Everything to Remember About All the Members of the Thunderbolts* Team

Thunderbolts*, out May 2, features Marvel’s B-team superheroes—sidekicks and antagonists who have existed largely on the sidelines of the MCU for the past decade and a half. Now they are finally getting their moment to shine. The ragtag group joins together under the watchful eye of Valentina Allegra de Fontaine (Julia Louis-Dreyfus), a morally flexible private-sector spook who has been named the head of the CIA in the new film.

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Valentina, who was first introduced in the Disney+ series Falcon and the Winter Soldier and appeared in Black Panther: Wakanda Forever as the ex-wife of Everett Ross (Martin Freeman), has quietly been gathering together a group of assassins to work on covert operations and now dreams of her own very public superhuman—or superteam—that she can control.

But if you missed movies like Black Widow or Ant-Man and the Wasp or TV shows like Falcon and the Winter Soldier, you may be confused as to who these antiheroes who Valentina has collected are, what they’ve been up to for the last several years, and whether they’re good guys or bad.

Here is your spoiler-free guide to everything you need to know about the characters who make up the Thunderbolts team.

Read more: All the Future MCU Movies Announced in Marvel’s Major Revamp

Yelena Belova

Introduced in Black Widow as the little sister of Natasha Romanoff (Scarlett Johanson), Florence Pugh’s Yelena was raised from childhood to be an assassin in the Russian Red Room, just like Black Widow before her. Yelena and Natasha are not sisters by blood but by circumstance: When they were children they were sent as spies to America and lived with a fake family of other covert operatives. David Harbour’s Alexei Shostakov or Red Guardian (more on him later) and Rachel Weisz’s Melina Vostokoff acted as their parents until all four had to escape back to Russia.

The four reunite in Black Widow to eliminate the Red Room and save the women being brainwashed there. After the death of Natasha in Avengers: Endgame, Yelena became an assassin for hire working for Valentina Allegra de Fontaine, who in Thunderbolts* is trying to build (and control) her own superhuman.

Bucky Barnes / The Winter Soldier

Sebastian Stan has been playing Steve Rogers’ best bud, Bucky Barnes, since 2011’s Captain America: The First Avenger. A lot has happened to Bucky since he fought alongside Cap during World War II in that film. Bucky fell from a train in that movie, apparently dying, but his body was recovered by HYDRA, a science-minded organization within the Nazi party. Bucky was given supersoldier serum, brainwashed, and transformed into the Winter Soldier. He performed many dastardly deeds for HYDRA, including murdering Tony Stark’s parents.

Steve eventually helped Bucky recover his memories and break free of HYDRA, and the Wakandans gifted Bucky an indestructible arm. Bucky fought alongside the Avengers against Thanos in Avengers: Infinity War and teamed up with Sam Wilson (The Falcon and, later, the new Captain America) in the Disney+ show, The Falcon and the Winter Soldier. Since then, apparently Bucky has become an elected official, representing Brooklyn in Congress. Whether his commitments to supersoldier-ing will interfere with his duties as an elected official remains unclear.

Alexei Shostakov/Red Guardian

The USSR’s answer to Captain America, Harbour’s Red Guardian is a washed-up super soldier who dreams of his days of glory as a Russian emblem of strength. A surrogate father to Natasha and Yelena, he was living in an Eastern European prison when the two girls broke him out during the events of Black Widow.

John Walker

An antagonistic force in Falcon and the Winter Soldier, John Walker (Wyatt Russell) is a military vet who takes the supersoldier serum and, briefly, is dubbed by the U.S. government as the new Captain America. However, we learn that supersoldier serum has different effects on different people. In the scrawny but noble Steve Rogers, it brought out leadership qualities. For Walker, it enhanced his already-simmering rage and resentment. Though Walker isn’t a bad guy, per se—he is in pursuit of justice—he doesn’t have the moral compass of, say, Sam Wilson. Walker eventually kills an innocent man in front of a crowd in the streets, bloodying the sacred Captain America shield in the process.

Walker is stripped of his title after that incident. But Valentina Allegra de Fontaine recruits the shamed Walker to be part of her network of privately paid assassins.

Ghost

Another misunderstood villain, Ghost (Hannah John-Kamen) is one of the antagonists in Ant-Man and the Wasp. The daughter of a former colleague of Hank Pym, Ava Starr has an encounter with the Quantum Realm as a child that grants her “phasing powers”—she can disappear and walk through walls—but leaves her in chronic pain. She joins S.H.I.E.L.D. as an assassin in exchange for a suit that allows her to control her instability and the promise of a cure that never manifests. By the end of Ant-Man and the Wasp, Janet van Dyne (Michelle Pfeiffer) uses the power of quantum physics to stabilize Ava.

Taskmaster

Though she does not play as large a role as the rest of the team in The Thunderbolts, Taskmaster does work for Valentina too. Antonia Dreykov (Olga Kurylenko) is the daughter of General Dreykov, the head of the Red Room. During an assassination attempt targeting General Dreykov, Natasha Romanoff almost kills Antonia. Antonia still carries the scars from the explosion. General Dreykov then trained Antonia to become Taskmaster and used a substance to control her mind. In Black Widow, Natasha and Yelena redeem Natasha’s near-murder of Antonia by freeing her from the Red Room to restart her life.

Bob

Bob (Lewis Pullman) is a new character in the Thunderbolts, a mysterious man who seemingly appears out of nowhere inside Valentina’s secret bunker. We won’t reveal more about Bob here to avoid spoiling the movie.

source https://time.com/7281053/thunderbolts-team-members-what-to-know/

The History of Why Raw Milk Regulation is Necessary

On April 21, The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) announced that it will be suspending its oversight of the labs that conduct safety and quality testing on the nation’s milk supply. The move comes as raw milk is ascendant in federal public health policy. Secretary of Health and Human Services Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has called for the end of what he deems the “aggressive suppression” of raw dairy by public health authorities, meaning that more deregulation may be on the way.

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Today’s raw milk evangelists like Kennedy claim that it has more nutrients, benefits the immune system, and that kids are healthier when they consume raw milk rather than pasteurized dairy. Public health authorities have debunked these claims while highlighting thousands of illnesses linked to raw milk. Nevertheless, raw dairy is increasingly popular with American consumers. It fits nicely into the “tradwife” aesthetic, personified by Ballerina Farm influencer Hannah Neeleman, who feeds her children raw milk on Tiktok for millions of viewers. Yet, like the rest of the aesthetic, the mainstreaming of raw dairy relies on consumers forgetting our history—in this case, a history in which kids got sick from raw milk.

The history of children’s health in the U.S. reveals an important truth. The U.S. government adopted a robust apparatus for regulating and monitoring the milk supply after an epidemic killed thousands of kids at the turn of the 20th century. This history offers a grim warning about what a future without milk regulation could hold for America’s children.

Nineteenth-century Americans recognized the dangers of an unregulated dairy industry. In 1843, the domestic writer Catharine Beecher warned parents that “diseased” milk was “the cause of extensive mortality among young children.” Yet, even after the French microbiologist Louis Pasteur patented the technology of pasteurization, or heating liquids to kill microorganisms, in 1865, Americans largely continued to consume raw milk for several more decades.

Read More: Public Health Experts Alarmed at Trump’s Pick of RFK Jr. to Lead HHS

They did so despite increasing fears about the dairy industry, driven by the way young children were consuming an increasingly dairy-centric diet. As America urbanized in the late 19th century, many mothers moved away from families who could have supported them in breastfeeding, while also working at Gilded Age jobs like textile factories without labor protections. The technologies of pumping and refrigeration, so essential to balancing work and breastfeeding today, were not yet widely available. This combination of barriers to breastfeeding proved insurmountable for many mothers.

Bad advice from their pediatricians compounded the situation. At the time, pediatrics was a new specialty trying to prove its worth, and practitioners mistakenly believed in sticking to a strict schedule for breastfeeding, which actually limited breastmilk supply. Hampered by this erroneous guidance, health authorities and the American public began to believe that women were physically incapable of producing enough breastmilk. 

The result of both inadequate support for new mothers and poor medical advice was that more and more mothers bottle-fed their babies cow’s milk. Young children drank lots of milk, too. Medical authorities like the pediatrician Luther Emmett Holt, whose 1894 The Care and Feeding of Children would become the most popular parenting manual of the early 20th century, advised parents to feed their toddlers milk at every meal.

But for kids at the turn of the century, milk came with dire risks. Amid the unbridled capitalism of the Gilded Age, the milk supply was a nightmare of corruption and contamination. On the farm, poor sanitation enabled cows and dairy workers to introduce tuberculosis, typhoid, and other pathogens into milk. Farmers or middlemen also frequently adulterated milk, watering it down to stretch supplies—with impure water likely to introduce further pathogens—or adding toxic substances, like formaldehyde or chalk, meant to conceal spoilage or make milk appear whiter. The milk was then shipped in open, unrefrigerated containers no matter the weather, vulnerable to even more contamination and spoilage. 

This poisoned milk threatened America’s most vulnerable consumers: young children. Infant mortality skyrocketed in the second half of the 19th century, up to 20% nationally and closer to 30% in urban centers. Tens of thousands of babies died every year of gastroenteritis known as “the summer complaint,” an epidemic of diarrhea that worsened in the warmer months. Gastrointestinal infections were the third leading cause of death across all ages, but particularly impacted small children’s fragile immune systems.

Read More: Is Raw Milk Safe? Here’s What to Know

Parents, many mourning dead children, pushed for lawmakers to clean up the milk supply. They joined a movement of Americans calling for government regulation of the food industry. Progressive Era reformers chronicled the lax food safety and labor conditions that put Americans at risk. In 1902, a Department of Agriculture chemist named Harvey Wiley launched a brilliant but dangerous public relations campaign dubbed “The Poison Squad” dosing human test subjects with food additives like formaldehyde and chronicling their alarming effects on the body. In his famous 1905 novel The Jungle, the journalist Upton Sinclair exposed the horrors of meatpacking plants and the threat they posed to Americans.

This activism prodded state and federal authorities to enact a flurry of public health legislation. In 1906, Congress passed the Pure Food and Drug Act, leading to the creation of the FDA. In 1910, New York State mandated the pasteurization of all milk sold for human consumption. As an extra layer of oversight, public health authorities began testing cows for diseases like tuberculosis, to ensure that milk remained safe for American consumers.

Public health historians credit the cleanup of the milk supply as one of the major drivers of the dramatic decrease in child mortality over the course of the 20th century. Within two generations of the pasteurization mandates, “the summer complaint” had become a memory, so much so that Benjamin Spock, the pediatrician whose parenting advice defined childcare in mid-20th-century America, had to explain its history to the parents of Baby Boomers. In the 1964 edition of his bestseller Baby and Child Care, Spock described the terror of early 20th century doctors and parents who watched infants suffer “serious intestinal infections that afflicted tens of thousands of babies yearly.” Spock confidently asserted that pasteurization had made such suffering a thing of the past.

Yet as Kennedy’s attacks on dairy regulation illustrate, the memory of the infant mortality crisis has receded too far into the past. Unlike their turn-of-the-20th century forebears, most 21st century parents will never know the agony of losing a child, as infant mortality rates have fallen below 1%. Many Americans are unaware that government regulation of industry helped bring us these precious gains in children’s health, by keeping tuberculosis, E.coli, and yes, bird flu out of the milk people drink. If this important regulatory work is undone, Kennedy’s calls to “Make America Healthy Again” could bring back an infant mortality crisis previous generations of Americans thought they had overcome.

Carla Cevasco is associate professor of American studies at Rutgers University-New Brunswick. She is writing a book on the history of feeding children in the U.S.

Made by History takes readers beyond the headlines with articles written and edited by professional historians. Learn more about Made by History at TIME here. Opinions expressed do not necessarily reflect the views of TIME editors.

source https://time.com/7280534/why-raw-milk-regulation-is-necessary/

How TIME and Statista Determined the World’s Top EdTech Companies of 2025

For the second time, TIME is awarding the World’s Top EdTech Companies 2025, in partnership with Statista, a leading international provider of market and consumer data and rankings. The result of this quantitative study: 350 companies dedicated to the development and provision of educational technologies, encompassing both products and services. Here’s how the winners were selected.

Methodology

The research project “World’s Top EdTech Companies 2025” is a comprehensive analysis conducted to identify the top performing EdTech companies in the United States. First, companies had to primarily focus on developing and providing educational technologies, products, or services. The 350 companies with the highest score were awarded as “World’s Top EdTech Companies 2025.”

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The ranking is built on two pillars: financial strength and industry impact. Statista gathered and scrutinized data from over 7,000 companies through desk research, online application forms, and collaborations with other data and market intelligence companies. A company received scores in each of these dimensions, which were then combined into an overall score.

For the first dimension, financial strength, Statista analyzed revenue, employee, and funding data, obtained from publicly available sources like annual reports, company websites, through media monitoring, and via databases. Additionally, company disclosures submitted via an online application form, which was freely accessible via the TIME website, were considered.

For the evaluation of the industry impact, Statista cooperated with HolonIQ and LexisNexis® Intellectual Property Solutions to assess companies in different impact dimensions, encompassing factors such as:

• quality and impact of their product/service portfolio
• quantity and value of a company’s IP (intellectual property) portfolio

In addition, Statista researched various metrics around web traffic, to assess the relevance of the products and services to the respective target groups.

The evaluation process involved assessing all relevant companies within the global EdTech sector that exhibited above-average performance on financial metrics in their geographical region. Subsequently, the selection was narrowed down to include only those companies that not only excelled financially but also demonstrated significant industry impact within their specific categories. This selection process allowed us to establish our final ranking of the World’s Top EdTech Companies 2025. Once the data was collected and evaluated, it was consolidated and weighted within a scoring model. The final score was calculated as follows: 70% x financial strength score + 30% x impact score. The companies with the highest score were awarded as “World’s Top EdTech Companies 2025” by TIME and Statista.

Alongside the list of 350 top EdTech companies, Statista and TIME are also publishing a “Rising Stars Ranking” highlighting the companies with the highest revenue growth rates over the past three years out of those who submitted company data via the online application process.

Applied criteria:

• company age 10 years and younger
• minimum revenue of 1 million U.S. dollars in 2022
• revenue growth rate of more than 20% over the last three years
  

Disclaimer
The selection of the companies and the definition of the evaluation criteria were based on independent journalistic criteria of TIME and Statista. The evaluation was carried out by the statistics and market research company Statista. TIME and Statista make no claim to the completeness of the companies examined.

The ranking only includes companies that qualify according to the criteria described in this document. A position in the ranking is a positive recognition based on research of publicly available data sources at the time and information received via an application process and through collaboration partners.

In addition, events after March 14, 2025, were not considered in the analysis. As such, the results of this list should not be used as the sole source of information for future deliberations. The information provided through this ranking should rather be considered in conjunction with other available information about a company.

The quality of companies that are not included in the ranking is not disputed.

source https://time.com/7280705/worlds-top-edtech-companies-2025-methodology/

Pierre Poilievre Is the Ron DeSantis of Canada

It’s easy to forget this now, but, not so long ago, Florida governor Ron DeSantis appeared poised to win the Republican primary. Mega-donors were lining up behind him. The New York Post, on behalf of Rupert Murdoch’s media empire, dubbed him “DeFuture” on its front page. Polls showed him neck-and-neck with the scandal-plagued Donald Trump. DeSantis had, apparently, figured out a way to stuff Make America Great Again into a sleeker, less objectionable package, one that appealed to both traditional Republican business interests and the newly influential far right.

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Then DeSantis bombed on the national stage. He was a terrible retail politician, his utter lack of charisma a death knell in the early-voting primary states. He dropped out in January 2024 after blowing at least $160 million without a single victory to show for it.

Something similar looks set to befall Pierre Poilievre, the leader of Canada’s Conservative Party. Canadians head to the voting booth today, and, if the polls are accurate, the country will elect a Liberal government for a fourth consecutive term. Just a few months ago, this would have been unthinkable. The Conservatives enjoyed a 25-point lead over a Liberal Party led by Justin Trudeau. But then Trump started talking about annexing Canada, the deeply unpopular Trudeau resigned, former banker Mark Carney took his place, and a trade war got underway. Suddenly, Poilievre—who has spent the last several years remaking himself, and his party, in Trump’s image—started sounding like the enemy. Now he’s found himself in the very same predicament that DeSantis once did. The two men are an object lesson in the pitfalls of trying to do Trumpism without Trump.

Their similarities begin with their personalities. Neither man is exactly likeable. Both Poilievre and DeSantis look and sound like overgrown children, and that has made them vulnerable to ridicule. During his primary campaign, DeSantis was variously accused of wearing lifts in his cowboy boots, eating pudding with his fingers, and wiping his snot on other people. For his part, Poilievre appeared to stop wearing glasses after being compared to Milhouse from The Simpsons. (Unfortunately for him, Poilievre without glasses still looks like Milhouse without glasses.)

At the same time, both men struggle to talk like normal humans, especially when it comes to their pronatalist obsession with other people’s bodies and sexual proclivities. Poilievre, for example, can’t stop talking about women’s “biological clocks,” prompting a rival leader to quip, memorably, “I don’t think any woman wants to hear Pierre Poilievre talking about their body.” It would be petty to focus on their appearance and disposition were cruelty not so central to their political brands. Poilievre and DeSantis, both infamously thin-skinned, are the epitome of being able to dish it out but not take it.

Which brings us to another challenge both men face: they can’t stand up to Trump. Even as they copied his language and playbook, they couldn’t predict, control, or outdo the man himself. The basic premise of DeSantis’s primary candidacy—that Republicans wanted Trumpism without Trump—fell apart once the former president started hoovering up media attention and gained a wide lead in the polls. He was especially brutal with DeSantis, making fun of his height and name, and baselessly accusing him of being a pedophile.

Poilievre’s predicament might be worse. Even more so than DeSantis, he cribbed Trump’s talking points, railing against woke ideology and globalist elites so often that the Liberals, in an attack ad, intercut clips from Poilievre’s and Trump’s speeches, just to drive the point home. But his campaign has struggled amid resurgent Canadian nationalism and voters’ deep dislike of the president.

Over the past decade, the far-right resurgence around the world has prompted a lot of comparisons between Trump and other leaders. But most of these politicians—Hungary’s Viktor Orban, France’s Marine Le Pen, Italy’s Giorgia Meloni, and so on—speak in their own vocabularies and draw on their countries’ deep-rooted traditions of reactionary populism. DeSantis and Poilievre, on the other hand, are mere imitators. This was especially egregious in Poilievre’s case; he imported culture-war dogma from the U.S. even as the Canadian government slapped actual U.S. imports with reciprocal tariffs. There has never been a worse time for a Canadian politician to sound American.

In some ways, both DeSantis and Poilievre are pitiable. They’re classic Napoleon-complex figures: minor men with big dreams and a self-regard at odds with the limits of their talents. Like DeSantis, Poilievre was thought to be the face of conservatism’s future; he’s reportedly told allies he has no right to lose this race. But it looks as though he will.

Of course, it’s possible that the polls are wildly inaccurate, and that Canada’s Conservative Party will somehow eke out a win tonight. But, right now, Poilievre, like DeSantis, looks an awful lot like one of Trump’s favorite insults: a loser.

source https://time.com/7280859/canada-poilievre-election-trump/

What to Know About the Power Outage that Hit Spain, Portugal, and France

A countrywide power outage impacted Spain—as well as swaths of Portugal and smaller portions of France—Monday afternoon, affecting essential services and wreaking chaos across the Iberian Peninsula. 

The cause of the outage is currently being investigated by Spanish and Portuguese officials and ministers. 

“We have activated the procedures planned for restoring power supply; in this phase of the work, the objective is to provide power to the generating units so they can start up and propagate power to the grid and other units,” electricity company Red Eléctrica said in Spanish in a press release on Monday. 

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But in the interim, residents are experiencing traffic delays as traffic lights stopped functioning, the shutdown of nearby grocery stores, and other disruptions.

Spanish officials have asked residents to steer clear of the roads and only request emergency services in serious cases. Similarly, Portuguese police asked locals to only travel if necessary, warning that street and traffic lights could collapse.

“Something like this has never happened before,” Red Eléctrica told El Pais. Eduardo Pietra, director of operations for the electricity grid added that there was “no record of the cause of the incident” and that the company could not “speculate about its origin.”

Red Eléctrica shared that there was a drop in power at about 12:30 p.m. local time. While some power began to be restored by 1:00 p.m. local time, electricity will only return gradually. The company estimates that power will return throughout Spain between 9:00 p.m. to 1:00 a.m. Electricity is now available in some areas of Catalonia, Aragon, the Basque Country, Galicia, Asturias, Navarre, Castile and León, Extremadura, and Andalusia, Red Eléctrica told TIME.

While hospitals will continue operating thanks to generators, other sectors remain impacted. Transportation has been temporarily paused across airports and train stations. In a post on X, Spanish train company Renfe said that all trains are detained and will have no departures, citing the fact that the national electricity grid was cut. Portuguese airline TAP Air asked its customers to not go to the airport as flights remain suspended. Air Europa asked patrons to remain patient due to expected delays. “Flexible date changes are being made to assist all passengers,” the airline said in a post on X.  Spain’s flagship airline Iberia said that their systems were fully operational despite the outage, but were giving passengers the option to reschedule their trips given the problems reported at numerous airports. 

Renfe did not respond to TIME’s request for comment.

The outage also prompted the suspension of the international tennis tournament Madrid Open. 

source https://time.com/7280916/spain-portugal-france-power-outage-what-to-know/

7 Things to Do When Your Memory Starts Slipping

Changes in memory as you get older—frustrating as they might be—are completely normal.

“It might become more difficult to access things as quickly, but you get into that state of, ‘If you give me a couple minutes, or you give me a cue or a clue, then yes, it’ll come back,’” says Dr. Daniel Lesley, a neurologist at Remo Health, a virtual dementia care company. “You aren’t quite as sharp as you were, but as long as you can set up strategies for yourself—like learning to write things down—you can make information much more accessible and know what’s important.”

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We asked Lesley to share what to do the moment you start to feel your memory slipping, and little things you can do every day to keep your brain sharp.

Figure out if something reversible is going on

If you’ve noticed you’re having more frequent memory lapses, mention it to your primary care doctor—and be prepared to share specific examples. You could be experiencing something reversible. “Anybody of any age can look like they have some form of dementia if they’re very stressed, if their sleep is poor, if their B12 is low, or if they have an ongoing infection or inflammation or some other psychological thing happening,” Lesley says. For example, infections like Lyme disease and autoimmune diseases like lupus are linked to brain fog that causes cognitive difficulties such as trouble concentrating or recalling words, as well as a drop in working memory, which allows people to do tasks and solve problems without looking up information. “If you feel that you’re having problems,” Lesley says, “look at the things we can fix.”

Set up a routine

The more things you can automate, the more reserves you’ll have to focus on whatever you’re doing at the moment. “If you’re juggling a crazy schedule that always changes, or you’re putting things in different places, then you’re having to relearn or redo the same things differently every time,” Lesley says. “That’s a cognitive load.”

Read More: Why We’re Obsessed With Other People’s Morning Routines

Instead, make it a point to do your activities at the same time each day (and consider using alarms to signal it’s time to start each one), set up spots where you always drop your keys or set your glasses, and make a to-do list that you cross off as you go along.

Exercise your brain

Many so-called brain games won’t actually help keep you sharp. If you play a computer game where you follow a fish with your cursor, for example, “then you’ll be good at using a mouse to catch fish,” Lesley says. “It doesn’t necessarily translate to anything that matters to you.”

Instead, prioritize increasing your cognitive reserves through continuing education like signing up for a class that fascinates you or using an app to learn a new language, he suggests.

Talk to other people every day

The single best thing most people can do to improve their memory and thinking skills is have a social circle. “Social activity is what people are built for,” Lesley says. Talking to others expands the pool of what you’re exposed to every day, which helps ensure you’re constantly learning. Plus, “you don’t know what’s going to come out of another person’s mouth, so you keep yourself sharper to respond to those comments,” he says.

Read More: How to Make Friends as an Adult—at Every Life Stage

If you have trouble hearing what your friends are saying, talk to your doctor. Research has found that mild hearing loss doubles the risk of dementia, while moderate loss triples it, and severe loss increases it fivefold. “If you have hearing problems, that interferes with your social activity, which interferes with your memory more than almost anything else,” Lesley says.

Write things down—or make a jingle about them

“If you just listen to somebody, then it’s going in one ear and it may be going out the other,” Lesley says. If you write it down, however, and then read it out loud—or make a catchy jingle or joke about it—you’ll have many more routes back to easily summoning whatever it is you want to remember.

Cut back on clutter

Keep your life as uncomplicated as possible, Lesley advises. That doesn’t just mean monitoring how much stuff is on your desk or in your office. Even your wall art matters: “If you’ve got different pictures on every part of your wall, and you’re getting distracted every time by a different picture, then there’s more to keep track of,” he says. Going in a more minimalist direction could benefit your brain health.

Take care of financial concerns right away

Tending to money matters efficiently can curb stress and anxiety. Budgeting, planning for the future, and enlisting professional help if you need it around financial concerns is good for your brain. “The anxiety of living on the edge actually can drop your IQ,” Lesley says. Research has found that when farmers are dealing with financial concerns like damage to their crops, for example, their IQ dropped 13 points compared to when they weren’t anxious about their financial stability.

Read More: 8 Ways to Talk About Money With Your Partner

Not all financial concerns are in your control. But taking care of the ones that are, by incorporating a financial routine, “will do wonders in terms of memory and thinking,” he adds.

source https://time.com/7280043/memory-slipping-what-to-do/

Canada Votes as Trump Overshadows a Crucial Election. Here’s What to Know

Canadians head to the polls today to cast their vote in a snap election called by Prime Minister Mark Carney, in what may be the most consequential vote in the country’s history.

The contest has been completely transformed by U.S. President Donald Trump, who has launched a trade war on arguably his nation’s closest ally, and threatened to annex Canada and make it the “51st state.”

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These actions have infuriated Canadians and helped spur a stunning Liberal comeback. The Conservative Party—led by the populist Pierre Polievre—had been ahead of the Liberals by 25 points before Justin Trudeau resigned in January and Carney replaced him as leader.

Read More: Why Canadians Are Giving Mark Carney a Shot

On election day, Carney’s Liberals sit at almost 43% in the opinion polls, compared to 39% for the Conservatives. The Liberals are heavily favored to win the most seats in Parliament. 

Here’s what you need to know about the 2025 Canadian election.

How does the Canadian election work?

The election was called by Carney on March 23, a week after he was sworn in as Liberal Party leader and therefore Prime Minister following Trudeau’s resignation.

The first polls have already opened in Newfoundland, Canada’s most eastern province, at 7 a.m. E.T. Polls in other provinces will open later, staggered by timezones. The last polls close in British Columbia at 10 p.m. E.T.

Canadians will vote for a candidate from one of the political parties in their federal “riding,” or district. Whichever candidate gets the most votes in a riding will become a Member of Parliament (MP) in the House of Commons, and the party with the most MPs wins the election.

The Liberal Party currently has a minority government with 153 seats, the Conservatives have 120, followed by the separatist Bloc Québécois with 33, the social-democratic New Democratic Party with 25, as well as the Greens with two, and four Independent MPs.

What are Canadians saying about Trump?

Trump’s dealings with Canada have angered many, with sports fans booing the U.S. national anthem and Canadians boycotting American goods.

Carney, who did not hold elected office before becoming Prime Minister, has taken a firm line on Trump. In his first address, he said: “We will never, in any shape or form, be part of the U.S.”

He recently revealed that Trump had brought up the 51st state issue in their most recent conversation on March 28. “The president brings this up all the time,” Carney added.

Carney has been vocal about his approach toward U.S. tariffs. After President Trump’s announcement of global tariffs on April 2, or “Liberation Day,” the former central banker responded with a promise of retaliatory tariffs.

Poilievre has taken aim at Carney’s approach to Trump and tariffs, arguing that he failed to secure relief even as other countries managed to.

But a March poll by Ipsos suggested more Canadians think Carney is better able to deal with Trump and tariffs. The Liberals have also worked to paint Poilievre as a “Maple MAGA” and “Trump-inspired” figure at a time of resurgent Canadian nationalism.

Read More: How Trump Revived Canada’s Liberals

When can we expect a result for the Canadian election?

The counting of ballots begins once polls close in each province and territory. Mail-in ballots can be counted ahead of polls closing if there is a high volume of them. This year has seen a record 7 million votes cast ahead of election day.

Early indications of the results should come after 9:30 p.m. E.T., when polls close in Quebec and Ontario. These provinces are home to the majority of Canadians, and could give a good indication as to how different demographics and ridings nationwide have voted.

The CBC usually declares a winner on Election Night based on results from Elections Canada. But a close contest could mean it will take more time to determine whether Canadians elected a minority or majority government.

What are polls saying?

At the start of the year, the Conservatives looked set for an election win for the first time since 2011. Support for the Conservatives had been on a steady rise since June 2023, amid a global anti-incumbent wave and anger over the cost-of-living crisis.

Despite hitting a low of 20% at the start of January, according to CBC polling, the Liberals are now on track to win the election. Much of this climb has been at the expense of the more left-leaning New Democratic Party (NDP), which has fallen by roughly 11 points in the same period.

The CBC is projecting 161-204 seats for the Liberal Party. The Conservatives are projected to win between 111-146 seats, the Bloc Québécois between 19-26, and the NDP between 3-15. The Economist’s election model gives the Liberals a 72 in 100 chance of winning an outright majority in parliament, which is equivalent to more than 170 seats.

source https://time.com/7280857/canada-election-carney-poilievre-trump-explainer/

How the Filipino Community Is Rallying Support After Vancouver Attack—and How to Help

The Lapu-Lapu Festival in Vancouver on Saturday was meant to be a celebration of Filipino heritage, but a car-ramming attack that killed at least 11 and left dozens injured has left the community reeling from tragedy.

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Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney as well as his election rival conservative leader Pierre Poilievre extended their sympathies, as did Philippine President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. after the attack.

The suspect was arrested and faces murder charges. Police say his motive remains unclear.

David Eby, the premier of British Columbia, a province home to some 174,000 people of Philippine descent, described the local Filipino community as one “that does nothing but give, has nothing but love,” adding: “The grief right now and the solidarity with the Filipino community is not just Vancouver, it’s not just British Columbia, it’s national, and it’s even international.”

“We are in incredible pain,” provincial lawmaker Mable Elmore said at a press conference on Sunday. “The Filipino community will show true resilience, and we will come together out of this catastrophe with the support and the love from the broad community, from all of you in the public across British Columbia and around the world.”

The Philippine Consulate General in Vancouver provided hotlines for those affected. But it also issued a warning to those who want to help against unverified fundraising campaigns that have emerged soliciting donations.

“It has come to the Philippine Consulate General’s attention that certain individuals have set up GoFundMe pages claiming to raise funds to support the victims of the Lapu-Lapu Day Incident, using a screencap of the Consulate’s official message as a backdrop as part of its material on the said fundraising page,” the consulate warned, declaring that it has not created or sanctioned any such effort. “The public is also advised to exercise vigilance and prudence to avoid being victimized by unscrupulous and malicious actors attempting to exploit this tragedy that has befallen the Filipino Community in British Columbia.”

Joel Castro, 44, who was at the festival and witnessed the attack, told TIME, “Just personally, I think I’m a bit traumatized. It’s not something that you could easily forget.” But he added that in the aftermath so far, “what I’m seeing right now is like a solidarity … solidarity from other politicians, other nations.”

Local community leaders on the ground tell TIME that the Vancouver Filipino community has rallied resources to support its members, asking those who wish to help from afar to exercise patience.

“There are sharks—I don’t know whether they’re Filipinos or not—who have used this tragedy, these people suffering, to scam people,” said Erie Maestro, 72, a founding member of local migrant worker organization Migrante BC.

“It’s only the first day after the incident. People are still trying to find out who got killed, who got injured,” Maestro told TIME late Sunday, as victims had not yet been publicly identified.

Maestro emphasized the importance of the “community rallying together” for both emotional and concrete support.

“There is more than enough” being done within the community, “from folks that are offering meal trains, social workers offering mental health support,” says Sammie Jo Rumbaua, 43, a board officer of local cultural organization Mabuhay House Society. “The focus is the victims and the families and how to give the help that people need right now.”

Mabuhay House compiled and shared a list of resources, including a site set up by local organizers to coordinate requests for and offers of support within the community in response to the attack.

“Please note there are no monetary requests on our forms, we just want to connect folks with each other,” the site says, though it promotes links to several GoFundMe fundraisers “directly going to the impacted families.”

Filipino BC, the organizer of the Lapu-Lapu Festival, also posted on its social media page contact details to crisis lines. “We are focused on supporting our community right now, in addition to experiencing this trauma,” the group said in its post. “We also want to make it clear that we discourage the viewing and sharing of the videos that are currently circulating of the tragedy.”

source https://time.com/7280841/vancouver-attack-filipino-community-support-victims-fundraisers-how-to-help/

How a New Group of Survivors in The Last of Us Episode 3 Could Play a Frightening Role in the Drama to Come

Warning: This post contains spoilers for Episode 3 of The Last of Us Season 2.

In the wake of the devastating events of last Sunday’s episode of The Last of Us, this week’s installment marked a new chapter for Ellie (Bella Ramsey) and the rest of the survivors of the infected horde’s attack on Jackson.

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Following a cold open in which we saw Tommy (Gabriel Luna) say a final goodbye to his brother’s body and Ellie wake up in the Jackson Hospital screaming as she flashed back to Joel’s death, Episode 3 jumped a few months ahead to the spring day Ellie was finally cleared to go home. That night, Dina (Isabela Merced) showed up to tell her she had initially lied and actually did know the names and home base of Abby (Kaitlyn Dever) and the rest of the crew that aided in brutally killing Joel.

Dina explained she had seen a patch on one of their backpacks with a yellow triangle, a wolf’s head, and the letters W-L-F on it. She had then connected that to a story Eugene (Joe Pantoliano), the late husband of Catherine O’Hara’s Gail, had told her from back when he was a member of the Fireflies about a militia group from Seattle who had also been trying to fight FEDRA called the Washington Liberation Front—a.k.a. WLF or, as they’re nicknamed in the video game, the Wolves.

Naturally, this had Ellie raring to hop on a horse to Seattle. But after the girls told Tommy about what they knew, he insisted they bring the issue to a vote at a town hall, where it was vetoed 8-3 by Jackson’s council despite Tommy’s support. With the help of their unlikely new ally Seth (Robert John Burke), Ellie and Dina then set out on their own for Seattle. This was a deviation from what happens in The Last of Us Part II video game, in which there is no town hall vote. Following Joel’s death in the game, Tommy leaves for Seattle to hunt Abby down first, prompting Ellie and Dina to follow.

By the end of the episode, Ellie and Dina had made it to Seattle and were preparing to enter the city under the misguided impression that WLF was a relatively insignificant force. However, the closing scene made it clear the Wolves are much more powerful than the girls seem to believe—not to mention that they also have some pretty intense firepower.

Amid these developments, we were also introduced to a whole new group of survivors who will come to play a major role in the show—that is, as long as it stays at least somewhat true to the events of the game.

Who are the Seraphites?

Around 20 minutes into the episode, the show cut away from Jackson to a group of people hiking through the woods around Seattle. While all of the men had shaved heads and were wearing cloaks with a mysterious symbol on the back, the group’s most noticeable trait was that each and every member had Glasgow smile-type scars carved into their faces. In this first scene, one of the men was walking with a little girl (presumably his daughter) and explaining to her that they were leaving their home to gain distance from a war.

However, the group then appeared to come under attack and, later in the episode, Ellie and Dina discovered their dead bodies while traveling the same path en route to Seattle. Although the show hasn’t yet revealed their identity, anyone who’s played the video game will recognize them as members of the Seraphites.

Also known as the Scars, the Seraphites are part of a religious cult that was founded in Seattle in the years after the initial outbreak of the Cordyceps pandemic and based their belief system on the teachings of a woman referred to as the Prophet. In The Last of Us Part II, the Prophet has been dead for a number of years, but we know she believed the outbreak was a punishment for mankind’s overreliance on technology and therefore preached living off the land and avoiding anything manufactured in the “Old World.” Although the Seraphites started out as a peaceful community, as their fanaticism grew, they began incorporating increasingly strange and brutal practices into their lifestyle.

As for why they’re important, in The Last of Us Part II, the Seraphites have been intensely warring with the Wolves for control of Seattle since the WLF overthrew FEDRA and took control of the city. Without spoiling anything, if the show continues to follow a similar path as the game, that means we’re about to learn a whole lot more about the Seraphites and the part they have to play in the violence still to come.

source https://time.com/7280424/the-last-of-us-season-2-episode-3-the-seraphites/

Ahead of Canada’s Election, Secretary of State Marco Rubio Speaks Out on Trump’s Plans to Annex the Country

On the eve of Canadians gearing up to vote in a federal election, Secretary of State Marco Rubio addressed President Donald Trump’s previous comments about making Canada the “51st state.”

During an appearance on NBC’s Meet the Press on Sunday, April 27, host Kristen Welker questioned Rubio on whether or not the State Department has “taken any steps to carry out” Trump’s plans “as he has said, to annex Canada.”

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“What the President said, and he has said this repeatedly, is he was told by the previous Prime Minister [Justin Trudeau] that Canada could not survive without unfair trade with the United States, at which point [Trump] asked, ‘Well, if you can’t survive as a nation without treating us unfairly in trade, then you should become a state,’” Rubio said.

Rubio’s comments come after a back-and-forth between Canada’s former Prime Minister Trudeau and Trump about how Canada should deal with the pressures felt by Trump’s tariffs. Canada has also countered with a 25% tariff on goods imported from the U.S.

Read More: These Are the U.S. Cities Most Vulnerable to Canadian Tariffs, a New Report Finds

Trump has repeatedly said both on social media and to reporters that Canada could become the 51st state of the U.S. When asked in the Oval Office by reporters if there was anything Trudeau could “give” to Trump amid ongoing tariff discussions, Trump reiterated that as a state, there would be no tariffs on the country.

“What I’d like to see; Canada become our 51st state,” Trump said. “If people wanted to play the game right, it would be 100% certain that it would become a state.”

Canada’s current Prime Minister Mark Carney has also spoken out on Trump’s persistent comments about annexing Canada. He said Trump raised the matter during a phone call in March. Speaking at a campaign press conference, Carney said: “To be clear, as I’ve said to anyone who’s raised this issue in private or in public, including the President, it will never happen.”

In an April 22 interview with TIME, Trump doubled down on his previous statements and said he was “really not trolling” about making Canada the 51st state, arguing that America doesn’t “need anything from Canada.”

“We’re taking care of their military. We’re taking care of every aspect of their lives, and we don’t need them to make cars for us. In fact, we don’t want them to make cars for us. We want to make our own cars. We don’t need their lumber. We don’t need their energy. We don’t need anything from Canada,” Trump said. “And I say the only way this thing really works is for Canada to become a state.”

Read More: Fact-Checking What Donald Trump Said in His ‘100 Days’ Interview With TIME

Trudeau—who stepped down in January as Canada’s Liberal Party leader—has previously told lawmakers and business leaders to take the threat of annexation seriously, with several outlets reporting that at a Canada-U.S. Economic Summit in Toronto in February, Trudeau suggested that Trump wants access to Canada’s critical minerals. “Mr Trump has it in mind that the easiest way to do it is absorbing our country and it is a real thing,” he said.

As mentioned, Rubio’s new comments land a day before Canada’s April 28 federal election, which could see a new leader in place for negotiations about tariffs with the United States. Trump’s comments have weighed heavily on the Canadian elections thus far, with the Liberal Party utilizing a Canadian wave of nationalism that has resulted from the ongoing trade concerns. The country’s next leader could decide the fate of Canada’s critical relationship with the U.S. and how that will look moving forward.

“They’re going to have a new leader. We’ll deal with a new leadership in Canada,” Rubio said. “There are many things to work cooperatively with Canada on, but we actually don’t like the way they treated us when it comes to trade, and the President has made that point when he responded to the previous Prime Minister.”

source https://time.com/7280793/does-trump-plan-to-annex-canada-marco-rubio-51st-state-comments/

Why Crypto Leaders Are Feeling Optimistic About the Future: ‘The Crypto Revolution Is Happening’

After years of false starts and regulatory crackdowns, crypto’s future in America may be reignited by something deceptively simple: a digital dollar that doesn’t fluctuate in value.

Stablecoins—cryptocurrencies pegged to the U.S. dollar—have quietly become the centerpiece of Washington’s new approach to digital assets. With President Donald Trump now publicly embracing crypto and bipartisan momentum building in Congress, lawmakers have a rare chance to pass the country’s first major crypto legislation. But industry leaders warn: move too slowly, or get too ambitious, and even that narrow victory could slip away.

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That was the consensus at a TIME100 Talks conversation titled “The Future of Finance: Can Regulation Power Innovation?” on Saturday, April 26, where some of crypto’s most influential players gathered ahead of the White House Correspondents’ Dinner to dig into the current debate over digital asset regulation that could well shape the next chapter of finance and economic progress for decades to come.

The panel was moderated by TIME technology correspondent Andrew R. Chow and featured Dante Disparte, the chief strategy officer at Circle—the sponsor of the event—acting Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) chair Caroline Pham, former Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC) chair Jelena McWilliams, and former White House National Security Council special adviser Carole House. The panelists agreed that a focused, narrow bill regulating stablecoins could help cement the U.S. dollar’s dominance in a digital future. They argued that Congress should pass stablecoin legislation now, before broader fights over crypto market structure derail the opportunity.

“Having worked in the Senate on many legislative efforts, it’s hard to get a bill passed,” McWilliams said with a chuckle. “You get done what you can get done, and you call it a victory.”

But despite the broad consensus on the issue, the road to regulation is tricky. Recent reports detail how some crypto companies and lobbyists have pushed to pair stablecoin legislation with a broader, more complex market structure bill—an approach the panelists appeared to oppose. “It would be an utter mistake to try to create a joint and severable model where stablecoins and market structure go side by side,” Disparte said. “It would deny the President a bipartisan legislative win… The stablecoin bill is ready to go and the President wants it on his desk to sign. They can do it before the summer recess, and there’s energy—and I think a deep national security imperative to get it right.”

Indeed, there appears to be a growing energy around crypto in Washington. Trump, who once called Bitcoin a “scam,” has embraced the industry—and the industry has embraced him right back. During the 2024 election cycle, crypto companies and executives poured tens of millions into campaign donations, helping usher in a Congress far more friendly to digital assets. In March, Trump said that he hoped to sign stablecoin legislation by August. Since then, both the House and Senate have advanced bills—the STABLE Act and the GENIUS Act—out of committee, setting the stage for what could be the first major piece of crypto legislation in U.S. history.

Read More: How the Crypto World Learned to Love Donald Trump, J.D. Vance, and Project 2025

At its core, a stablecoin is a digital token pegged to a fiat currency like the U.S. dollar, designed to offer the speed and accessibility of crypto without the volatility of assets like Bitcoin or Ethereum. Today, stablecoins represent a $238 billion market—up from $152 billion just a year ago—and are increasingly used for everything from cross-border payments to decentralized finance. Supporters argue that they could bolster the dollar’s global standing, provide lifelines to inflation-stricken economies, and modernize the U.S. financial system.

“To me, the key question here is not really the vehicle, but we have to focus on the outcome and the prize,” Pham said. “The prize here is that good regulations are good. Anybody who thinks that you’re going to [have a] money or banking system with no regulations is ridiculous.”

Stablecoin regulation, the panelists argued, isn’t just about innovation. It’s also about financial stability, national security, and global competitiveness. “We need to be able to provide for instant payment at the speed of the Internet and at the speed of human need,” Disparte said. “Domestically, it’s a misery to move money fast.”

House agreed that the moment to act had finally arrived, noting that stablecoin legislation has been debated for three consecutive Congresses, stalling each time over partisan divisions and industry infighting. “This has been the low-hanging fruit,” she said. “I’m delighted that we’re finally going to get it, but I agree that it would be a mistake [to pass both bills together].”

Still, not everything about the pending bills inspires confidence. Some panelists raised alarms about a provision in the Senate’s GENIUS Act that would allow foreign stablecoin issuers to apply for U.S. licenses directly through the Treasury Department—without the same oversight faced by domestic firms. That, they warned, could open the door to major players like Tether, an international cryptocurrency whose opaque reserve practices and regulatory controversies have long worried U.S. officials.

Asked by Chow, the author of Cryptomania, whether a foreign issuer should be able to put out a stablecoin in the U.S. without direct supervision of the U.S. authorities, Disparte warned that letting foreign issuers operate under looser rules could weaken trust in U.S. dollar-backed assets. 

“I cannot build a car without an airbag and then drop it on the streets of the United States without complying to our safety standards,” he said. “What’s the incentive to stay in the U.S. if a bill is passed that allows an offshore issuer to have free access to the US banking system? … Wouldn’t it be nice if the rest of this largely amorphous industry also planted flags in the United States? You should not be able to counterfeit the U.S. dollar anywhere in the world and not obligate yourself to U.S. law and U.S. competitiveness.”

House also stressed the dangers of creating an uneven playing field for U.S.-based firms, warning that if Congress creates a system where offshore stablecoin issuers have easier access than U.S. firms, that is “not, in fact, setting the stage for true competitiveness for U.S. markets.”

Still, political complications loom. Trump’s own growing entanglement with the crypto industry—including the launch of a Trump-branded stablecoin through World Liberty Financial, the crypto venture backed by his family—has already sparked ethical concerns. Critics worry that Trump’s direct financial stake in a market he’s trying to regulate could complicate legislative efforts—or worse, politicize them.

Pham, who was nominated by former President Joe Biden as CFTC commissioner and then designated acting chair by Trump, noted the current Administration has made crypto a much larger focus. “The previous Administration had been quite skeptical of the crypto industry, if not downright hostile,” she said. In contrast, she praised the Trump Administration’s openness, citing the first-ever White House Crypto Summit last month—just a day Trump signed an Executive Order establishing a “Strategic Bitcoin Reserve.”

“It was the first time to be there in the room with these new market participants in an open and welcoming way without stigma,” Pham said. She emphasized the need for “a principles-based regulatory framework that allows for fair competition and responsible innovation,” adding that the CFTC had already rescinded crypto-related advisories from 2018 to reflect how much the market has evolved.

McWilliams, the former FDIC chair, echoed that sentiment: “The crypto revolution, or cryptopalooza, is happening,” she said, adding that “if you’re not at the table, you’re on the table.”

TIME100 Talks – The Future of Finance: Can Regulation Power Innovation? was presented by Circle.

source https://time.com/7280490/time100-talk-leaders-crypto-revolution/

Pope Francis’ Legacy Is Celebrated by Mourners at His Funeral: ‘His Tolerance and Humility Changed the Catholic Church’

Pope Francis was laid to rest in Rome on Saturday with a moving, multi-lingual ceremony that reflected his humble approach to the papacy and the global adoration he enjoyed as the “People’s Pope.”

Hundreds of thousands of people gathered on the streets around St. Peter’s Square in the Vatican to pay their final respects to a man whose message, from the very first days of his papacy in March 2013 to his last on 21 April 2025, was that the church was a home for all—no matter their race, class, religion, or sexual orientation.

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Presidents, cardinals, key world figures, and royalty attended the requiem mass held in front of St. Peter’s Basilica as Cardinal Giovanni Battista Re eulogized a man who spoke to everyone “especially to the marginalized, the least among us.”

“Rich in human warmth and deeply sensitive to today’s challenges, Pope Francis truly shared the anxieties, sufferings, and hopes of this time of globalization,” Re told an audience that included President Donald Trump, former President Joe Biden, Britain’s Prince William, French President Emmanuel Macron, and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky.

Read More: Trump Publicly Calls Out Putin After Meeting With Zelensky at Pope Francis’ Funeral

The proceedings were broadcast on large screens set up along the Tiber River and throughout the city to accommodate the mass crowds. Sister Margaret Wyrodek, of Poland, tells TIME that she wanted to accompany Pope Francis on his final journey because he had accompanied so many through their own difficult journeys. “He was the parish priest to the whole world,” she says. “He comforted the marginalized, the poor, the people who were abused, the people on the sidelines.”

Born Jorge Mario Bergoglio, Pope Francis was the former Archbishop of Buenos Aires and the first non-European Pontiff in more than 1,200 years. He was a man loved for his genial humility and how he ushered the Catholic Church into a contemporary era by preaching tolerance for those that the church had long denigrated. “He made it clear that all are welcome at God’s table,” says Patrick Gallagher, a gay American who has lived in Rome for the past 15 years. “Because of Francis, I finally felt I could be a Catholic again.”

Among the mourners clustered along the riverbank next to the Vatican were scores of youths wearing bright green T-shirts and scarves. They had planned to come to Rome on a special pilgrimage that was to culminate with a papal audience and the now-postponed canonization of Carlo Acutis, a British-born Italian who died of leukemia aged 15 in 2006. Acutis became known as the “millennial saint” for his devotion to the church and inspired a new generation of Catholics worldwide. Instead, they arrived just in time for the Pope’s funeral. “I am disappointed,” says 15-year-old Julie Brugnoni, who landed in Rome on Thursday with a delegation of teenagers from the northern Italian town of Cremona. “I was so excited to meet Pope Francis, because he loved teenagers. Instead, we are here to say goodbye.”

The teenagers appreciated Pope Francis’ commitment to raising awareness of climate change, especially how it impacts younger generations. In 2015, the Pope published a landmark encyclical letter to the Catholic congregation, lamenting environmental degradation and global warming, and warning of “serious consequences for all of us” if such trends were to continue. “He preached that if we want a better world, we must protect God’s creation,” says Alberto Razzetti, 15.

The group fell silent as they watched the proceedings on a screen set up on the piazza. Pallbearers dressed in black suits hoisted Pope Francis’ coffin on their shoulders. The simple wood coffin, lined with zinc and marked with a white cross, symbolized another departure from church tradition.

Read More: The Enduring Connection Between Pope Francis and a Parish in Gaza

Historically, Popes have been buried in three-tiered caskets made of cypress, lead, and oak and entombed under ornate marble fixtures in St. Peter’s Basilica. But Francis, who had taken a vow of poverty as a Jesuit priest, typically shunned the trappings of papal luxury. That vow extended to his death. Last year, he amended the rules for papal funerals, simplifying the process and ushering a more humble approach into the Catholic Church, something that further endeared him to his followers.

“It is just another demonstration that the trappings of wealth are worth nothing in this world,” says Ricardo Montalto, an elderly Italian man who sought refuge from the bright sun under a shop awning during the funeral proceedings. “Under God, we are all the same, whether we are cardinals, migrants, or poor.”

The pallbearers loaded the coffin into a white pickup truck, which commenced a slow journey out of St. Peter’s Square, followed by thousands of mourners. Pope Francis specified in his will that he did not want to be buried in the Vatican like most of his predecessors, but at Santa Maria Maggiore, a basilica on the other side of Rome near the central train station. The church is a Baroque jewel in an area populated by migrants, the homeless, and the poor—the people Francis had long sought to uplift. He made a point to pray at the basilica before and after every foreign trip, and often requested to stop there whenever he was on his way home from his increasingly frequent hospital stays.

Sister Maria Rose Pellicioli, an Italian nun from a school for the poor outside of Rome, waited near the steps of Santa Maria Maggiore for the funeral procession to arrive. She first met Pope Francis 12 years ago when she brought a group of her students for an audience, and believes that his blessing has kept her and her students safe ever since. Coming to bid him farewell, she says, was her way of thanking him for all that he had done for the world. For Pellicioli, the day was bittersweet. “We have joy that we knew him, and pain that we have lost him. But he is coming home to God, and in this way he stays with us,” she says.

Pope Francis’ commitment to outreach and inclusion was underscored by a hand-picked honor guard of migrants, Muslims, the homeless, prisoners, and transgender people who awaited his arrival at Santa Maria Maggiore. They were among the last to bid farewell as the pallbearers mounted the steps to deposit the coffin in a plain marble tomb marked with the simple inscription “Franciscus.”

The actual burial, next to a chapel containing a famed Byzantine icon painting of the Madonna and child, was closed to the public. Outside, the crowd started drifting away, with thoughts turning to the future leader of the world’s 1.4 billion Catholics.

Read More: Pope Francis’ Complicated, but Undeniable, Impact on The LGBTQ Community

In the coming days, the College of Cardinals will gather in Rome for a conclave to elect Francis’ successor. The next Pope could extend Francis’ progressive legacy or return the church to the more dogmatic tradition embraced by his predecessors. 

Francis appointed roughly 80 of the 120 cardinals who will choose the next Pope, but that doesn’t necessarily mean they will elect someone in his mold. Francis’ legacy is mixed. He opened communion to divorced couples and homosexuality, and he restricted the Latin Mass, which he deemed exclusionary. But he stopped short of allowing women to become deacons. He also worked to make sure the College of Cardinals better reflects the modern church by including more representatives from the global south, many of whom are more conservative on issues of homosexuality, women’s rights, and divorce.

At the funeral, however, the crowd appeared overwhelmingly in favor of Francis’ openness to the world, no matter the specific questions of church doctrine.

“That’s why I’m feeling optimistic,” says Gallagher, the aforementioned gay American who has lived in Rome for over a decade. “Pope Francis shifted attitudes. I have seen how people embraced his goodness, how they celebrated his tolerance and humility. That will remain no matter who comes next. He has changed the church.”

source https://time.com/7280693/pope-francis-funeral-legacy-celebrated-catholic-church-transformation/

Virginia Giuffre, Prominent Jeffrey Epstein and Prince Andrew Accuser, Dies at 41

Virginia Giuffre, who accused Britain’s Prince Andrew and other influential men of sexually exploiting her as a teenager trafficked by financier Jeffrey Epstein, has died. She was 41.

Giuffre died by suicide Friday at her farm in Western Australia, her publicist confirmed.

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“Virginia was a fierce warrior in the fight against sexual abuse and sex trafficking. She was the light that lifted so many survivors,” her family said in a statement. “Despite all the adversity she faced in her life, she shone so bright. She will be missed beyond measure.”

Her publicist Dini von Mueffling described Giuffre as “deeply loving, wise and funny.”

“She adored her children and many animals. She was always more concerned with me than with herself,” von Mueffling wrote in a statement. “I will miss her beyond words. It was the privilege of a lifetime to represent her.”

The American-born Giuffre, who lived in Australia for years, became an advocate for sex trafficking survivors after emerging as a central figure in Epstein’s prolonged downfall.

The wealthy, well-connected New York money manager killed himself in August 2019 while awaiting trial on U.S. federal sex trafficking charges involving dozens of teenage girls and young women, some as young as 14. The charges came 14 years after police in Palm Beach, Florida, first began investigating allegations that he sexually abused underage girls who were hired to give him massages.

Giuffre came forward publicly after the initial investigation ended in an 18-month Florida jail term for Epstein, who made a secret deal to avoid federal prosecution by pleading guilty instead to relatively minor state-level charges of soliciting prostitution. He was released in 2009.

In subsequent lawsuits, Giuffre said she was a teenage spa attendant at Mar-a-Lago — President Donald Trump’s Palm Beach club — when she was approached in 2000 by Epstein’s girlfriend and later employee, Ghislaine Maxwell.

Giuffre said Maxwell hired her as a masseuse for Epstein, but the couple effectively made her a sexual servant, pressuring her into gratifying not only Epstein but his friends and associates. Giuffre said she was flown around the world for assignations with men including Prince Andrew while she was 17 and 18.

The men denied it and assailed Giuffre’s credibility. She acknowledged changing some key details of her account, including the age at which she first met Epstein.

But many parts of her story were supported by documents, witness testimony and photos — including one of her and Andrew, with his his arm around her bare midriff, in Maxwell’s London townhouse.

Giuffre said in one of her lawsuits that she had sex with the royal three times: in London during her 2001 trip, at Epstein’s New York mansion when she was 17 and in the Virgin Islands when she was 18.

“Ghislaine said, ‘I want you to do for him what you do for Epstein,’” Giuffre told NBC News’ “Dateline” in September 2019.

Andrew categorically rejected Giuffre’s allegations and said he didn’t recall having met her.

His denials blew up in his face during a November 2019 BBC interview. Viewers saw a prince who proffered curious rebuttals — such as disputing Giuffre’s recollection of sweaty dancing by saying he was medically incapable of perspiring — and showed no empathy for the women who said Epstein abused them.

Within days of the interview, Andrew stepped down from his royal duties. He settled with Giuffre in 2022 for an undisclosed sum, agreeing to make a “substantial donation” to her survivors’ organization. A statement filed in court said that the prince acknowledged Epstein was a sex trafficker and Giuffre “an established victim of abuse.”

She also filed, and in at least some cases settled, lawsuits against Epstein and others connected to him. In one case, she dropped her claims against a prominent U.S. attorney, saying she might have erred in identifying him as one of the men to whom Epstein supplied her.

Epstein’s suicide put an end to his accusers’ hopes of holding him criminally accountable.

Maxwell was convicted in 2021 on federal sex trafficking and conspiracy charges and was sentenced to 20 years in prison. She said she wasn’t to blame for Epstein’s abuse.

Prosecutors elected not to include Giuffre’s allegations in the Maxwell case, but Giuffre later told the court that the British socialite had “opened the door to hell.”

Giuffre, born Virginia Roberts, told interviewers that her childhood was shattered when she was sexually abused as a grade-schooler by a man her family knew. She later ran away from home and endured more abuse, she said.

She said she met her now-husband in 2002 while taking massage training in Thailand at Epstein’s behest. She married, moved to Australia and had a family.

Giuffre founded an advocacy charity, SOAR, in 2015.

Giuffre separated from her husband and children this year. She had been charged with breaching a family violence restraining order over an incident in February, and was set to apepar in court in June in the city of Perth, where her estranged husband and children live.

She had yet to enter a plea to the charge. A conviction would have carried a potential maximum sentence of two years in prison.

Giuffre was hospitalized after a serious accident, her publicist said last month. She didn’t answer questions at the time about the date, location, nature or other specifics of the accident and about the accuracy of an Instagram post that appeared to come from Giuffre. The post said she had been in a car that was hit by a school bus and her prognosis was dire.

She is survived by her three children, whom the statement described as the “light of her life.”

Sigrid McCawley, an attorney for Giuffre, said in a statement, “Her courage pushed me to fight harder, and her strength was awe-inspiring. The world has lost an amazing human being today. Rest in peace, my sweet angel.”

The AP does not identify people who say they were victims of sexual assault unless they have come forward publicly.

—Associated Press writer Rod McGuirk in Melbourne, Australia, contributed to this report.

If you or someone you know may be experiencing a mental-health crisis or contemplating suicide, call or text 988. In emergencies, call 911, or seek care from a local hospital or mental health provider.

source https://time.com/7280676/virginia-giuffre-dies-age-41-jeffrey-epstein-prince-andrew-abuse-accuser/