptures, imbuing them with a distinct material presence that transforms them into “artifacts” and cultural records of contemporary society and of the state of our civilization. This focus on craft interrupts the ceaseless flow of products and advertising, giving these objects a new weight and individuality, allowing them to stand apart from the homogenized world of consumer goods and acquire unique identities.
These layers of interpretation add depth to Belanger’s practice, especially considering how, in photographs, her art often resembles digital images created by A.I. based on inputs about our human needs. “I think it’s exciting to make an object that exists in the world, but when it’s photographed, it could just be like the imagination of an artificial intelligence,” says Belanger.
This concept complicates the relationship between her creations and the real-life objects that inspire them, highlighting how Belanger’s artistic process absorbs and transforms these influences into new material forms—similar to how A.I. processes and reinterprets data on human consumer behavior. Thus, her work reflects on the meaning and significance of objects and products, a dialogue that gains further relevance as data itself becomes more valuable than the physical items it represents. Despite these complexities, Belanger’s art ultimately encourages us to appreciate the tangible materiality of the objects we create, interact with, and integrate into our lives.
LONDON (AP) — It’s been a year since a sycamore tree that stood high and proud near the Roman landmark of Hadrian’s Wall in the north of England was inexplicably chopped down, triggering a wave of shock and disbelief across the U.K., even among those who had never seen it up close.
Known and loved by millions, the 150-year-old tree was made famous around the world when it featured in Kevin Costner’s 1991 film “Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves.” The Sycamore Gap tree, as it was known because of its regal canopy framed between two hills, was a popular subject for landscape photographers and a great resting spot for walkers.
Now it is going to get a new lease of life — dozens of them.
The National Trust, a conservation charity that seeks to protect and open up historic places and green spaces to the general public, launched an initiative on Friday in which 49 saplings from the tree will be given to communities around the U.K. Other saplings will be sent to the U.K.’s 15 national parks and the local primary school.
The initiative, which also involves the local Northumberland National Park Authority and Historic England, the public organization that looks after England’s historic environment, is called “Trees of Hope” and aims to “create a new chapter in the life of this legendary tree.”
Each of the 49 saplings — one to represent each foot of the tree’s height when it was felled — is expected to be 6 feet (1.8 meters) tall on delivery.
People from around the U.K. are invited to apply for a tree to plant in publicly accessible spaces which have emotional connections with people and communities. Entries must be made by Oct. 25, with winners announced on Nov. 18.
“The last 12 months have been a real rollercoaster of emotions, from the hopelessness and grief we felt when we discovered that the tree had been illegally felled, to experiencing the stories shared with us about just what the tree meant to so many,” said Andrew Poad, general manager for the National Trust’s Hadrian’s Wall properties.
Also on Friday, the Northumberland National Park Authority is marking the anniversary of the felling with the opening of the first phase of an exhibition, “Sycamore Gap: One Year On,” including the largest remaining section of the tree.
Two men — Daniel Graham and Adam Carruthers — have been charged with two counts over the felling of the tree. One count is for allegedly cutting down the tree and the second is for damage to the adjacent wall built by Emperor Hadrian in A.D. 122 to protect the northwest frontier of the Roman Empire. Prosecutors have calculated that the cost of the felling was around 620,000 pounds ($825,000).
Both have been released on bail ahead of their trial scheduled for early December.
For Zoë and Layo Paskin, going to a good restaurant should feel like being invited to a dinner party. It’s a welcoming philosophy that the siblings have embodied in all of Studio Paskin’s openings, from their iconic (now closed) London nightclub The End, to debut restaurant The Palomar, which opened in 2014, to Covent Garden favorite The Barbary, which opened its doors in 2016, to Michelin-starred fine dining spot Evelyn’s Table. Now, the hospitality group has expanded west with The Barbary Notting Hill, a lively restaurant that is notably bigger than all of their prior endeavors, but still retains that intimate dinner party vibe.
“I’ve always enjoyed having people to my home,” Zoë tells Observer. “So that’s, for me, how it all feels and how you’re making someone feel. And they need to feel better when they leave than when they arrive, so when they walk out that door, they think, ‘I just had a great time.’”
“It’s a bit like music,” adds Layo. “You need all the classical professional things to be there, but a little bit of the jazz that goes on top and feeling with the people who are serving you or welcoming you or are being present in that moment with you is quite important. You need to feel the whole thing is engaged.”
The Barbary Notting Hill seats 75 guests (the original has only 24), and expands on the sharing plates and flatbreads beloved at The Barbary and its sister restaurant, The Barbary Next Door. The dishes and ingredients are inspired by the Barbary Coast, a 16th-century region that comprised North Africa and southern Europe, although the dishes are modern and forward-thinking. It’s helmed by head chef Daniel Alt, who has included both classics and new offerings on the menu, which is accompanied by a 250-bottle wine list.
Guests for lunch and dinner can currently partake in two types of flatbread, accompanied by small plates like fried artichokes and dips like hummus and spinach borani. There is a range of fish preparations, from scallop aguachile to monk fish tempura, as well as larger plates of meat and seafood cooked on the fire (a personal favorite was the coffee rub organic chicken). These can be served with vegetable sides, although there’s no wrong way to order. It’s all intended as a convivial, collective experience, which Zoë describes as a “feast of flavors.”
The Coffee Rub Organic Chicken. Mickaël A. Bandassak
“In London, you’ve got a lot of reinvention of Thai food and Indian food, and with lots of cuisines here right now, you get the layering of lots of different dishes and flavors,” Layo says. “It’s a really fun way to eat, because you get a lot more food. Don’t get me wrong: It’s nice having one dish and one thing. But we’ve all been embracing, over the past few years, this option of having loads of dishes together.”
Zoë and Layo chatted with Observer about the two-year journey to opening The Barbary Notting Hill, how the menu was brought to life and where they like to dine when going out in London.
The Barbary Notting Hill took over a former gallery space. Mickael A. Bandassak
Observer: Why did you decide to open in Notting Hill?
Layo Paskin: We asked ourselves the same question. All of our places, and even going back to when we had our nightclub The End, are in central London, but neither of us live centrally. With the pause that happened during Covid, we focused a bit more on our own neighborhoods. So when we started to think about doing [another restaurant], we decided to step away from the center of town, although Notting Hill is a central neighborhood. So that started the conversation. And then, really, what often happens is, you see the site. We saw this site when it was an art gallery and it was a beautiful room. It was quite an immediate reaction to the site. A bit like when you’re searching for a flat and you see something you love. Galleries are nice because you get a sense of peace from the space. So straight away, we got a nice energy from it.
Zoë Paskin: We always hoped one day to do a corner site. The combination of that and a blank canvas was quite exciting.
How challenging was it to develop the restaurant once you found the site?
ZP: First, we had to secure the site. There were various people going for it. And then the lease took a long time, and the license had to be sorted out because it was a change of venue [type]. We actually went on a high-risk journey with this, evolving what we wanted to do but always knowing we may not quite get there. But once we started designing the restaurant, it was about what we wanted to draw from The Barbary’s core and essence. Obviously, it’s many years later in a very different location. When you find a space you always get informed by it, too. The Palomar was an old restaurant called The Spice Bazaar. The Barbary in Neal’s Yard was a skate shop.
LP: In the back of our minds, it was always to take some elements from The Barbary. We wanted to have a kitchen bar still, but we always wanted to have these bigger tables. You put down all of the things you want to include, and then you try to incorporate as much of that into the design as possible.
Inside the Barbary Notting Hill. Mickael A. Bandassak
Sitting at the counter is a big draw at the original restaurant. How did you balance having tables and a counter here?
LP: One of the biggest functions in this restaurant, from our perspective, was that the kitchen and the kitchen team could really work. So the positioning of the kitchen and the back of house informed a lot. The kitchen had to be in a certain position, which dictated where the bar is. There were two possible entrances to the restaurant, and we picked the one where your immediate reaction when you walk in is the drinks bar, with the tables to one side and the kitchen bar to the other. These are subtle things, but you think about where the thoroughfares are. If you’re sitting at a table, you don’t want a ton of people always walking past. The reality is you can’t overcome every obstacle, but I think we’ve achieved a lot of what we wanted.
How does it feel to finally open a restaurant after going through all of that?
ZP: In the middle of a service, you feel like you’ve taken this vessel out to sea. In a marvelous way. I quite like standing in the middle of the restaurant and seeing it all come together and all of the respective chatter. But, of course, it is a bigger restaurant to captain, in that sense.
LP: The nicest thing about a bigger restaurant is that there’s more places to be in it. Take our restaurant Evelyn’s Table; we can’t really be in service unless we’re actually in service because it’s so small. So it’s quite nice to be in the room orchestrating and working with the team, but not feel too in the way.
Octopus Sabzi. Mickaël A. Bandassak
How did you determine which dishes to bring from The Barbary and which dishes to introduce as new?
LP: We’ve been testing dishes all of this year. So we’ve got a big bank of recipes that work seasonally with different things, and that will react to how people in the area respond. But we tried to take all of the things that were important to take while also wanting to develop. We didn’t want to open the same restaurant in a different neighborhood. The Barbary and The Barbary Next Door are so small that there was a lot more to the story we could tell, and by doing that in a bigger restaurant with a bigger kitchen, we could have more scope. And none of it is hard and fast. It’s always evolving. That probably makes life harder work-wise, but it probably makes the restaurants have more longevity.
ZP: One of the things about the menu is the buildup of lots of flavors and lots of dishes, which is my personal favorite way to eat. I like the way they all complement each other.
LP: I like that we can also do bigger dishes. We could do a whole fish for two, which is just not feasible in any of our other places. And we’re only just beginning how we’re doing that. We’ve worked on it a lot. Even with our flatbreads, we’ve got lots of toppings and ideas, but because we have a brand-new team, we want to give them a bit of time to feel their way in. Those are the biggest changes in the dishes we’re doing—the rest of the evolutions of dishes that we’ve done and other things we’ve worked on in the same vein.
Has the concept behind The Barbary shifted since you first opened the one in Neal’s Yard?
LP: It’s developed. With The Barbary Next Door, we haven’t got a fire there, so it’s more about raw and slow cooking. That made us look at the cuisine in a different way. With The Barbary Notting Hill, we’ve gone farther into Europe than we have before. It’s the same geography of southern Europe and northern Africa, but we’ve moved that around a little bit. There’s more from southern Spain and southern Italy than we have in the original Barbary.
Did you travel to research those places?
LP: Yeah, that’s the best bit of the job! We went to Sicily. We went to Seville. San Sebastian. El Palmar de Vejer. Costa Brava.
ZP: It’s slightly more complicated now that we’ve each got children, but it’s one of the ways we get into a creative space together.
There’s still bar seating. Mickael A. Bandassak
What’s your favorite thing about opening a new restaurant?
LP: When you see it all come together and you feel that atmosphere and you see all the work, from yourselves and the team, come together. And all of that time and energy and creative endeavor comes together. It feels really, really good. And maybe you get a nice moment with a customer, either re-booking or coming up to you and saying they had a great meal. That’s when you feel, “Okay, we’re in the right area of where we want to be.”
ZP: At the end the night last night, I sat down to have some food at the bar on my own before driving home, and I managed to get to chatting with the couple next to me. I just had such a wonderful conversation with them. They had lived on Shelton Street near The Barbary and had loved it and recently had moved to Chelsea. They were so complimentary about their relationship with The Barbary and how they felt about the one they were now sitting in. It was just a magical moment. Very, very special.
It’s a nice idea to think about people having living relationships with restaurants.
ZP: They are living things, aren’t they? Like I said earlier, you’ve got this vessel and you’ve got the bar, the kitchen, the kitchen porters, the runners, the guests. People are waiting for a table patiently or impatiently. People won’t get off their table. There’s this whole improvisation going on every day where the core elements are the same but they’re completely different every day. And that’s bit where, hopefully, all of the good stuff happens.
Where do you both like to go out to eat in London?
LP: Thinking about it like relationships, I have different places for when I want different things. I like going to Bistrotheque if I’m having lunch in east London. On a night out, I’d choose somewhere like Chiltern Firehouse. If I want turbot, I’d go to Brat. If I want dim sum, Royal China Club. If I want Turkish, there’s a place in Dalston called Number 34. For takeaway, my favorite in Islington is called Afghan Kitchen. We go to all of the new openings, but some I repeatedly enjoy. For me, it’s a personal choice about what I’m in the mood to eat.
ZP: I have my favorites, too. Most recently, I keep wanting to go back to Farang. I live quite near and I like strong, spicy flavors. For old favorites in town, I love Barrafina.
What’s the most memorable meal you’ve had recently?
ZP: Whenever we order a ton of oysters and my partner shucks—that feels like a real treat at home. Or we go to the Japanese fish market near us, and we do a massive plate of sashimi at home. When I was at the end of my pregnancy, those were the two experiences I was asking for most.
LP: This summer, I was near Saint Tropez and near Dubrovnik, and both times I had lunch in beachside restaurants. Grilled fish and bottle of rose by the sea. If I can picture what my last meal should be, it’s that. Being in those moments, surrounded by friends and family, and feeling that sense of relaxed, late afternoon sun.
LONDON (AP) — The Bank of England is widely expected to keep interest rates unchanged on Thursday, a day after official figures showed inflation in the U.K. holding steady at an annual rate of 2.2% in August, with higher airfares offset by lower fuel costs and restaurant and hotel bills.
Central banks around the world dramatically increased borrowing costs from near zero during the coronavirus pandemic when prices started to shoot up, first as a result of supply chain issues built up and then because of Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine which pushed up energy costs. As inflation rates have fallen from multi-decade highs recently, they started cutting interest rates.
The latest reading from the Office of National Statistics on Wednesday was in line with market predictions and means that inflation remains just above the British central bank’s goal of 2% for the second month running, having fallen in June to the target for the first time in nearly three years.
Last month, the central bank reduced its main interest rate by a quarter-point to 5%, the first cut since the onset of the pandemic. It was a close call though with four of the nine members voting for no change.
Most economists think the Bank of England’s monetary policy committee will take a pause on Thursday as some panel members have voiced ongoing worries about price rises in the crucial services sector, which accounts for around 80% of the British economy. Wednesday’s data showed that services sector inflation jumped to 5.6% in August from 5.2% in July as a result of higher airfares across European routes.
However, they think that the bank will most likely cut again in November, in the wake of the government’s budget on Oct. 30.
The new Labour government has said that it needs to plug a 22 billion-pound ($29 billion) hole in the public finances and has indicated that it may have to raise taxes and lower spending, which would likely weigh on the near-term outlook for the British economy and put downward pressure on inflation.
“An interest rate cut on Thursday is looking unlikely with the majority of the Monetary Policy Committee likely to want to assess the impact of next month’s budget before deciding when to loosen policy again,” said Suren Thiru, economics director at the Institute of Chartered Accountants in England and Wales.
LONDON (AP) — The chief executive of Britain’s scandal-ridden Post Office will step down next year, the company said Wednesday, as criticism mounts over the speed of compensation payments to branch managers wrongly convicted of theft or fraud because of a faulty computer system.
Nick Read said it has been a “great privilege” to have been chief executive of the company during an “extraordinarily challenging time for the business and for postmasters.”
Read, who took the helm in 2019, announced in July his intention to temporarily step back from the role to give his “entire attention” to the next stage of the ongoing inquiry into what is one of the country’s biggest miscarriages of justice that saw hundreds of branch managers wrongly convicted. The next stage of the inquiry is due to begin next week.
“There remains much to be done for this great U.K. institution but the journey to reset the relationship with postmasters is well under way and our work to support justice and redress for postmasters will continue,” said Read, who was not at the company when the miscarriages of justice took place.
Read succeeded Paula Vennells, who has given back her Commander of the Order of the British Empire title that she received in 2019, following criticism of her actions in the top job.
The scandal around the Horizon IT scandal has been known for years but really became headline news at the start of this year when a four-part television docudrama aired.
The ITV show, “Mr. Bates vs the Post Office,” told the story of branch manager Alan Bates, played by Toby Jones, who has spent nearly two decades trying to expose the scandal and exonerate his peers.
Bates said that Read “hasn’t achieved anything for the victims” during his time as chief executive.
“It’s funny that because when I knew he’d taken seven weeks’ leave — in theory to prepare for the inquiry — I thought he’d taken seven weeks off to find a new job,” he added.
After the Post Office introduced the Horizon information technology system 25 years ago to automate sales accounting, local managers began finding unexplained losses that bosses said they were responsible for covering.
The Post Office maintained that Horizon, which was made by the Japanese company Fujitsu, was reliable and accused branch managers of dishonesty. Vennells, who was chief executive from 2012 to 2019, a period that included the last few years of the scandal, had for years insisted that the system was “robust” despite the hundreds of workers who said they had done nothing wrong.
Between 2000 and 2014, more than 900 postal employees were wrongly convicted of theft, fraud and false accounting, with some imprisoned and others forced into bankruptcy.
The number of victims is not fully known but the British government introduced legislation to reverse the convictions, brought by the Post Office itself.
The company, which is state-owned but operates as a private business, has had a unique function whereby it can prosecute its own staff without the need to contact police or state prosecutors. However, Read has said he couldn’t imagine using it again given what happened.
LONDON (AP) — Former BBC news anchor Huw Edwards, once one of the most prominent media figures in Britain, was given a suspended prison sentence Monday for images of child sexual abuse on his phone.
Edwards, 63, pleaded guilty in Westminster Magistrates’ Court in July to three counts of making indecent images of children, a charge related to photos sent to him on the WhatsApp messaging service by a man convicted of distributing images of child sex abuse.
Chief Magistrate Paul Goldspring sentenced Edwards to a six-month prison term suspended for two years. He will be listed on a sex offenders register for seven years.
“It is not an exaggeration to say your long-earned reputation is in tatters,” Goldspring said.
Edwards’ fall from grace over the past year has caused turmoil for the BBC after it was revealed the publicly funded broadcaster paid him about 200,000 pounds ($263,000) for five months of his salary after he had been arrested in November while on leave. The BBC has asked him to pay it back.
“We are appalled by his crimes,” the BBC said in a statement after the sentencing. “He has betrayed not just the BBC, but audiences who put their trust in him.”
Edwards had been one of the BBC’s top earners when he was suspended in July 2023 over separate claims made last year involving a teenager he allegedly paid for sexually explicit photos. Police investigated and decided not to bring charges.
Although Edwards was not publicly named at the time those allegations surfaced, his wife later revealed he was the news presenter investigated and said he was hospitalized for serious mental health issues.
He never returned to the air but the BBC kept him on the payroll until he resigned in April for health reasons.
Edwards began his BBC career in Wales four decades ago. He went on to become lead anchor on the nighttime news for two decades and led the coverage of the funeral of Queen Elizabeth II in 2022 as well as election coverage.
The BBC said at the time of his guilty plea that it was shocked to hear the details of the charges against him.
More than 375 sexual images were sent to him on WhatsApp between December 2020 and August 2021. More than 40 were indecent images of children, including seven classified as “category A” — the most indecent — with children estimated to be between 13 and 15. One child was aged between 7 and 9.
In chats with Alex Williams, who was later convicted of distributing child sex abuse images, Edwards was asked if he wanted sexual images of a person whose “age could be discerned as being between 14 and 16,” and Edwards replied, “yes xxx,” prosecutor Ian Hope said.
“From that chat in December 2020, Alex Williams said that he had ‘a file of vids and pics for you of someone special,’” Hope said.
Edwards asked who the subject and was then sent three images that appeared to be the same person who appeared to be aged 14 to 16, Hope said.
Williams later sent Edwards a video in February 2021 that involved two children, one possibly as young as seven and the other no older than 13, involving penetration, Hope said.
Edwards did not respond, but when asked by Williams if the material was too young, he said, “don’t send underage.” He also said he didn’t want him to send anything illegal.
Defense lawyer Philip Evans said Edwards was “truly sorry” for the offenses and the damage he had done to his family.
“He apologizes sincerely and he makes it clear that he has the utmost regret and he recognizes that he has betrayed the priceless trust and faith of so many people,” Evans said.
Evans said Williams had reached out to Edwards on Instagram at a time when he was mentally vulnerable and began sending him images. He said Edwards never received gratification from the images and hadn’t saved them or sent them to anyone.
Hope said Edwards paid Williams “not insignificant sums of money,” as gifts that Williams used while studying at a university.
At one point, Williams asked for a “Christmas gift after all the hot videos” he had sent. Edwards remarked that some of the images were “amazing,” Hope said.
Williams, 25, was given a suspended 1-year sentence in March for possessing and distributing indecent images as well as possessing prohibited images of children.
Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell announces interest rates will remain unchanged during a news conference at the Federal Reserves’ William McChesney Martin Building in Washington, D.C., on June 12, 2024.
Kevin Dietsch | Getty Images
A flurry of major central banks will hold monetary policy meetings this week, with investors bracing for interest rate moves in either direction.
The Federal Reserve’s highly anticipated two-day meeting, which gets underway on Tuesday, is poised to take center stage.
The U.S. central bank is widely expected to join others around the world in starting its own rate-cutting cycle. The only remaining question appears to be by how much the Fed will reduce rates.
Traders currently see a quarter-point cut as the most likely outcome, although as many as 41% anticipate a half-point move, according to the CME’s FedWatch Tool.
Elsewhere, Brazil’s central bank is scheduled to hold its next policy meeting across Tuesday and Wednesday. The Bank of England, Norway’s Norges Bank and South Africa’s Reserve Bank will all follow on Thursday.
A busy week of central bank meetings will be rounded off when the Bank of Japan delivers its latest rate decision at the conclusion of its two-day meeting on Friday.
“We’re entering a cutting phase,” John Bilton, global head of multi-asset strategy at J.P. Morgan Asset Management, told CNBC’s “Squawk Box Europe” on Thursday.
Speaking ahead of the European Central Bank’s most recent quarter-point rate cut, Bilton said the Fed was also set to cut interest rates by 25 basis points this week, with the Bank of England “likely getting in on the party” after the U.K. economy stagnated for a second consecutive month in July.
“We have all the ingredients for the beginning of a fairly extended cutting cycle but one that is probably not associated with a recession — and that’s an unusual set-up,” Bilton told CNBC’s “Squawk Box Europe.”
“It means that we get a lot of volatility to my mind in terms of price discovery around those who believe that actually the Fed [is] late, the ECB [is] late, this is a recession and those, like me, that believe that we don’t have the imbalances in the economy, and this will actually spur further upside.”
Policymakers at the Fed have laid the groundwork for interest rate cuts in recent weeks. Currently, the Fed’s target rate is sitting at 5.25% to 5.5%.
Some economists have argued the Fed should deliver a 50 basis point rate cut in September, accusing the central bank of having previously gone “too far, too fast” with monetary policy tightening.
Others have described such a move as one that would be “very dangerous” for markets, pushing instead for the central bank to deliver a 25 basis point rate cut.
“We are more likely 25 but [would] love to see 50,” David Volpe, deputy chief investment officer at Emerald Asset Management, told CNBC’s “Squawk Box Europe” on Friday.
“And the reason you do 50 next week would be as more or less a safety mechanism. You have seven weeks between next week and … the November meeting, and a lot can happen negatively,” Volpe said.
“So, it would be more of a method of trying to get in front of things. The Fed is caught on their heels a little bit, so we think that it would be good if they got in front of it, did the 50 now, and then made a decision in terms of November and December. Maybe they do 25 at that point in time,” he added.
For Brazil’s central bank, which has cut interest rates several times since July last year, stronger-than-anticipated second-quarter economic data is seen as likely to lead to an interest rate hike in September.
“We expect Banco Central to hike the Selic rate by 25bps next week (to 10.75%) and bring it to 11.50% by end-2024,” Wilson Ferrarezi, an economist at TS Lombard, said in a research note published on Sept. 11.
“Further rate hikes into 2025 cannot be ruled out and will depend on the strength of domestic activity in Q4/24,” he added.
Traffic outside the Central Bank of Brazil headquarters in Brasilia, Brazil, on Monday, June 17, 2024.
Bloomberg | Bloomberg | Getty Images
In the U.K., an interest rate cut from the Bank of England (BOE) on Thursday is thought to be unlikely. A Reuters poll, published Friday, found that all 65 economists surveyed expected the BOE to hold rates steady at 5%.
The central bank delivered its first interest rate cut in more than four years at the start of August.
“We have quarterly cuts from here. We don’t think they are going to move next week, with a 7-2 vote,” Ruben Segura Cayuela, head of European economics at the Bank of America, told CNBC’s “Squawk Box Europe” on Friday.
He added that the next BOE rate cut is likely to take place in November.
South Africa’s Reserve Bank is expected to cut interest rates on Thursday, according to economists surveyed by Reuters. The move would mark the first time it has done so since the central bank’s response to the coronavirus pandemic four years ago.
The Norges Bank is poised to hold its next meeting on Thursday. The Norwegian central bank kept its interest rate unchanged at a 16-year high of 4.5% in mid-August and said at the time that the policy rate “will likely be kept at that level for some time ahead.”
The Bank of Japan, meanwhile, is not expected to raise interest rates at the end of the week, although a majority of economists polled by Reuters expect an increase by year-end.
LONDON (AP) — British regulators on Wednesday cleared Microsoft’s hiring of key staff from startup Inflection AI, saying the deal wouldn’t stifle competition in the country’s artificial intelligence market.
The Competition and Markets Authority had opened a preliminary investigation in July into Microsoft’s recruitment of Inflection’s core team, including co-founder and CEO Mustafa Suleyman, chief scientist Karen Simonyan and several top engineers and researchers.
The watchdog said its investigation found that the hirings amounted to a “merger situation” but that the “transaction does not give rise to a realistic prospect of a substantial lessening of competition.”
Big technology companies have been facing scrutiny on both sides of the Atlantic lately for gobbling up talent and products at innovative AI startups without formally acquiring them.
Three U.S. Senators called for the practice to be investigated after Amazon pulled a similar maneuver this year in a deal with San Francisco-based Adept that sent its CEO and key employees to the e-commerce giant. Amazon also got a license to Adept’s AI systems and datasets.
The U.K. watchdog said Microsoft hired “almost all of Inflection’s team” and licensed its intellectual property, which gave it access to the startup’s AI model and chatbot development capabilities.
Inflection’s main product is a chatbot named Pi that specializes in “emotional intelligence” by being being “kind and supportive.”
However, the CMA said the deal won’t result in a big loss of competition because Inflection has a “very small” share of the U.K. consumer market for chatbots, and it lacks chatbot features that make it more attractive than rivals.
LONDON (AP) — The bosses of water companies that pollute waterways could go to prison under a new law the British government says will help clean up the country’s sewage-clogged rivers, lakes and beaches.
A bill introduced in Parliament on Thursday will give regulators the ability to ban bonuses for executives of polluting firms and bring criminal charges against lawbreakers, with the possibility of up to two years’ imprisonment for executives who obstruct investigations.
The state of Britain’s waterways made a stink during the campaign for a July 4 national election. For critics of the Conservative Party that had been in office since 2010, dirty water was a pungent symbol of Britain’s aging infrastructure and the effects of privatization of essential utilities.
The private companies that provide combined water and sewage services routinely discharge sewage into waterways when rain overwhelms sewer systems often dating from the Victorian era. Critics say the firms have failed to invest in upgrading infrastructure – but have continued to pay dividends to shareholders.
Water companies say they want to invest in upgrades but accuse the industry’s financial regulator, Ofwat, of not allowing them to raise customers’ bills enough to finance improvements.
The center-left Labour Party government elected in July has promised to clean up the “unacceptable” state of Britain’s waters.
Environment Secretary Steve Reed said that “water executives will no longer line their own pockets whilst pumping out this filth.”
The bill, which must be approved by lawmakers, also would strengthen powers of the regulators and force water companies to publish real-time data of all sewage spills.
Clean-water campaigner Feargal Sharkey said it was good news that “after years of denial at least there is a government prepared to accept and recognize the scale of the problem.”
But he said existing anti-pollution laws have rarely, if ever, been used.
“We don’t need new regulations, we don’t need new laws, we’ve got 35 years’ worth of laws that have never been applied,” Sharkey told Sky News. “You should force them to go out and apply the law as it stands today, that would have been a massive step forward.”
Throughout history, there have been several notable spills — oil in the ocean, molasses in Boston, and the New York Times reminds us Tuesday of the legacy of the Great Lego Spill of 1997.
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At least two people missing and dozens rescued after boat travelling from France to Britain capsizes.
At least 12 people have died and dozens have been rescued after the boat they were travelling in capsized during an attempted crossing of the English Channel, authorities say.
French Interior Minister Gerald Darmanin said 12 people were dead and rescue operations were under way on Tuesday to find two people still missing.
He said he would travel to the site, near the town of Boulogne-sur-Mer, later in the afternoon.
“Unfortunately, the bottom of the boat ripped open,” said Olivier Barbarin, mayor of Le Portel near Boulogne-sur-Mer.
Etienne Baggio, a spokesman for the French maritime prefecture that oversees that stretch of sea, said rescuers have pulled 65 people from the water.
Baggio described it as the deadliest migrant boat tragedy in the English Channel this year. Many of those on board didn’t have life vests, he said. It was not immediately clear how the boat ripped open or what kind of boat it was. Some attempt the crossing in rubber dinghies.
The maritime prefecture said the boat got into difficulty off Gris-Nez point between Boulogne-sur-Mer and the port of Calais farther north.
Sea temperatures off northern France were about 20 degrees Celsius (68 degrees Fahrenheit).
United Kingdom Home Secretary Yvette Cooper called the deaths “horrifying and deeply tragic”.
In a statement, Cooper criticised the “gangs behind this appalling and callous trade in human lives”, adding they “do not care about anything but the profits they make”.
At least 30 refugees and migrants have died or gone missing while trying to cross to the UK this year, according to the International Organization for Migration.
At least 2,109 people have tried to cross the English Channel on small boats in the past seven days, according to UK Home Office data updated on Tuesday.
The data includes people found in the channel or on arrival.
Hewlett Packard Enterprise will pursue a lawsuit against the estate of British tech entrepreneur Mike Lynch, who died in August after his yacht sank off the coast of Sicily.
Britain’s High Court in 2022 ruled mostly in favor of the U.S. technology company, which accused Lynch and his former finance director of fraud over its $11 billion takeover of his software company Autonomy. Hewlett Packard is seeking up to $4 billion in damages, and the judge is expected to issue a decision on the final sum soon.
Lynch died when his yacht, the Bayesian, sank in a storm off Sicily on Aug. 19. His widow, Angela Bacares, could now be liable for the damages. Months before the sinking, Lynch was acquitted in a separate U.S. criminal trial of fraud and conspiracy charges in the deal.
Hewlett Packard initially celebrated the costly acquisition of Lynch’s company in 2011 but quickly came to regret it. The company said in a statement Monday that it had “substantially succeeded” in its civil fraud claims against Lynch and Sushovan Hussain, the former finance director.
“It is HPE’s intention to follow the proceedings through to their conclusion.”
However, the judge in the U.K. civil case has already ruled that the amount payable in damages would be “substantially less” than the company is seeking.
A spokesperson for Lynch’s family declined to comment.
Mike Lynch, former CEO of Autonomy Corp., and five other passengers died when his luxury yacht sank during a storm off the coast of Sicily on Aug. 19, 2024.
Simon Dawson/Bloomberg via Getty Images
Lynch and his 18-year-old daughter Hannah were among six passengers who died when his 184-foot luxury yacht sank quickly in a storm on Aug. 19. One crew member, the boat’s chef, also died, while 15 people survived the disaster. They had gathered on the yacht to celebrate Lynch’s acquittal.
The incident has raised questions, as another sailboat that had been anchored nearby off the coast of Palermo made it through the storm unscathed. Officials initially said the yacht was struck by a tornado over the water, known as a waterspout. Prosecutors in Italy are investigating the captain on possible charges including manslaughter.
The captain, engineer and a sailor aboard the yacht, called “Bayesian,” were placed investigation for possible manslaughter in connection with the shipwreck.
Federal authorities sought for years to extradite Lynch from the U.K. to face multiple counts of fraud and conspiracy in the U.S. related to HP’s acquisition of Autonomy.
UNITED NATIONS (AP) — Yemen’s Houthi rebels have agreed to allow tugboats and rescue ships to assist a Greek-flagged oil tanker that remains ablaze in the Red Sea “in consideration of humanitarian and environmental concerns,” Iran’s mission to the United Nations claimed late Wednesday. However, the Houthis did not offer specific details and are believed to have blocked an earlier attempt to salvage the vessel and continue to attack shipping across the Red Sea.
Last week’s attack on the Sounion marked the most serious assault in weeks by the Iranian-backed Houthi rebels, who continue to target shipping through the Red Sea corridor over the Israel-Hamas war in the Gaza Strip. The attacks have disrupted the $1 trillion in trade that typically passes through the region, as well as halted some aid shipments to conflict-ravaged Sudan and Yemen.
Iran’s U.N. mission said Wednesday that following the fire on the Sounion “and the subsequent environmental hazards,” several countries it didn’t identify reached out to the Houthis “requesting a temporary truce for the entry of tugboats and rescue ships into the incident area.”
“Ansar Allah has consented to this,” the Iranian mission said, using another name for the Houthis. It offered no further details, nor did the Houthis, who have repeatedly attacked ships in the Red Sea, detained aid workers, deployed child soldiers and cracked down on dissent since holding Yemen’s capital, Sanaa, in 2014.
Houthi spokesman Mohammed Abdul-Salam, in comments carried by the Houthi-controlled SABA news agency, said late Wednesday that the attack showed how serious the rebels took their campaign against shipping.
“After several international parties contacted us, especially the European ones, they were allowed to tow the burning oil ship Sounion,” Abdul-Salam said, without giving further details.
The Pentagon said Tuesday that attempts by an unidentified “third party” to send two tugboats to the stricken Sounion were blocked by the Houthis. Air Force Maj. Gen. Pat Ryder told reporters that the Houthis’ actions demonstrate “their blatant disregard for not only human life, but also for the potential environmental catastrophe that this presents.”
Ryder said the Sounion appears to be leaking oil into the Red Sea, home to coral reefs and other natural habitats and wildlife. However, the European Union’s Operation Aspides, whose mission is to protect shipping in the area, said as recently as Wednesday the ship was not leaking oil.
The Houthis in their campaign have seized one vessel and sank two in the campaign that also killed four sailors. Other missiles and drones have either been intercepted by a U.S.-led coalition in the Red Sea or failed to reach their targets.
The rebels maintain that they target ships linked to Israel, the U.S. or the U.K. to force an end to Israel’s campaign against Hamas in Gaza. However, many of the ships attacked have little or no connection to the conflict, including some bound for Iran.
In the case of the Sounion, the Houthis have claimed the Greek company operating the vessel had other ships serving Israel. The Joint Maritime Information Center, a multinational organization overseen by the U.S. Navy, assessed that the Sounion “has no direct association with Israel, U.S. or U.K. within the company business structure” though other ships had “visited Israel in the recent past.”
London — Britain’s King Charles III visited the English town of Southport on Tuesday to meet survivors and the families of victims of the knife attack that left three young girls dead and 10 others wounded at a Taylor Swift-themed children’s dance class last month. The monarch’s visit came just a day after the pop icon herself met two of the young survivors backstage at one of her concerts in London.
King Charles arrived in Southport and was greeted by hundreds of the seaside town’s residents as he visited a floral tribute to the victims of the attack.
“His Majesty The King will travel to Southport to express his continued support for those affected by the 29th July attack and the riot which followed in the town, and to thank frontline emergency staff for their ongoing work serving local people,” Buckingham Palace said in a statement earlier. “The meeting will include some of the surviving children who were present at the Hart Space Community Centre, and their families.”
Britain’s King Charles reacts as he views tributes outside Southport Town Hall, during his visit to meet with members of the local community, following the July 29 attack at a childrens’ dance party, in Southport, Britain, Aug. 20, 2024.
PAUL ELLIS/Pool via REUTERS
Three young girls Bebe King, 6, Elsie Dot Stancombe, 7, and Alice da Silva Aguiar, 9, were killed in the attack. The stabbing rocked the country and sparked riots led by far-right groups across England. The unrest was fueled by widespread disinformation spread on social media about the attacker’s identity in the wake of the attack.
A 17-year-old male was arrested and faces charges of both attempted murder and murder. CBS News partner network BBC News reported that the suspect was born in Cardiff, Wales, and moved to the Southport area in 2013.
On Monday, Swift met two girls who were wounded in the attack backstage at her concert in London’s Wembley Stadium. A TikTok montage posted by the girls’ mother, Sami Foster, of photos showing her daughters meeting the popstar, along with Swift’s own mother Andrea, quickly went viral.
Swift met the family wearing the one-piece costume that has become synonymous with her record-breaking “Eras” concert tour. In one of the photos, one of the young girls appears to have a bandage on her forearm as she poses with the singer.
The post showing Foster’s daughters Hope and Autumn with Swift was captioned: “You drew stars around my scars,” a reference to lyrics in Swift’s song “Cardigan.”
Swift had expressed shock at the attack last month. In a statement posted on her Instagram account in July, she expressed “horror” at “the loss of life and innocence and the horrendous trauma inflicted on everyone who was there, the families, and first responders.”
“These were just little kids at a dance class,” the post said. “I am at a complete loss for how to ever convey my sympathies to these families.”
The Perseid meteor shower, one of the most highly anticipated celestial events every year, just took place — and at Stonehenge, one photographer managed to capture it in an image that he calls a “window to the universe.” The image, a composite of dozens taken over three hours the night of Aug. 9, shows the meteor shower and the Milky Way glowing over the U.K. historic site.
“I always like to remember them as ancient fireworks because they are,” astrophotographer Josh Dury, who captured the image, told CBS News. “The Perseus meteor shower is created by one of the oldest objects of our solar system, comets … I thought, ‘this is such a pertinent narrative through that sense of mystery and time.’”
Astrophotographer Josh Dury captured a photo of the Perseids meteor shower’s “ancient fireworks” falling over Stonehenge on Aug. 9.
Josh Dury
The image, a composition of 40 images taken over a three-hour period, was so dazzling that even NASA featured it as the Astronomy Picture of the Day on Aug. 12, an honor that Dury said “words can’t explain.”
“It’s insane,” he said. “… In a career as a landscape astrophotographer, it can’t get any bigger than that.”
Dury has been photographing the night sky since he was 7 years old after he watched the animated series “Biker Mice from Mars.”
“That just encapsulated my curiosity from such a young age for life on other worlds. And if you imagine that we’re lucky enough to have this composition for life here on Earth, as astronomers, when we’re observing galaxies, nebulas or star clusters, you can’t help but imagine thinking that there must be life somewhere out there in the universe,” he said. “And I do believe that’s what drives people forward, is that curiosity [of] what’s out there amongst the veil of darkness?”
Dury hopes his viral photograph will help today’s children feel as inspired as he was, and that it can help bring awareness to the importance of dark sky preserves and environmental conservation.
Artificial light is a major problem for catching these glimpses into space, he said. But it goes beyond disrupting what could be a mystical experience with the cosmos. Light pollution can also disrupt nocturnal wildlife, he said, and even people.
“Our bodies produce melatonin at night for our sleep patterns. And so if we don’t protect the night, we’re almost creating a ticking time bomb by not having the right condition,” he said. “…When we see dark sky places under threat more than ever before … the view of the night sky, it could well change within the period of our lifetime.”
Dark sky preserves, protected areas with minimal light pollution, are also under threat. Canada’s Jasper National Park, the second-largest dark sky preserve in the world, just suffered its worst wildfire in a century.
“It’s so important to protect our environment, culture and heritage,” he said, adding that it’s his mission to capture images such as this to provide inspiring “windows to the universe.” “… That’s another reason why I take photographs, is to inspire that next generation of 7-year-old youngsters like I was to look up at the night sky.”
Li Cohen is a senior social media producer at CBS News. She previously wrote for amNewYork and The Seminole Tribune. She mainly covers climate, environmental and weather news.
