BEIRUT — Palestinians in northern Gaza described heavy Israeli bombardment Saturday in the hours after airstrikes killed at least 22 people, as Israel continued to tell people there and in southern Lebanon to get out of the way of its offensives against the Hamas and Hezbollah militant groups.
In Lebanon, the United Nations peacekeeping force said its headquarters in Naqoura had again been hit, with a peacekeeper struck by gunfire late Friday and in stable condition. It wasn’t clear who fired. The shooting occurred a day after Israel’s military fired on the headquarters for the second straight day. Israel, which has warned the peacekeepers to leave their positions, didn’t immediately respond to questions.
[time-brightcove not-tgx=”true”]Hunger warnings emerged again as residents in northern Gaza said they hadn’t received aid since the beginning of the month. The U.N. World Food Program said no food aid had entered the north since Oct. 1. An estimated 400,000 people remain there.
Israel’s military renewed its offensive in northern Gaza almost a week ago while escalating its air and ground campaign against the Iran-backed Hezbollah in Lebanon. Lebanon’s state-run National News Agency said an Israeli airstrike hit an apartment building in the Zarout coastal area on the edge of Barja south of Beirut, and the Health Ministry said four were killed. The ministry said another airstrike on the village of Maisra northeast of Beirut killed five.
The total toll in Lebanon over the past year of conflict between Israel and Hezbollah is now 2,255 killed, according to the Lebanese Health Ministry. Hezbollah continued to fire into Israel.
“We will keep standing with the Lebanese people during these difficult circumstances and also with the Palestinian people,” the speaker of Iran’s parliament, Mohammad Bagher Qalibaf, said Saturday while touring the scene of an Israeli airstrike in Beirut.
In northern Gaza, residents told The Associated Press many were trapped in their homes and shelters with dwindling supplies while seeing bodies uncollected in the streets as the bombing hampered emergency responders.
Those who rushed to the scene of the latest deadly airstrikes in the urban refugee camp of Jabaliya found a hole 20 meters (65 feet) deep where a home once stood.
At least 20 bodies were recovered as of Saturday morning, while others likely were trapped under the rubble, emergency service officials said. Elsewhere in Jabaliya, a strike on a home killed two brothers and wounded a woman and newborn baby, the officials said.
Another strike in the afternoon hit a Jabaliya home and killed at least four people including a woman, said Fares Abu Hamza, an official with the emergency service.
Israel’s military did not immediately respond to request for comment on the strikes. Military spokesperson Avichay Adraee told people in parts of Jabaliya and Gaza City to evacuate south to an Israeli-designated humanitarian zone as Israel plans to use great force “and will continue to do so for a long time.”
Israel has repeatedly returned to parts of Gaza as Hamas and other militants regroup. The war has destroyed large areas of Gaza and displaced around 90% of its population of 2.3 million people, often multiple times.
Once again, some families moved south on foot, in donkey carts or crowded in vehicles that navigated piles of rubble. Others refused to go.
“It’s like the first days of the war,” said a Jabaliya resident, Ahmed Abu Goneim. “The occupation is doing everything to uproot us. But we will not leave.”
The 24-year-old said Israeli warplanes and drones struck many neighboring houses in the past week, He counted 15 relatives and neighbors, including four women and five children as young as 3, killed in neighboring homes. He said there were dead in the streets and “no one is able to recover them because of the bombing.”
Hamza Sharif, who stays with his family in a school-turned shelter in Jabaliya, described “constant bombings day and night.”
He said the shelter has not received aid since the beginning of the month. “Families depend on what they have stored, but they will run out of supplies very soon,” he said.
The World Food Program said it was unclear how long the limited food supplies it distributed in northern Gaza earlier will last.
The U.N.’s independent investigator on the right to food last month accused Israel of carrying out a “starvation campaign” against Palestinians, which Israel has denied.
Israel’s offensive in Gaza started after Hamas’ Oct. 7 attack, when militants stormed into Israel, killing some 1,200 people, mostly civilians, and abducting around 250 others.
Israel’s offensive has killed over 42,000 Palestinians, according to local health authorities, who do not specify between combatants and civilians. Gaza’s Health Ministry said hospitals had received the bodies of 49 people killed over the past 24 hours.
The White House Military Office released Vice President Kamala Harris’ medical report on Oct. 12, sharing that Harris “remains in excellent health” based on her most recent and “unremarkable” physical exam in April 2024.
A healthcare statement from Joshua R. Simmons, Harris’ physician, said the Vice President “possesses the physical and mental resiliency required to successfully execute the duties of the Presidency.”
[time-brightcove not-tgx=”true”]Simmons shared that Harris, 59, had certain health issues, including her nearsightedness, as well as seasonal allergies triggered by pollen, and urticaria—a common skin condition that causes itchiness and redness. Still, her physician asserted that she is managing these well, her allergies and urticaria have improved, and she has “never experienced severe symptoms.” The Vice President’s nearsightedness is also corrected by lenses, which leave her with 20/20 vision.
It was noted that Harris’ maternal side of the family has a history of colon cancer.
Meanwhile, Harris is up to date on her immunizations and preventive care recommendations—including colonoscopies and mammograms. Simmons described Harris’ active physical routine, something she has spoken about previously, as well as her “very healthy” diet.
Harris’ physical exam is significant because her approach to transparency differs intensely from that of former President Donald Trump, and Harris’ Republican opponent in the upcoming presidential election on Nov. 5.
Read More: What Kind of President Would Kamala Harris Be?
Ever since President Joe Biden dropped out of the presidential election on July 21, Trump, 78, has become the older candidate. This came after there was repeated focus on the age of Biden throughout the campaign battles between Biden and Trump, as well as Biden’s highly criticized debate performance in June, despite the age gap between Biden and Trump only being about three and a half years.
The public has little information on Trump’s current health situation. The most recent medical report publicly shared by Trump was featured in a Nov. 20, 2023, Truth Social post, which included a screenshot of a letter from Dr. Bruce Aronwald, sharing little detail but saying the former President was in “excellent health.”
Though Trump has recently said that he would “gladly” share his medical records, he has not yet done so. Furthermore, Harris released the information about her health almost exactly three months after Trump was wounded during an assassination attempt at his campaign event on July 13 in Pennsylvania—an event that killed a man in the audience.
Read More: What We Do and Don’t Know About Trump’s Ear Wound
Trump’s medical team has remained extremely tight-lipped over any information about the former President’s medical records after the attempt or the extent of his ear wound. Republican representative and physician Ronny Jackson of Texas did write a signed letter released on July 20, stating that the ear wound was caused by a gunshot, and that the wound was “beginning to granulate and heal properly.”
The Trump campaign has also not responded to attempts from publications like the New York Times to receive medical records—though the Harris campaign also did not respond to the Times, instead deciding to release the Vice President’s records on their own timeline.
According to ABC News, a senior Harris aide said they see the release of the Vice President’s records as an “opening to highlight how little is known about the health of 78-year-old Trump.”
Autumn may be the most atmospheric season, tantalizing the senses with soft sweaters and warm beverages and the crunch of colorful leaves underfoot. But, as we all suddenly remember once Sept. 30 gives way to Oct. 1, it isn’t all flannel-swaddled, pumpkin-spice ASMR. This is a time charged with the contradictions inherent in the end of the calendar—cozy and eerie, Thanksgiving and Halloween, harvest and decay. The entertainment industry offers up its own autumnal cornucopia of contrasts. Sandwiched between chummy fall baking competitions and the anodyne made-for-TV Christmas movies that arrive earlier each year is a dollop of bloody, gory, nightmare-inducing horror on screens big and small.
[time-brightcove not-tgx=”true”]Falling somewhere between the two is a third spooky-season sensibility—one epitomized this year by the reunion of Tim Burton, Winona Ryder, and Michael Keaton in a blockbuster sequel to their classic undead comedy Beetlejuice: goth. With aesthetic roots in pre-Victorian Gothic fiction, goth was adapted into a black-shrouded subculture by fans of melancholic 1980s British rock bands like the Cure and Cocteau Twins and has, since then, been sliced, diced, and spliced into dozens of divergent factions. I’m using it here in the broadest sense. It’s dark, it’s spooky, it’s romantic, it’s death-obsessed. It’s velvet and lace and vampires and witches and black cats and dripping candles and séances conducted by Ouija board. It has the trappings of horror but no interest in jump scares. And more often than not, especially as it approaches a half-century of existence, goth has a campy sense of humor about its own melodrama.
Goth’s mainstream profile tends to ebb and surge, and the past few years have seen a new wave of macabre media that seems to be cresting this fall. (What says goth revival more than the Cure releasing its first new song in 16 years, a few days after the autumnal equinox?) In a recent Vogue
essay trumpeting fashion’s rediscovery of morbid beauty, Tish Weinstock—whose forthcoming book How to Be a Goth: Notes on Undead Style is itself a bellwether—identifies a “full-blown gothic resurrection” and proclaims: “welcome to the season of the witch.” Weinstock is right to name witches as the supreme goth signifier of 2024. Every retro movement gets repackaged to suit the era into which it’s reborn. And from Beetlejuice Beetlejuice to Agatha All Along, this year’s extra-comforting model has an aspirational girl-power quality grounded in nostalgia for the goth-pop artifacts of the late ‘80s and ‘90s.
Tracing the origins of the goth aesthetic is a fool’s errand. While the subculture coalesced within a music scene transitioning from ’70s punk to ’80s new wave, the sensibility has no discrete genesis. It predates proto-goth touchstones like Rocky Horror, the droning decadence of The Velvet Underground and Nico, silent-film vamp Theda Bara, the chilling fictions of H.P. Lovecraft and Edgar Allen Poe, Dracula and Frankenstein. Goth did not even begin with the eponymous Germanic tribes that raided the waning Roman Empire. Insofar as it is entails the romanticization of death and the occult, the goth worldview might be as old as human society—a Freudian, death-drive fixation that’s as apparent in the funereal traditions of Ancient Egypt as it is in Chappell Roan’s velvet, chainmail, and crucifix VMAs ensemble.
Goth as we know it today can, however, be loosely sorted into eras. If the early scene was predominantly about music and nightlife, then by the late ’80s goth had become a full-on pop phenomenon, spawning superstars like filmmaker Burton and author Anne Rice, with Marilyn Manson and Hot Topic mass-producing PVC-clad rebellion for the ’90s mallrat. A binary of sorts emerged, with such aggressively masculine variations as the industrial rock of Manson and his mentor at the time, Trent Reznor of Nine Inch Nails, on one side and a witchier, female-driven vibe on the other. This was a decade bookended by riot grrrl’s feminist-punk energy and the neopagan, earth mother ethos of Lilith Fair; goth girls synthesized aspects of both movements, white magic and white-hot rage.
In 1988, Burton gave that audience an icon in Ryder’s Beetlejuice heroine, Lydia Deetz, who dressed like a miniature Siouxsie Sioux and moved into a country house where only she had the ability to see the ghosts of its previous owners. Ryder grew into an offbeat romantic lead with Burton’s 1990 cult classic Edward Scissorhands, the teen black comedy Heathers, and Francis Ford Coppola’s take on Dracula. Following in her combat-booted footsteps, Christina Ricci broke out by reviving the deadpan ’60s proto-goth icon Wednesday Addams in The Addams Family and Addams Family Values, romanced a friendly ghost in Casper, and entered the Burton-sphere with 1999’s Sleepy Hollow. By then the witchy girl was everywhere, forming outcast covens in The Craft, fighting supernatural baddies in Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Charmed, all grown up and empowered to destroy abusive boyfriends in Practical Magic.
While there have been short-lived resurgences in the 21st century (see: Twilight), it’s primarily this strain of goth that is driving the current nostalgia fest. September’s Beetlejuice Beetlejuice gives Lydia a brooding teenage daughter of her own in Ryder’s closest Gen Z analog, Jenna Ortega. Ortega also plays the title role in Burton’s incredibly popular teen-drama twist on the Addams Family, Netflix’s Wednesday. An adult Ricci (who has also been revisiting her ’90s weird-girl persona in Showtime’s Yellowjackets), appears appears as one of Wednesday’s teachers. Those who crave a more tactile connection with the actor’s dark brand can shop Ricci’s recent West Elm collab, which features tarot cards. A musical adaptation of Death Becomes Her, the 1992 goth-camp comedy that pit Meryl Streep against Goldie Hawn in an orgy of cartoon violence, is about to open on Broadway; Sabrina Carpenter’s “Taste” video, also starring Ortega, pays homage to the same movie. And if you just want to watch vintage Ryder, Criterion Channel is honoring her with an October retrospective.
Sequels and reboots and rereleases may be the linchpins of Hollywood’s nostalgia-industrial complex, but goth’s comeback goes beyond the reanimation of dormant titles. The new Disney+ series Agatha All Along is about as original as Marvel shows get. A once-fearsome witch, Kathryn Hahn’s WandaVision villain Agatha Harkness convenes a makeshift coven to flank her on a perilous journey that might restore her lost powers. The show celebrates and sends up all sorts of witchy archetypes, writing into its lore a ’70s singer à la Stevie Nicks and a wellness influencer mixing up toxic potions. Eighties-set teen comedy Lisa Frankenstein, released this past winter, finds a misfit girl falling for the gentle Victorian zombie who follows her home from the cemetery. Soundtracked by period-appropriate indie rock, the movie is itself a Frankenstein’s monster of influences, from Beetlejuice to the 1992 B-movie that kicked off the Buffy franchise. Its very existence confirms the longevity of a previous generation’s dark teen tropes.
What are we looking for when we flock to these paradoxically pleasurable paeans to monsters and magic, mortality and the afterlife? In an interview with the Guardian, Weinstock, the How to Be a Goth author, ventured that “there’s so much sadness and violence in the world that it’s beginning to seep into and shape the culture…. It’s a form of escapism but it’s also a reality check that reminds us we’re living through scary, uncertain times.”
I’m not so sure about that. The girly goth talismans we’re clinging to now are relics of a more upbeat era, when the economy was coasting and the Cold War was ending and the daughters of second-wave feminists were inventing new ways to inhabit their power. While some of us will always feel the temptation to immerse ourselves in the gloomy and supernatural, the more potent form of escapism at play in this revival is nostalgia for the recent past. One perennial lure of the goth subculture, with its Victorian wardrobe and Expressionist makeup, is its ability to untether adherents from the present. “Goth’s interest in the timeless,” writes the critic Simon Reynolds in his post-punk history Rip It Up and Start Again, “could be seen as precisely that—a refusal of the timely, the topical, the urgent issues of the day.” It supplants the sadness and violence we know with dark fairy tales too remote from reality to demand our engagement with real-world problems.
Goth ca. 2024 may not visually resemble the cardigan-core of Taylor Swift’s Folklore/Evermore era, but, like a certain seasonal latte, it’s delivering pure comfort. You might notice that Beetlejuice Beetlejuice feels cozier than its predecessor; while both have the same rural idyll as a backdrop, the sequel de-emphasizes the original’s uncomfortable framing of Lydia as a child bride to the titular ghoul in favor of a plot that repairs broken bonds between generations of Deetz women. Or that Wednesday is set at a boarding school for outcasts, monsters, and practitioners of magic—shades of Harry Potter. Or that Agatha eases its underworld odyssey with camp-savvy faces: Hahn, Aubrey Plaza, Patti LuPone. Meanwhile, one recent Gen X goth IP revival that bombed was a convoluted, self-serious reboot of the 1994 revenge fantasy The Crow, which earned $9 million at the domestic
box office to Beetlejuice Beetlejuice’s $266 million and counting.
Maybe that’s why the most successful of these titles have been hitting like any other fall-sploitation trifle, enjoyable but forgettable, Hallmark Christmas specials for viewers who prefer
Halloween. Just as we line up in autumn for an annual round of virus-season vaccines, we might seek out these morbid fantasies, each its own plush sensory overload, as an inoculation against the pain of processing war, misogyny, political upheaval. The entertainment itself is surprisingly benign. Scarier by far is the impulse that drives us to it.
A ”once in a lifetime” comet is expected to light up the night sky as it passes by Earth later this week. Comet Tsuchinshan-ATLAS will be bright enough to view by the naked eye for most of October. Here’s how to make sure you don’t miss the rare sighting.
NASA defines comets as “cosmic snowballs” made of debris from the formation of the solar system. As they get close to the sun, they heat up and form a glowing tail of gas and dust that can be millions of miles long. Comet Tsuchinshan-ATLAS was discovered in 2023 by observers at China’s Tsuchinshan Observatory and an ATLAS telescope in South Africa. It was officially named in honor of both observatories.
The comet comes from the Oort Cloud, a region filled with frozen debris on the edge of our solar system.
It made a close transit of the sun on Sept. 27, which scientists suspected it might not survive, and is now expected to come within 44 million miles of the Earth.
Read More: Scientists Solve the Mystery Behind the Oumuamua ‘Alien Spacecraft’ Comet
Peak visibility will occur Oct. 9-10, according to NASA. The comet will be closest to the Earth on Saturday, Oct. 12, but should be visible until the end of October.
Stargazers in the Southern Hemisphere will have the best view of the comet, but those in the Northern Hemisphere will be able to catch a glimpse as well.
NASA astronomer Bill Cooke recommends choosing a dark vantage point just after full nightfall—typically an hour after sunset—and looking to the southwest.
The comet should be visible by the naked eye, but using binoculars or a telescope can help you get a better view. For those who want to enjoy the exciting event from the comfort of indoors, the Virtual Telescope Project will also host a live broadcast on Oct. 9.
Be sure to catch a glimpse: following its appearance this month, the comet will not be visible for another 800 centuries, according to NASA. That is, if it survives the trip.
Jeremy “Jez” Butterworth and Laura Donnelly are a couple with two kids, who also work together; he writes plays, and she appears in them. But their collaboration goes deeper. Butterworth’s last play, the Tony Award-winning The Ferryman, was based loosely on the story of Donnelly’s uncle who was “disappeared” by the IRA during the Troubles in Northern Ireland. The couple’s newest production, The Hills of California, currently playing on Broadway, draws inspiration from both Donnelly’s childhood and his own experiences of loss and grief.
[time-brightcove not-tgx=”true”]The play stars Donnelly as both the matriarch of a faded British seaside resort who is determined to get her four daughters a career modeled on that of the Andrews Sisters (Donnelly and her sisters were pushed into gymnastics as children), and as one of the sisters in later life as she visits her mother’s deathbed (drawn in part from Butterworth’s interactions with his brothers as they looked after their dying sister). Butterworth seems to like a family business; several of his screenwriting credits, including Ford v Ferrari and Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny, are shared with one or another of his brothers.
During the production’s early days, Butterworth and Donnelly spoke to TIME about working together, fame, and that one time he punched Harvey Weinstein.
Butterworth: She had ovarian cancer, and when they couldn’t operate on her again, she moved into a cottage next to the farmhouse where I was living at the time, and her end-of-life care lasted for six months. Different groups of friends and family would come stay on the farm and visit Joanna. And I think it was a happy time for her, despite what was going on. I’ve never seen anything quite like it, and I knew that one day that I would want to distill some of the atmosphere of how people behave around the dying and when they gather in different stages of their lives all under the same roof. How that plays out, in all of its comedy and intensity and banality and vividness, and I didn’t know how to do that for the best part of a decade.
Donnelly: No, everybody else in my family went on to do what you would term a normal job. But there wasn’t really a lot of that around me, full stop, growing up in the ‘80s in Belfast. People didn’t tend to have careers in the arts.
Donnelly: Well, I can relate to her for sure. I had a recent experience where I went home, and I was walking around the area in which I had grown up, and I just had suddenly had a very, very strong memory of having been a 15-year-old girl in my bedroom and thinking, there isn’t a lot of magic here, and I want to go out and have a magical life.
Butterworth: What I think Laura’s unique quality is, is dignity. And I think if dignity is at stake on the stage, everybody leans forward. When she’s on stage, you care about her destiny in terms of her dignity and whether that will be compromised, and whether she will be able to survive that. And whenever I talk about it, I kind of get chills, because I really do think that’s where drama lies, not in the outcome of sword fights, or whether the king dies, but just whose dignity is at stake. Because, of course, when you go to the theater, as opposed to the cinema, the audience’s dignity is at stake. They’re in a live event. Something might happen that will threaten their dignity. And when that works, and it comes off, it’s just so exciting.
Butterworth: I can sort of take an ingredient like Laura Donnelly and put it in the pot, and I can take an ingredient like a mother who can’t see what is coming, who’s building a house of cards that is going to be blown away. The idea is just like watching a spider building a web that a dog runs through. And I put those ingredients in the pot, and then I leave it on to simmer, and hope for the best.
Donnelly: There was something about his writing that I just felt like I knew how to sing it. Whenever I read anything that he’s written, whether it’s a character I’m going to play or not, it seems very, very clear to me how it’s supposed to be done, because he writes with a very particular rhythm and all the meaning and all of the emotion is in the rhythm. So I get the greatest reward from having these layered, complex, interesting characters, but at the same time, it doesn’t feel like terribly hard work.
Butterworth: The way it’s come about is I write an act of the play, which is roughly around an hour, and she sees it the day before we read it through with actors. I think the main reason I do that is to kind of prove to [director] Sam Mendes and [producer] Sonia Friedman that I’m actually doing it, and sort of get them pregnant bit by bit, to put the show on. It also allows me to build the play and then get actors’ responses to what they just did, which for me is absolutely crucial.
Donnelly: Jez will talk a lot about the process as he’s doing it. I may not read anything until a first act is written, but he will have talked the whole way through what he’s considering, how he’s shaping it, and we will just chat over dinner or whatever about that. When I start my job in earnest, I won’t necessarily think that there is a problem with something. I just might be struggling to understand exactly how that moment takes shape, and when I ask the right question, that’s usually when Jez will say, actually, that’s because that’s not right.
Butterworth: Much as that would be fun to do, we don’t. It’s a little bit of a dance. Laura is like a steel trap in terms of what has happened in the rehearsal that day, so that there isn’t any kind of feedback or whispering campaign. She’s from Northern Ireland, where that gets you kneecapped. And Sam knows that. There’s just a trust between the three of us.
Donnelly: It’s essential to my job. I can’t have two different people sending me in two different directions from the moment we start rehearsals. I recognize Sam as my director, and he’s the person I’m going to for everything.
Donnelly: Through my 20s, if I’d had that offered up to me on a silver platter, I would have taken it. I think I’d probably be dead right now if that happened. It was not for me at all, and now I can recognize that I’ve slipped a punch there. I have remarkably found myself getting to do what I consider to be the best work that any actor could possibly have available to them. And I can walk down the street, which is heaven.
Butterworth: I can’t work out in this story, whether these four daughters are gathering at my deathbed and I’m the mother upstairs, or whether I’m gathering with my four brothers at my sister’s death bed. When I’m writing plays, the thing they resemble most is dreams. I’m kind of going from one to the other. I’m up there and I’m down here. And also the four children who are being drilled, not just to prosper, but to soar, are partly based on stories of Laura’s youth and how her and her siblings were really thrown at gymnastics. I’ve jokingly called them the Family McTrapp. All of these things go into a soup in my head and in terms of which bit’s driving what, your guess is pretty much as good as mine. I think that if I had beefs that I just wanted to sort out with my past, and I was going to write them down and knock them off, then you’d have a stuffed bird and it wouldn’t fly.
Butterworth: I feel like we’re just living a life that we’ve both made, and that day to day, week to week, astonishes us. But the fact is, this is the work that we make together, and we love doing it. I know that both of us revel in being here in New York for the third time together, that our life has taken on this pattern.
Donnelly: When I was 12 and thinking of the kind of life I might want to have as an actor, I could never have imagined it would be this very old school version of a brilliant playwright and actor in New York doing a new play. It feels to me that we could have been doing this same thing 80 years ago.
Butterworth: And we create these works together. The plot of The Ferryman was dreamt up by both of us in a car driving to upstate New York in a snowstorm. And when we got to our friend’s little cottage up there, we opened a few pots of wine, and by the morning, we had the story plotted completely between us, and it was filled with ideas to do with Laura’s family, things I had no idea about. Laura was absolutely intrinsic, not only to the performance, but to the creation. I think Tom Waits said that with his relationship with his wife, Kathleen Brennan, he washes and she dries. But in that case, we both washed and then she dried.
I really don’t know the answer to that. I could say that absences haunt a lot of drama. Sydney Pollack, when I was just starting out, said when you create a story, you’re not building a house. You’re building a haunted house. You’ve got to put a ghost in it. Just feeling the presence of something without knowing what it is, is the thing that I instantly recognize to be important to make a drama live. And for me, theater’s always been about entrances and exits and what’s off stage and what’s on stage.
Donnelly: She didn’t discuss her work much. But as Jez said earlier, being where I’m from, not a lot did ever get discussed that was below surface level. I suspect that my mom’s involvement in that was because she specifically counseled victims of the Troubles and worked with other families of the disappeared. It was wrapped up in her own grief, and so I guess it was a way of trying to process that for herself by helping other people. When we started researching for The Ferryman, I began asking her questions about her brother, but there was just such silence around it. I always got the impression that it was just too painful for people to talk about.
Butterworth: This has become, for me, a kind of a memory play. I’m absolutely haunted by the past. I spend most of my time, and have all my life, facing backwards, and I haven’t really got much of a clue what’s happening next week. It’s like being blind in one eye. I can tell you within 10 seconds, the week and often the day something happened. But my memory, which I used to consider to be a catalog of what actually happened, is not a catalog of what happened at all. It’s my version of what happened, and sometimes it is comically wrong. And I’ve just had to accept that there’s no such thing as the truth when you’re looking backwards.
Butterworth: One of the reasons I run away from ideas and wait for them to chase me is to avoid exactly what you’re describing, which is to write something that feels modish or in any way of the day, because it won’t be of the tomorrow. I mean, I had my own experiences with Harvey Weinstein, when I made a movie 25 years ago, but the idea that I would choose a hot topic and write about it fills me with horror. I’d be lying if I said that my experiences of that haven’t found their way into the play, but they found their way into the play to lesser of an extent than my own experience of sexual abuse at the age of 15.
Butterworth: Yes. It was in midtown Manhattan outside a hotel that I’ve not been to since or before. It was not a great hotel. He was bullying a producer that I was working with. This would have been late 1998, so a long time ago.
Butterworth: I think everything that I’ve ever written is driven by this kind of stew that contains all these things that I consider losses or are painful to me, and I can’t deal with in any other way. But what you’re asking is, does it help me with it? No, not at all. It doesn’t really get, as it were, transubstantiated into something beautiful. I put it alongside everything else that I would consider to be a profoundly sort of critical moment or loss in my life, and they all line up like birds on a wire, and you try and get some more to sing in unison.
Butterworth: No, I don’t. I’m in a dream world. It just seems like the most magical, beautiful wind to be blown around this town. I’m very Tiggerish about it. It’s partly being a playwright, where you don’t really have a job, where you sort of breeze in and sit at the back, and it all looks wonderful. This is particularly to do with the sort of stories I’m trying to write. I don’t think they’re really going anywhere. I think people will always be gathering and trying to explain these losses that you can’t explain any other way other than drama, and I unashamedly see it as a religious ritual.
Butterworth: I mean, there was a brief, horrible moment when Sarah Jessica Parker and Matthew Broderick were in town, horrible standoff, threw things at each other in a restaurant, and I don’t know who won, but I’d like to think we did.
Donnelly: I’m sure. They’re both tiny.
Butterworth: James Joyce. And I’d also really have to have dinner with Harold Pinter, again.
Donnelly: I’m going with Cher.
Butterworth: Why didn’t I think of Cher? Because I’m scared of Cher, that’s why. I just know what’s gonna happen.
Donnelly: Gonna make a fool of yourself.
Butterworth: I’ve been in love with Cher since I was 4 or so and it hasn’t really changed. What’s that: 51 years? It’s a long time.
Butterworth: No. And I think I’d have to sit here a long time before I came up with a subject I cared less about.
Butterworth: I’d like for her to have been James Bond.
Billionaire tech executive Elon Musk cast the upcoming presidential election in dire terms during an appearance with Donald Trump, calling the Republican presidential nominee the only candidate “to preserve democracy in America.”
The CEO of SpaceX and Tesla who also purchased X, Musk joined Trump in Butler, Pennsylvania, on Saturday at the site where the former president survived an assassination attempt in July. Musk said “this will be the last election” if Trump doesn’t win. Wearing a cap with the “Make America Great Again” slogan of Trump’s campaign, Musk appeared to acknowledge the foreboding nature of his remarks.
[time-brightcove not-tgx=”true”]“As you can see I am not just MAGA — I am Dark MAGA,” he said.
It was the first time that Musk joined one of Trump’s rallies and was evidence of their growing alliance in the final stretch of the presidential election. Musk created a super political action committee supporting the Republican nominee and it has been spending heavily on get-out-the-vote efforts. Trump has said he would tap Musk to lead a government efficiency commission if he regains the White House.
Read More: Trump Urges Supporters to Deliver Victory in His Return to Scene of First Assassination Attempt
Trump joined Musk in August for a rare public conversation on X, a friendly chat that spanned more than two hours. In it, the former president largely focused on the July assassination attempt, illegal immigration and his plans to cut government regulations.
Before a large crowd Saturday, Musk sought to portray Trump as a champion of free speech, arguing that Democrats want “to take away your freedom of speech, they want to take away your right to bear arms, they want to take away your right to vote, effectively.” Musk went on to criticize a California effort to ban voter ID requirements.
The event took place at the same property where a gunman’s bullets grazed Trump’s right ear and killed a Trump supporter, Corey Comperatore. The shooting left multiple others injured.
Several members of Comperatore’s family, as well as other attendees and first responders from the July rally, returned to the site on Saturday. Also appearing with the former president were his running mate Republican Ohio Sen. JD Vance, son Eric Trump, daughter-in-law and RNC co-chair Lara Trump, along with Pennsylvania lawmakers and sheriffs.
HANOI, Vietnam — More than a dozen tigers were incinerated after the animals contracted bird flu at a zoo in southern Vietnam, officials said.
State media VNExpress cited a caretaker at Vuon Xoai zoo in Bien Hoa city saying the animals were fed with raw chicken bought from nearby farms. The panther and 20 tigers, including several cubs, weighed between 10 and 120 kilograms (20 and 265 pounds) when they died. The bodies were incinerated and buried on the premises.
[time-brightcove not-tgx=”true”]“The tigers died so fast. They looked weak, refused to eat and died after two days of falling sick,” said zoo manager Nguyen Ba Phuc.
Samples taken from the tigers tested positive for H5N1, the virus that causes bird flu.
The virus was first identified in 1959 and grew into a widespread and highly lethal menace to migratory birds and domesticated poultry. It has since evolved, and in recent years H5N1 was detected in a growing number of animals ranging from dogs and cats to sea lions and polar bears.
In cats, scientists have found the virus attacking the brain, damaging and clotting blood vessels and causing seizures and death.
More than 20 other tigers were isolated for monitoring. The zoo houses some 3,000 other animals including lions, bears, rhinos, hippos, and giraffes.
Read More: A New Bird Flu Death Is Making Experts Uneasy
The 30 staff members who were taking care of the tigers tested negative for bird flu and were in normal health condition, VNExpress reported. Another outbreak also occurred at a zoo in nearby Long An province, where 27 tigers and 3 lions died within a week in September, the newspaper said.
Unusual flu strains that come from animals are occasionally found in people. Health officials in the United States said Thursday that two dairy workers in California were infected—making 16 total cases detected in the country in 2024.
“The deaths of 47 tigers, three lions, and a panther at My Quynh Safari and Vuon Xoai Zoo amid Vietnam’s bird flu outbreak are tragic and highlight the risks of keeping wild animals in captivity,” PETA Senior Vice President Jason Baker said in a statement sent to The Associated Press.
“The exploitation of wild animals also puts global human health at risk by increasing the likelihood of another pandemic,” Baker said.
Bird flu has caused hundreds of deaths around the world, the vast majority of them involving direct contact between people and infected birds.
Yoga practitioners know that poses like downward-facing dog, warrior, bridge, and others can improve flexibility, reduce stress, and build strength in your body. Face yoga can offer similar benefits for your complexion.
Face yoga—including moves like the eyebrow lifter, happy cheeks sculpting, and temple developer—refers to stretching, massaging, and exercising the face, says Dr. Joshua Zeichner, an associate professor of dermatology at the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai. “The goal is to enhance facial muscle tone to minimize signs of skin aging.”
[time-brightcove not-tgx=”true”]The technique involves repeatedly moving facial muscles in certain ways. By practicing making these expressions, face yoga claims to improve how well those muscles function and boost your appearance, says Dr. Murad Alam, vice-chair of the dermatology department at Northwestern University’s Feinberg School of Medicine, who’s conducted research on face yoga.
So, if you’ve seen people making funny faces on TikTok, where there are more than 77,000 videos tagged #faceyoga, that’s why. If you’re considering trying it yourself, here’s how to do it and the benefits face yoga might offer.
Aging drives a number of changes that affect your complexion. You can lose muscle tone, which may make the skin on your face appear loose and saggy, Zeichner says.
As you age, the fat pads under your skin thin out, and you lose collagen, Alam adds. This typically makes your skin less elastic and gives it a less-full appearance.
“With facial yoga, you’re trying to grow your muscles, which are underneath the fat pads,” he says. “Kind of like bodybuilding, you exercise the same muscles over and over again, and they become bigger.”
Read More: Why You Should Change Your Exercise Routine—and How to Do It
The bulked-up facial muscles can fill in some of the volume that’s been depleted by age-related fat, muscle, and collagen loss, Alam says.
As you might imagine, there is very limited research on face yoga. But in a small study led by Alam and published in JAMA Dermatology in 2018, women ages 40 to 65 performed facial exercises for 30 minutes daily or every other day for 20 weeks. After comparing before-and-after photos, researchers noted that the people had fuller upper and lower cheeks and appeared younger after doing face yoga.
Exercise of any kind can improve circulation, so strengthening face muscles likely has the same effect, explains Dr. Anetta Reszko, a dermatologist in New York City.
“Increased facial muscle strength results in a more natural ‘face-lift’ effect by creating a lifted and toned look, while improved blood circulation adds to a naturally radiant and healthy complexion,” she says.
Enhanced blood flow to the skin and better circulation are essential for cell turnover, the natural process where dead skin cells are replaced with new ones, Zeichner says. Improved cell turnover ensures the skin has a smooth texture and even tone and encourages collagen production.
Read More: How to Stop Checking Your Phone Every 10 Seconds
Face yoga can also tap into the parasympathetic nervous system, which is responsible for promoting relaxation and reducing stress, Reszko adds. This helps lower your heart rate and blood pressure and contributes to your overall well-being.
A small 2018 study found that facial exercises improved mental health for older people. The exercises also enhanced facial expressions and tongue muscle power, which the researchers concluded could be a useful therapy for this age group. Movement, in general, has been shown to release endorphins and decrease stress, improving mood.
“Any activity that helps improve relaxation and reduce stress can be of benefit to the body in general as well as the skin specifically,” Zeichner says. “We know that emotional stress has a negative impact on the skin, impairing wound healing and leading to worsening of conditions like eczema or rosacea.”
Face yoga is safe for most people who are looking for a non-invasive way to improve skin firmness, reduce wrinkles, and relieve facial tension, Reszko says. It could be uncomfortable if you have sensitive skin, though.
If you have facial injuries, like bruises or cuts, she recommends not trying the technique until these heal. You could inadvertently put extra strain on the skin if you don’t do the moves correctly, which could also worsen conditions such as acne, as the movements could irritate the skin.
Read More: 8 Signs You’re in Perimenopause
Talk to your dermatologist before trying face yoga if you’ve had dermal fillers or other cosmetic procedures to make sure you’re not interfering with the results, she adds.
Another issue is that continuous facial movements might end up causing more wrinkles if you do them too much, Reszko says. Repeating certain facial expressions could overwork some muscles and lead to skin folding and worsen the appearance of wrinkles in between the eyebrows, horizontal forehead lines, and crow’s feet, Zeichner says.
Just like regular yoga, a face yoga practice consists of many different moves. Research showing the anti-aging benefits of face yoga featured some Happy Face Yoga exercises, developed by Gary Sikorski, who co-authored the study. These include:
Research suggests that practicing face yoga for 30 minutes several times a week can offer anti-aging results, Alam says. That’s a lot of fake smiling and funny faces. “At least in our study, it required a fair amount of commitment.”
If you’re not getting the results you’re looking for with face yoga, see a dermatologist. They can recommend treatments like Botox, fillers, retinol, or other therapies, to help smooth wrinkles and stimulate collagen production, Zeichner says.
A dermatologist can also identify any underlying skin issues that you might have and offer the best remedy, Reszko adds.
“Face yoga can be a good recommendation for those looking for natural, non-invasive methods to improve facial tone and reduce stress,” she says. “However, it’s important to emphasize proper technique and manage expectations regarding gradual results.”
ATLANTA — Rapper Rich Homie Quan died from an accidental drug overdose, the medical examiner’s office in Georgia confirmed.
The cause of death for the hip-hop performer, born Dequantes Devontay Lamar, was from a slew of drugs such as fentanyl, alprazolam, codeine and promethazine, a spokesperson for the Fulton County medical examiner’s office said on Wednesday.
[time-brightcove not-tgx=”true”]Quan showed no signs of trauma when his body was found. His brother told police that he thought Quan was asleep on the floor by the kitchen before he picked up the rapper and put him on the couch, saying it was “very unusual” to see food still in his mouth.
Later that morning, police were called by a woman who noticed that Quan’s body was cold and he was not breathing.
Quan, 33, who died at an Atlanta hospital on Sept. 5, was one of the biggest names in hip-hop in the mid-2010s. He gained mainstream fame through the rap singles “Flex (Ooh, Ooh, Ooh)” and “Type of Way,” which became such a success that several other rappers jumped on the remix, including Jeezy and Meek Mill.
Quan appeared on a YG track with Jeezy and released the London on da Track-produced song “Lifestyle” through his Rich Gang rap collective that included Young Thug and Birdman.
Quan followed up with “Flex (Ooh, Ooh, Ooh),” a song produced by DJ Spinz and Nitti Beatz. It became his highest charting solo single at No. 26 on the Billboard Hot 100 chart. He was also featured on Lil Dicky’s viral “$ave Dat Money.”
In 2018, Quan debuted his first and only studio album “Rich as in Spirit,” which mostly went without any features — except for “Think About It,” a single with Rick Ross.
NEW YORK — Federal prosecutors said Wednesday that they might bring additional charges against New York City Mayor Eric Adams and indict others in the corruption case against him.
Prosecutors made the disclosure as Adams appeared in court for a hearing days after he was indicted on charges that he accepted about $100,000 worth of free or deeply discounted international flights, hotel stays, meals and entertainment from foreign interests, and obtained illegal campaign contributions.
[time-brightcove not-tgx=”true”]The allegations span nearly a decade, dating to when Adams was Brooklyn’s borough president. The judge didn’t immediately set a date for his trial, which prosecutors estimated will take about four weeks. Adams’ lawyer, Alex Spiro, asked to hold the trial in March, before an important ballot deadline for next June’s mayoral election.
Prosecutors say Adams’ travel perks were arranged by a senior Turkish diplomatic official in New York and Turkish businesspeople who wanted to gain influence with Adams. The indictment alleges that Adams, a Democrat, also conspired to receive monetary donations to his political campaigns through straw donors from foreign sources who weren’t allowed to give money to U.S. political candidates.
Assistant U.S. Attorney Hagan Scotten told Judge Dale Ho that it is “quite likely” prosecutors will seek a superseding indictment and that it is “likely” additional defendants will be charged and “possible” that more charges will be brought against Adams, who pleaded not guilty last week to the current charges against him.
Scotten said some of the evidence includes Turkish Airlines records that show Adams either didn’t pay for flights or that he paid a few hundreds dollars for an economy class ticket “to create the illusion that he was paying his way” when he was really receiving free upgrades worth several thousand dollars.
Other evidence includes bank, credit card and phone records, campaign finance filings, emails and text messages, Scotten said. Some of the material, including communications between alleged co-conspirators arranging travel and campaign donations, is written in Turkish, he said.
The hearing Adams’ first court appearance since his arraignment on Friday.
“Busy. Busy. Busy city. Running the city. Making sure we continue to move forward,” Adams said as he stepped out of a black SUV and walked into the courthouse.
He didn’t speak after the hearing but gave a quick thumbs up before he stepped back into the vehicle to head to a police briefing on increased security for the Jewish High Holidays.
Inside the courtroom, Adams mostly sat quietly at the defense table with his hands in his lap as the judge set a schedule to deal with complaints that his lawyers have been airing in court filings and media appearances about the charges and investigation. At one point, as his lawyer spoke from a nearby lectern, Adams leaned forward in his seat and scribbled notes on a legal pad.
Adams’ lawyers have filed motions seeking to dismiss the bribery charge against him and seeking an inquiry into whether prosecutors improperly leaked information to reporters about the investigation.
The U.S. attorney’s office will have until Oct. 18 to respond in writing. The defense will then have until Oct. 25 to file additional paperwork, with arguments scheduled for Nov. 1.
Adams’ indictment alleges that he reciprocated gifts he received from the Turkish official and businesspeople in 2021 by helping Turkey open a new diplomatic facility in the city despite concerns that had been raised by the Fire Department about whether the building could pass all of its required fire safety inspections.
Adams has denied knowingly accepting any illegal campaign contributions. He also said there was nothing improper about the trips he took abroad or the perks he received, and that any help he gave to Turkish officials regarding the diplomatic building was just routine “constituent services.” He has said helping people navigate the city’s bureaucracy was part of his job.
A spokesperson for Turkey’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Oncu Keceli, said in a statement that the country’s missions in the U.S. and elsewhere operate according to international diplomatic rules and that “Our meddling in another country’s internal affairs is out of the question.”
In seeking to dismiss the bribery charge, Adams’ lawyer, Alex Spiro, argued that the mayor’s flights, upgrades, meals and hotel rooms do not count as bribes under federal law.
The defense’s motion regarding potential leaks didn’t cite any evidence that prosecutors broke grand jury rules, but it cited a string of news reports by The New York Times about instances in which the investigation burst into public view, such as when FBI agents searched the home of one of Adams’ chief fundraisers and when they stopped the mayor as he left a public event last November and seized his electronic devices.
Adams is likely to face several challengers in next June’s Democratic primary. Spiro said he wants to finish the trial before a March deadline for candidates to be certified for that ballot.
“I’m not going to be asking for further delay,” Spiro said. Prosecutors did not object, and Ho said he would take Spiro’s request “under advisement” and make a decision at a later date.
“The public and Mayor Adams have an interest in a speedy trial here, and I agree that interest is heightened” in light of the election calendar, the judge said.
The results of the planet’s first annual physical—a complete health check—are in, and they are alarming. We are deep into the yellow danger zone and moving rapidly towards the red high-risk zone, where risks of permanently damaging life support on earth increase fast.
A patient in critical condition needs regular monitoring. The Planetary Health Check, launched by the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research on Sept. 24, fulfills this role by monitoring all nine planetary boundary processes and providing decision makers in public and private sectors with improved data, to accelerate and scale the transformations towards a safe and just landing for humanity within the safe operating space.
[time-brightcove not-tgx=”true”]Thanks to major scientific advancements in earth system science, tipping point research, and earth observation capabilities, we can now conclude that six of the nine planetary life-support systems have breached the safe operating zone for human life. This includes: climate change, change in biosphere integrity (this is driven by biodiversity and habitat loss), modification of biogeochemical flows (overloading with nitrogen and phosphorus due to overuse of fertilizers), land system change (mainly deforestation), change in freshwater cycles (continued overuse of freshwater and human caused changes in rainfall), and introduction of novel entities into the earth system, i.e., the myriad of human generated chemicals, like microplastics, PFAS (better known as “forever chemicals”), nuclear waste, and pesticides.
Meanwhile, we are rapidly moving closer to breaching the planetary boundary for ocean acidification, mainly due to continued human-caused CO2 emissions of which more than 25% are being absorbed by the oceans. The two planetary boundary processes stratospheric ozone depletion (the loss of the ozone layer due to chemicals like CFCs) and atmospheric aerosol loading (primarily driven by the incomplete combustion of fossil fuels) are currently within the green zone at a global scale.
Together, these processes and systems regulate the health of our planet. We all depend on them irrespective of where we live. And the science is clear: the patient, our home planet earth, is in critical condition. If we continue on this path, human health and wellbeing, economic prosperity, social stability, and equality, are all at risk. The only way to keep them safe for humanity is by combining local action and national regulation with collective global governance.
The stability of societies and economies depends on a healthy earth system, including, for example, stable climate conditions, secure water availability, and a resilient biosphere providing ecosystem service every citizen depends on. Science shows that the rise in life-threatening extreme events such as droughts, floods, fires, heat waves, disease outbreaks, and many more, are caused by us humans. These first symptoms of patient earth are increasing in frequency and strength because we have breached several planetary boundaries. The Planetary Health Check sheds light on such symptoms and tracks them down to their sources.
The first implication if we continue on the business as usual path is that extreme weather events will increase in frequency, causing harm to people and economies, and particularly the world’s most vulnerable communities. This will trigger further population displacement and migration, raising further risks of conflict.
The second implication is that Earth will continue losing its resilience—the capacity to buffer and dampen stress and shock—triggering planetary tipping points. As we cross 1.5°C of warming, the Greenland ice sheet, the West Antarctic ice sheet, and all tropical coral reef systems are in jeopardy of crossing the threshold where irreversible change is unavoidable—worsening further habitability for humans on earth. Further, the associated higher sea levels and loss of livelihoods will have catastrophic consequences.
The severity of the earth’s health calls for a fundamental and urgent reset of our relationship with the planet. As U.N. Secretary General Antonio Guterres hosted the first Summit of the Future (SOTF) last week, our message was clear: we can only define a just and healthy future for humanity, if we in parallel secure the future of the planet. The Sustainable Development Goals are unattainable on a critically ill planet. The planetary boundaries are a baseline for global justice and a reminder that the breaches caused by the wealthiest nations will have the most severe impact on the most vulnerable.
There is still a window of opportunity, however, if we can change direction over the next five years. Here are five actions we need to collectively take:
We need to urgently strengthen global governance for all nine boundaries. Currently we have several international treaties and agreements that nations have signed: the 1987 Montreal Protocol (which successfully enabled the world to halt the depletion of the ozone layer), the 2015 Paris Climate Agreement, the 2022 Global Biodiversity Framework, the 2019 Colombo Declaration on sustainable nitrogen, the 2023 High Seas Treaty, and others. However, not all governments have been signatory to all these agreements, nor do they deliver on their commitments. That needs to change.
Exponential and transformative innovation must occur on a global scale. Regulations are important but need to be accompanied by major technological and social innovation, ranging from circular business models closing the loop on resource extraction and waste, harnessing big data and AI for greater accountability and fair distribution of natural capital.
Several efforts are already underway to translate the science of quantifying planetary boundaries into tools for cities, businesses, and financial institutions, such as science-based targets for each planetary boundary process and standardizing reporting metrics beyond climate and nature. Our vision is to translate the annual Planetary Health Check into a dashboard that can interactively inform investors, business leaders, and policy makers, and allows them to monitor and analyze user-tailored real-time data.
Operating the global economy within nine scientifically defined planetary boundaries means global and finite budgets for use of natural resources. So far, we understand carbon, where the 1.5°C boundary translates to a global carbon budget. Today, only 200 billion tons of that budget remains—that’s equivalent to five years of global emissions at the current pace. Budgets lead to scarcity, which requires an economic value in order to provide the right incentives for paths to avoid breaching the budget. The same applies for freshwater, land, nitrogen, and phosphorus. We need to calculate these nine earth budgets to send the right signals to the global economy, and then start monitoring, accounting, and reporting on them. We must always review through a lens of planetary justice so those who have not caused the problems are supported in this transition back to a safe operating space.
Our scientific capabilities have transformed. Now, for the first time, we have scientific quantifications of safe boundaries for all “organs” that determine the health of the planet. We also have technologies, like near earth satellites, super-computing capacity for data storage and analytics, AI, and major earth system modeling capabilities. The breakthrough is that we can now have an annual Planetary Health Check, instead of one every six to eight years as has been the scientific pace to-date. The vision is a ‘Mission Control Room’ for planet earth, accessible to all, including both planetary scale health assessments and high-resolution spatial maps across the world.
The planet is raising a red alert. These steps are urgent and necessary, more than ever before. With the Planetary Health Check, we now have a monitoring system for our progress, enabling us to execute and account for our responsibility towards a good world for everyone.
CONYERS, Ga. — More than 90,000 residents east of Atlanta were told to keep sheltering in place Monday a day after a chemical plant fire sent a massive plume of dark smoke high into the sky that could been seen for miles.
The haze and chemical smell had spread to Atlanta by Monday morning, prompting firefighters to use detectors to check the quality of air in various parts of the city, Mayor Andre Dickens said.
[time-brightcove not-tgx=”true”]Closer to the source of the fire, officials said chlorine, a harmful irritant, had been detected in the air from the fire at the BioLab plant in Conyers, Georgia, the Rockdale County government said in statement early Monday. The plant is about 25 miles (40 kilometers) southeast of downtown Atlanta.
“For everyone sheltering in place, the best practice is to turn the air conditioning off and keep windows and doors shut,” the statement said.
In Atlanta, officials said they believe the hazy conditions and chemical smell is “related to the BioLab fire, but why we are seeing the change in conditions is what we are attempting to figure out.”
“Latest plume modeling indicates it moving to the northeast, which it is clearly not,” the Atlanta-Fulton County Emergency Management Agency said in a statement.
Emergency management officials in Fulton County, which encompasses much of Atlanta, said people with concerns about the haze or smell should stay indoors, close their windows and doors and turn off the air conditioning.
The fire was brought under control around 4 p.m. Sunday, officials said.
Interstate 20, which was shut down in both directions in the area Sunday, was reopened Monday morning, officials said. Some other roads in the county and county government offices were closed.
People in the northern part of Rockdale County, north of Interstate 20, were ordered to evacuate on Sunday, and others were told to shelter in place.
Sheriff’s office spokesperson Christine Nesbitt did not know the number of people evacuated, although it covered a large portion of the community of Conyers. Media reports said the number was 17,000.
The fire ignited when a sprinkler head malfunctioned around 5 a.m. Sunday at the BioLab plant in Conyers, Rockdale County Fire Chief Marian McDaniel told reporters. The malfunction caused water to mix with a water-reactive chemical, producing a plume of chemicals.
McDaniel said there were employees inside the plant, but no injuries have been reported, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution reported.
BioLab’s website says it is the swimming pool and spa water care division of Lawrenceville, Georgia-based KIK Consumer Products.
The company also said that no injuries were reported.
“Our top priority is ensuring the community’s safety, and our teams are working around-the-clock to respond to the ongoing situation at our facility in Conyers, Georgia,” a spokesperson said in a statement Monday. “We continue to work collaboratively with first responders and local authorities and have deployed specialized teams from out of state to the site to bolster and support their efforts. We are all focused on remediating the situation as rapidly as possible.”
A small fire on the plant’s roof was initially contained but reignited Sunday afternoon, authorities said.
