Health officials in the United States are reviewing whether to remove aluminium from some common vaccines, as part of the Trump administration’s escalating attacks on vaccines.
The Department of Health and Human Services has reduced some vaccine access. The agency scaled back COVID-19 vaccine recommendations, approved COVID-19 vaccines for fewer people and aimed to remove the preservative thimerosal from US vaccines. Experts told PolitiFact scientific research did not support its removal.
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During a September 22 news conference, in which US President Donald Trump told people not to take Tylenol during pregnancy, he also mentioned another objective. “We want no aluminium in the vaccine,” he said. The administration was already in the process of removing aluminium from vaccines, he added.
About two weeks later, on October 8, the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s (CDC) Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices, or ACIP, announced a new working group focused on the childhood vaccine schedule. Its discussion topics include vaccine ingredient safety and aluminium adjuvants.
Robert Malone, an ACIP member who has opposed COVID-19 vaccines, told Axios he expected the ACIP would determine there was “a lot of evidence” of “issues” with aluminium in vaccines. The committee would likely vote to re-categorise vaccines containing aluminium adjuvants so that people would have to discuss with their doctor before getting them, Malone told Axios.
That could have far-reaching ramifications. Here’s what to know about aluminium in vaccines.
A: Small amounts of aluminium are sometimes included in vaccines as adjuvants, or substances that boost the body’s immune response to the vaccine to ensure protection from infection.
That boost means people can get fewer vaccine doses in smaller quantities.
Q: When used, how much aluminium is in a vaccine?
A: Vaccines with aluminium adjuvants usually contain less than 1mg aluminium per dose, according to the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia.
That is a pretty abstract number. To help make it more concrete: a milligram is one-thousandth (1/1,000th) of 1g. One gram is about the weight of a raisin or a stick of gum. Imagine cutting one of those items into 1,000 equal pieces. One of the pieces would be about 1mg.
Here is another way to think about it.
People come in contact with and consume aluminium all of the time. It is one of the most abundant metal elements in the Earth’s crust, according to the US Geological Survey. It is naturally occurring in soil, air and water. Food is the main way people are exposed to aluminium. The average adult eats 7mg to 9mg of aluminium per day, according to the CDC.
A baby in its first six months might receive a total of about 4.4mg of aluminium from recommended vaccines. In the same period of time, a breastfed infant would ingest about 7mg of aluminium from breastmilk, and a formula-fed baby would ingest about 38mg from formula.
Q: How long have vaccines contained aluminium?
A: Aluminium adjuvants have been used in vaccines for more than 70 years, the CDC said.
“Aluminium is one of our oldest adjuvants; it’s been used in vaccines since the 1920s,” said Dr Peter Hotez, a Baylor College of Medicine professor and codirector of Texas Children’s Hospital Center for Vaccine Development.
Q: How do we know it’s safe to include small amounts of aluminium in vaccines?
A: Every vaccine’s safety and efficacy are tested in animal studies and human clinical trials before the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) licenses it for public use. Every vaccine containing adjuvants has been tested, and health agencies continuously monitor their safety, the CDC said.
Over several decades of use, vaccines with aluminium adjuvants have been proven safe, the FDA said.
Vaccines containing aluminium have been “given to billions of people worldwide now”, said Dr Kawsar Talaat, a professor at Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health.
A growing body of research has also found that aluminium adjuvants do not cause aluminium toxicity or other adverse outcomes.
Q: Do aluminium adjuvants have any risks?
A: Rarely, some people have allergic reactions to aluminium in the same way they might have allergic reactions to other substances, Talaat said.
In 2022, researchers published a retrospective, observational study on more than 325,000 children that found an association between vaccine-related aluminium exposure and persistent asthma. Association is not the same as causation, meaning the study did not prove a link between aluminium in vaccines and asthma.
Experts from the CDC and the American Academy of Pediatrics encouraged more research on the subject because the backwards-looking observational study did not prove causation and also had limitations, including that it excluded many children who developed asthma before they turned two years old.
A 2025 study found no increased risk of asthma associated with childhood exposure to aluminium-absorbed vaccines.
Q: Which vaccines contain aluminium adjuvants?
A: At least 25 vaccines approved for use in the US have aluminium adjuvants, the CDC says. That includes vaccines that protect against HPV, hepatitis A and B and diphtheria, tetanus, and acellular pertussis (whooping cough).
Q: Which vaccines do not contain aluminium adjuvants?
The CDC’s list of vaccines without adjuvants includes vaccines against COVID-19, Ebola, meningococcal, polio and rabies. Additionally, most seasonal flu shots and the vaccine against measles, mumps and rubella do not contain aluminium adjuvants.
Q: Can we remove aluminium from vaccines?
A: Not quickly. If it could be done at all, it would take years to develop, test and license new, aluminium-free vaccines. Many of the vaccines with aluminium adjuvants do not have aluminium-free formulas.
“A vaccine is licensed based on all of its ingredients and the exact manufacturing process,” Talaat said. “If you were to take an ingredient out of a vaccine, you would have to start all over with the clinical trials and the manufacturing, and it is highly possible that some of these vaccines wouldn’t work without the aluminium in there.”
Although other adjuvants exist, they are newer and often more scarce than aluminium, which is abundant.
An immediate ban on aluminium in vaccines would drastically reduce people’s ability to protect themselves and others against numerous diseases.
“I think we’d see outbreaks of vaccine-preventable diseases,” Talaat said.
Q: Why do people think aluminium in vaccines is causing autism?
A: A 2011 study said vaccines with aluminium adjuvants “may be a significant” contributing factor to the rising number of autism diagnoses in kids, Nature reported.
A year later, a World Health Organization vaccine safety committee called the 2011 study “seriously flawed”. The 2011 study and another by the same authors compared vaccines’ aluminium content and autism rates in several countries, the WHO group said, but that cannot be used to establish a causal relationship.
“We studied aluminium, and have no link between aluminium and autism,” Talaat said.
MBW’s Key Songs In The Life Of… is a series in which we ask influential music industry figures about the tracks that have defined their life and career so far. Here, to coincide with his Spirit of Life Award Warner Records Co-Chairman and COO Tom Corson punches the buttons on the jukebox of his memory to call-up some classics. The Key Songs… series is supported by Sony Music Publishing.
Asking Tom Corson to select his Key Songs over this last couple of weeks might have been perfect or terrible timing.
Last Wednesday [October 15] Warner Records Co-Chairman and COO was presented (by Cher!) with the Spirit of Life Award at the annual fund-raising gala for City of Hope, the US cancer treatment and research organization.
It was, of course, a huge honor and something that Corson welcomed with open arms and a full heart, but it will undoubtedly have added pressure and stolen hours from what is by default an always-heavy schedule.
So, did he need to be tasked with picking a pitifully small selection of songs to sum up his life so far at the same time? Maybe not. Or maybe, with the Award reflecting not only his long-standing commitment to City of Hope, but also his stellar career, it was the perfect time to think back on why he’s in the business in the first place – and the joy that music has brought him along the way.
Reflecting first on the Spirit of Life recognition, Corson says: “It’s sort of surreal, because I’ve been involved in a number of these occasions with former bosses and mentors, and it never really occurred to me that I would be honored.
“My family’s been hit by cancer – my wife, my son, my mom; it’s something that’s very real and very close to me. So, whilst I was surprised and humbled to be asked, once it had sunk in I was extremely grateful and determined to do it properly.”
And on the challenge of selecting his Key Songs, he says: “It’s been more fun than not. I had a flight from LA to New York last week, and I spent pretty much the whole time making lists. I didn’t limit myself, I didn’t try to be strategic or especially diplomatic, I just kind of went for it.
“Some of them do have a business context, but all of them are very personal. And in every case, if I was on a desert island and these were all I had to listen to, I’d be happy with that…”
1) Sly & The Family Stone, Dance To The Music (1967)
I grew up in Seattle and the music in our home was everything from Bix Beiderbecke to Robert Johnson to Hank Williams. My mom and dad would be dancing in the living room, my sisters were listening to the local AM station.
And then I ended up going to a mostly Black middle school, and so different influences started to come into my life.
When I was about 13, I bought a stereo, the best one I could afford. And pretty much the first thing I did was go to Tower Records and buy Sly & The Family Stone’s Dance To The Music.
They also ended up being my first concert around the same time, at the Paramount Theater. The memory’s a bit blurry, but I was with three of my friends, a lot of weed smoke in the air.
Exactly 45 minutes late, Sly came on and blew us away. It’s still one of the most amazing shows I’ve seen.
I actually met him much later on, when I was at A&M, and he was on the label. It was sad, because he was never able to get it together to put out a record, but he was around the studio.
This song was probably the first seriously great piece of music that hit me, when everything before then had been quite sugary pop music. So it was a really important discovery for me.
2) The Rolling Stones, Start Me Up (1981)
In 1978, I was going to college at UCLA, and Some Girls by The Rolling Stones was the album. That’s when I really started to get The Stones.
You go through that album, there’s Beast of Burden and Shattered and so much else, you know, they’re in amazing form.
But I’m going to jump forward a couple of years and go with Start Me Up [from Tattoo You]. That song always hits me, whenever I hear it. I’ll just randomly ask Alexa to play it when I’m getting ready in the morning; it never fails.
It’s funny, because I went back and forth between Bob Marley’s live version of No Woman, No Cry, which is arguably a better song in certain ways, and certainly a more culturally impactful song.
But I think what stuck it was – and bear with me on this – I’m a pretty avid golfer, and a few years ago at my club, my partner and I were in the finals of this tournament, in a shootout situation.
All the other players are surrounding the green, the stereo’s blasting, the MC is talking on the mic; it’s quite chaotic.
And as I step up to take the putt for the tournament, they start to crank out Start Me Up. That might be the closest I’ve ever felt to being a rock star [laughs] – of course it helps that I made the putt!
3) The Police, Bring On The Night (1980)
In 1981 I had an internship at IRS records thanks to Jay Boberg [label co-founder with Miles Copeland]
Literally on my very first day, The Go-Go’s are shooting their first video, Karen and Richard Carpenter are in the office next to us – and then halfway through the day I see Herb Alpert walking around.
It wasn’t that I didn’t know jobs could be as good as this, I just didn’t think this was a job! Like, I didn’t think this was what anyone could do for a living; it was such an alien world to me.
I think the sum total of my expectation at that time was that I might get some free records, some concert tickets – and then go back and get a proper job after 12 months.
But then at the end of the internship, Jay offered me a job at IRS, which is where it really all started.
And right away we had the Go-Go’s album, we had REM’s Radio Free Europe off of the Chronic Town EP, we had The English Beat’s Save It For Later, we had Mexican Radio by Wall of Voodoo. It was just incredible.
In 1982, we’re all at the first ever US festival, started by Steve Wozniak. The Police were headlining. Miles’ brother, Ian Copeland, had a booking agency called FBI, and he stacked the bill with his acts.
We were there the whole day, hanging around in the heat with the artists. Then, when night fell, we were up on a little riser at the side of the stage. At one point, Miles says, ‘Who wants to go down to the side of the stage?’ Me! Of course! So he pulls me down and I’m literally on stage, with about 200,000 people out in the audience. The Police are playing Bring On The Night, and it’s just going off, you know?
Sting comes over to the side of the stage and suddenly he’s right in my face, playing his bass and singing about an inch away from me!
I’m including this purely as a fan, because that was such a moment, something I remember so vividly. And that’s why I’m going to go with the live version as my definitive selection, because that’s the version that relates so directly to that moment.
4) Creep, Radiohead (1992)
When A&M was sold to Polygram in 1990, I left and became Head of International at Capitol Records in LA.
There were all these acts that were signed-up by our affiliate labels, but we never picked one up out of the UK. That always frustrated me, because I’d go back and forth and I’d see these bands like Jesus Jones and EMF, but we never had them.
A little further down the line, there was a song and an act that my boss had passed on a couple of times – and so had everybody in the US system. The act was Radiohead, and the song was Creep, which I loved.
Then, all of a sudden, out of nowhere, Live 105 in San Francisco started playing it. I got very excited and managed to convince the company to let me import several thousand CD singles into the Bay Area.
The stock blew out in less than a week, we picked up the act, and Creep became a No. 1 record. More than that, it became an iconic moment for the disaffected and the insecure.
Then comes The Bends, then OK Computer, and the Radiohead that we know and love today emerges.
The credit for their success belongs elsewhere, I’m more than happy to admit that, but I did champion them in America, we did break that record here and it turned out to be the start of something really special.
I left Capitol Records and joined Columbia in 1996, when Donnie Ienner came calling.
There’s no competitor more fierce, tough or brutal than Donnie. It was boot camp every day, and I learned so much.
When I walked in, the label was kind of in between hot streaks. But we very quickly. came back to number one.
It was the beginning of the Fugees, and then Lauryn Hill, and Ricky Martin, I Don’t Want To Miss A Thing by Aerosmith, plus Mariah Carey, Tony Bennett, Bruce Springsteen and Barbra Streisand were putting out records.
But there are two that really stick with me. One is Maxwell’s Ascension (Don’t Ever Wonder).
In certain circles, Maxwell’s an icon. If you talk to another group of people, they maybe don’t see him as a huge artist, but for me the important thing is that he did it his own way. He was always very alternative in terms of his sound and his videos, and it was always his vision.
Ascension is a perfect R&B record – the voice, the production, the guitar by Wah Wah Watson, it’s just beautiful.
And I’m going to pair this with Alicia Keys’ Fallin’. I remember the day that she was signed to Columbia Records. They had a piano room on the top floor of the old Sony building on Madison Avenue, and we were all brought up there to meet Alicia Keys, our brand new signing.
And there she was, maybe 15 years old, playing piano, a really lovely and obviously supremely talented young girl. But they couldn’t quite get it right in terms of the A&R. They were trying to push her into a Mariah kind of thing, and it just didn’t work.
Around this time, I left Columbia for Arista, to work with Clive Davis. Within six months, Clive is out, he starts J Records and pulls me over there with him – something I’m still thankful for, what an amazing experience.
We brought Alicia Keys over, and we absolutely smashed it with her. It was a really great time in my life. I had a big job, I became General Manager of the label a few years later, and eventually ended up running RCA when Doug [Morris] came in [as CEO of Sony Music Entertainment] in 2011.
But going back to Fallin’, and to Songs In A Minor, I can’t think of too many artists that have arrived on the scene with such an impact as Alicia Keys did at that time. She performed on Oprah, we dropped the album that week, and it went to No. 1.
Everybody thought we’d hyped it, and I was like, ‘No, this is all completely real, this is all her.’
6) Kings of Leon, Revelry (2009)
While Sex On Fire and Use Somebody were the smashes, Revelry remains a song important to me as it is perfection from one of my favorite bands.
I had seen them at their first NY show at Mercury Lounge when they were very green. They were signed to RCA by one of the great A&Rs, Steve Ralbovsky, before RCA merged with J/Arista. Their early albums are iconic, and they had started to break in the UK, but hadn’t yet in any market other than Australia.
When we merged with RCA, I was thrilled to be able to work with them and went to Nashville to hear the album and hang with the band, which turned into quite a night! I worked very closely on the project at the time when I was leading this version of RCA and I had the opportunity to champion a band I loved, poised for a breakthrough.
We chose Sex On Fire as the first single and that ignited the world. Then Use Somebody broke through at every radio format. I love those songs, but Revelry is my go-to from Only By The Night which, top to bottom, is a classic. The album and songs went on to win four Grammys and cement the Kings as legends.
I recently saw them at the Forum and they are better than ever.
7) Miley Cyrus, Wrecking Ball (2013)
I became President & COO of RCA Records when Doug Morris came in, and we were a powerhouse.
The roster was unprecedented. We had Alicia, Chris Brown, Usher, Pink, Justin Timberlake. And then we signed Childish Gambino, we signed Khalid and Bryson Tiller – neither of whom had played a live show at that point.
I also signed Pentatonix, and they ended up becoming one of the best-selling acts at Sony for many years.
I also remember going to the studio at Sunset Marquis to listen to Miley Cyrus’s demos and ideas. She came in with her mom, Tish, at 11 o’clock at night. They had just been at a charity dinner, dressed to the nines – these two beautiful women with this childlike energy. And they played us Wrecking Ball. We knew we had to sign it straight away, and of course it became a classic, along with the album, Bangerz.
I think what was so important about that record is it kind of changed everything. Because everyone dismissed these girls coming out of Disney, and with Wrecking Ball and everything around that, Miley not only crushed it, she buried Hannah Montana.
She was just a fearless, talented young woman making her own rules. And she’s never stopped.
8) Rüfüs Du Sol, On My Knees (2021)
On June 12, 2017, I met with Max Lousada and he asked me if I might be interested in taking the Warner Bros Records job.
I can’t remember if I told Max this at the time, but it was always a dream of mine to work at Warner Bros. When I was at A&M, they were like the grown-up version – or the big business version – of what we were doing.
I had such respect for what Mo [Austin] and Lenny [Waronker] had done, plus I had a bunch of friends that worked there. I was always kind of hurt that they never asked me!
That weekend, Susan, my wife, and I, were going to see Rüfüs Du Sol at Gov Ball, because we were both such huge fans – and would only become bigger fans as time went on.
I’ve gone to get us a drink, and when I get back she’s talking to Jon George – basically because they’d seen her taking a picture of their trailer!
Eventually we’re all talking – us, the band and their manager, Danny [Robson]. They’d had their troubles with Columbia and in fact had parted ways. So, I ask them what’s next and they tell me they’ve just signed with Warner Bros. Records. Susan turns to me and says, ‘You’re going to Warner!’.
It was a band I love, pointing the way, so I have to include a track of theirs here. And as much as I love Innerbloom and You Were Right and Brighter and No Place, I’ve got to choose On My Knees. It’s got this menacing, straight-to-the-heart, melancholic tone. It harkens back to some of my favorite Depeche Mode songs, or maybe even a New Order song or two.
And to see them play stadiums and arenas and headline festivals now, with them part of our label, that’s a real joy to me.
9) Madonna, Ray of Light (2000)
I have such a respect, such awe, for the history of Warner Music: Sinatra, Hendrix, Prince, Fleetwood Mac, The Ramones, Van Halen, Neil Young, Green Day, Linkin Park, Deftones, and on and on, you know.
Someone who fits right in there is Madonna. And a track that I could listen to forever is Ray of Light. I think it’s one of the seminal electronic dance songs of all time.
I spent a lot of the 1980s in New York – and a lot of that time was spent in clubs, like Danceteria, Limelight, Area, which I thought was the most fascinating one, and then the late-night ones, like Save The Robots.
So when I met Madonna, she and I were talking about those spaces and those days, and the music we’d listened to there.Ray of Light is clearly a track and project inspired by clubbing, and it’s one of the iconic songs and periods of her career.
I could easily have gone with Hung Up from Confessions on a Dancefloor five years later, which was sort of a companion piece to this, but I’m going to go with Ray of Light to wrap things up.
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As the 2025–26 NBA season approaches, the Western Conference has a firm hold on championship projections. According to The San Francisco Chronicle, six of the top seven title favorites listed by BetMGM come from the West. The lone Eastern team cracking that group is the Miami Heat, who sit well behind the leaders.
It’s not a new trend. Western franchises have captured three of the last four NBA titles, with Boston’s 2024 run as the only exception. Depth, stability, and star power continue to define the conference, while many Eastern contenders are facing uncertainty.
Behind the favorites, teams like the Los Angeles Lakers, Golden State Warriors, and Houston Rockets are drawing heavy betting action. Each is considered a “liability” for sportsbooks — meaning their fan bases have wagered large amounts that could lead to major payouts.
Golden State still carries the pedigree of multiple championships. The Lakers, driven by a mix of veterans and young talent, remain a headline magnet. Meanwhile, Houston’s fast rebuild under Ime Udoka has quickly turned them into a fashionable pick.
The West’s Enduring Edge
The Western Conference’s strength isn’t limited to one or two teams. It’s a structural advantage built over years of drafting, player development, and aggressive front-office moves. Even mid-tier squads like Minnesota and Sacramento have playoff-level cores.
Oddsmakers seem to agree: until an Eastern contender proves otherwise, the road to the Larry O’Brien Trophy still runs through the West.
There’s a lot of tours in New York City (I’ve highlighted my favorites here) but I think one thing people don’t do enough of is Airbnb experience. Most of us know Airbnb through their stay features but they also have a lot of experiences where you can get a local to show you around. I actually like these experiences more than traditional tours because they have locals who share something they are passionate about, they are small groups, and they are usually a bit more off the beaten path.
I don’t think people take these tours enough and they are always one of my favorite things to look for whenever I travel anywhere in the world. New York City has a ton of options you can choose from. Here are my favorites:
Pizza and NYC go hand in hand like bread and butter and this Brooklyn pizza tour run by travel writer Dani Hienrich takes you to some of the best spots in the city while also giving you a really detailed history of pizza in the city (who knew slives weren’t a thing until the 1940s!). I’ve taken a lot of pizza tours in the city and I think dani runs the best one because she explains the history, is super fun, and it’s a more off the beaten path tour so you’re not being herded around in a large group of twenty.
In this fun experience, you visit the Metropolitan Museum of Art and meet,X, a seasoned artist who will guide you on a sketching journey. You’ll begin with a friendly introduction and sketching warm-ups, then walk through selected galleries pausing to draw iconic sculptures and artworks of your choice. Along the way, he’ll also explain the history of sculpting and painting techniques and the sotry behind some of the exhibits. It’s definitely a fun and hands on way to explore the MET.
On this walking tour in Lower Manhattan, you’ll meet your host Larry at the National Museum of the American Indian and then walk through a tapestry of hidden Black New York: from the site of Bowling Green (where enslaved Africans helped build the city), to remnants of Fort Amsterdam, and to the location of the 17th-century enslaved houses. You’ll pass Wall Street to learn about its slave-market past, visit Federal Hall and a former free-African oyster house, walk through Foley Square (site of the original execution grounds), and conclude at the African Burial Ground National Monument. Larry is one of the best tour guides I have ever had. He’s so fun, engaging, funny, and filled with a ton of knowledge. I love this tour and learned a lot on it. It’s such a cool and unique way to see lower Manhattan. He also runs an amazing Harlem tour too!
If you want to do more than eat pizza, visit Paulie Gee’s, where your host Logan will guide you through the history of New York–style pizza before you shape your own dough, choose from a variety of sauces and toppings, fire your creation in a wood-fired oven. Afterwards, you’ll sit down to eat your creation as well as some other famous dishes from the restaurant. It’s run and interactive and Logan is a really interesting and personable host. Located in Greepoint, it’s an area most tourists skip so afterwards be sure to explore this locals only part of town.
The next time you’re in NYC and looking to do something fun and unique be sure to look into Airbnb Experiences as they are really fun and interesting. I’ve done a dozen or so of these and these ones I think are the absolute best out of those. But if you find one you love be sure to email me about it so I can check!
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Book Your Trip to New York City: Logistical Tips and Tricks
Book Your Flight Use Skyscanner to find a cheap flight. They are my favorite search engine because they search websites and airlines around the globe so you always know no stone is left unturned. Start with Skyscanner first though because they have the biggest reach!
Book Your Accommodation You can book your hostel with Hostelworld as they have the biggest inventory and best deals. If you want to stay somewhere other than a hostel, use Booking.com as they consistently return the cheapest rates for guesthouses and cheap hotels.
Don’t Forget Travel Insurance Travel insurance will protect you against illness, injury, theft, and cancellations. It’s comprehensive protection in case anything goes wrong. I never go on a trip without it as I’ve had to use it many times in the past. My favorite companies that offer the best service and value are:
Looking for the Best Companies to Save Money With? Check out my resource page for the best companies to use when you travel. I list all the ones I use to save money when I’m on the road. They will save you money when you travel too.
Need a Guide? New York has some really interesting tours. My favorite company is Take Walks. They have expert guides and can get you behind the scenes at the city’s best attractions. They’re my go-to walking tour company!
The BBC’s Hugh Schofield at the scene of ”brazen” Louvre jewel theft
Security measures will be tightened around France’s cultural institutions after a major jewellery heist at the Louvre museum in Paris on Sunday, advisers for the country’s interior minister have said.
The decision was made on Monday after a meeting with police and ministers, including Interior Minister Laurent Nuñez.
It comes after the justice minister said security protocols “failed” in preventing the heist, giving France a “terrible image”.
Thieves wielding power tools broke into the world’s most-visited museum in broad daylight, stealing eight items described as being of inestimable value, before escaping on scooters.
There are fears that unless the thieves are caught quickly, the priceless items – including a diamond and emerald necklace Emperor Napoleon gave to his wife – will be broken up and smuggled out of the country.
The museum announced it would be staying closed on Monday while investigations continued.
French media report that a preliminary assessment by the Court of Auditors (due to be published in November) said a third of the rooms in the wing where the robbery took place have no surveillance cameras.
“What is certain is that we have failed, since people were able to park a furniture hoist in the middle of Paris, get people up it in several minutes to grab priceless jewels, giving France a terrible image,” Justice Minister Gérald Darmanin told France Inter radio.
He added that he was certain police would eventually arrest the thieves.
But the head of an organisation specialising in the location and recovery of stolen artworks warned that if the thieves are not caught in the next 24 to 48 hours, the stolen jewellery will likely be “long gone”.
“There is a race going on right now,” Chris Marinello, the chief executive of Art Recovery International, told BBC World Service’s Newshour programme.
Reuters
The Louvre said it would remain closed on Monday due to “exceptional reasons”
Crowns and diadems – which were stolen in the heist – can easily be broken apart and sold in small parts.
The thieves “are not going to keep them intact, they are going to break them up, melt down the valuable metal, recut the valuable stones and hide evidence of their crime,” Mr Marinello said, adding it would be difficult to sell these jewels intact.
The French police “know that in the next 24 or 48 hours, if these thieves are not caught, those pieces are probably long gone,” he said.
“They may catch the criminals but they won’t recover the jewels.”
Louvre Museum
Louvre Museum
The Marie-Louise necklace and a pair of earrings were among the eight items stolen
A tiara worn by the Empress Eugenie, wife of Napoleon III, was taken
Nuñez said he was aware of “a great vulnerability” in museum security in France.
President Emmanuel Macron described the robbery as an “attack on a heritage that we cherish because it is our history”.
And Nathalie Goulet, a member of the French Senate’s finance committee, told the BBC it was a “very painful” episode for France.
“We are all disappointed and angry,” she said, and it is “difficult to understand how it happened so easily.”
Goulet told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme that the gallery’s alarm was recently broken, and “we have to wait for the investigation in order to know if the alarm was disactivated.”
She said the cut up jewels would be “used in a money laundering system.”
“I don’t think we are facing amateurs. This is organised crime and they have absolutely no morals. They don’t appreciate jewellery as a piece of history, only as a way to clean their dirty money,” she added.
EPA/Shutterstock
The thieves approached the building from the River Seine bankside
The theft took place between 09:30 and 09:40 local time on Sunday morning, shortly after the museum opened to visitors.
Four masked thieves used a truck equipped with a mechanical lift to gain access to the Galerie d’Apollon (Gallery of Apollo) via a balcony close to the River Seine.
Pictures from the scene showed a vehicle-mounted ladder leading up to a first-floor window.
Two of the thieves cut through glass panes with a battery-powered disc cutter and entered the museum.
They then threatened the guards, who evacuated the building.
The thieves smashed the glass display cases and stole the jewels, which collectively contained thousands of diamonds and precious gemstones.
The robbery took just seven minutes.
As the museum’s alarms started blaring, staff followed protocol by contacting security forces, the culture ministry said in a statement.
The thieves had tried to set fire to their vehicle outside but were prevented by the intervention of a museum staff-member, it added.
Eight items of jewellery were stolen in total, including an emerald and diamond necklace that Napoleon gave his wife, Empress Marie Louise.
Also taken was a diadem (jewelled headband) that once belonged to the Empress Eugénie – wife of Napoleon III – which has nearly 2,000 diamonds.
They also took a necklace that once belonged to Marie-Amelie, the last queen of France, and which contains eight sapphires and 631 diamonds, according to the Louvre’s website.
This one’s for guitarists who enjoy messing with tones, but spend way too much time trying to lock in the perfect sound. Groundhog Audio claims its tech can match the tone from any song and drop it into a compact pedal at your feet – no knob twiddling necessary.
The year-old company says it’s built a proprietary engine that isolates the guitar track from audio files that you upload to its mobile app, and reconstructs the full effects chain – including the amp, cab, reverb, and pedals.
The system also takes into account what sort of axe you’re plugging into the pedal, so it can factor in your guitar type and pickup selection when building a tone.
OnePedal™: The Tone-Matching Guitar Pedal
Once it’s done, the app will beam that to a deceptively conventional-looking pedal over Bluetooth that lets you scroll through saved tones, as well as multiple tones within a song, so you can faithfully reproduce the entire track in your performance.
The pedal only needs to be paired with your phone while you’re transferring tones to it; after that, it can operate without a wireless connection, and can hold up to 100 tones. You can also create and edit tones on the app, choosing from a range of gear for your signal chain.
The companion app works like a streaming service and lets you extract guitar tones, as well as edit them and create your own
Groundhog Audio
I really like the idea behind this gadget: it goes beyond the current bunch of amp profilers that can authentically capture the impulse response of a real amp and let you use that through a digital interface.
That said, this is likely going to be a better fit for hobbyists than professional musicians; the latter will need more control over their sound for performances and recording.
The control layout appears best suited for folks who want to play through whole songs with a variety of rhythm and lead tones
Groundhog Audio
I’m also not entirely sure about the promised app experience, which claims to work like a streaming music player with over 100,000 songs on tap. That’s a lot, but it’s also certainly not remotely close to the 100 million songs-strong library that Spotify offers. Groundhog doesn’t specify how and where it’s sourcing its tracks from. And while it’s great that you can import any song in MP3 or AAC format that you have handy, those aren’t as widely available as before the streaming era.
I also listened to the tone samples Groundhog has posted on Instagram and YouTube. They sound fine, I guess, and the showcased tones each include a bunch of different effects. However, I haven’t heard any high-gain tones that might come in handy for rock and metal, or an especially juicy tone that makes a guitar truly shine, a la Neural DSP’s desktop-based plugins. The demos also don’t give you much of a sense of how this works as a multi-effects pedal without the tone extraction, so it’s hard to say whether it’s ready to replace your analog pedalboard – even if you just like to jam at home.
OnePedal Extended Demo
Groundhog Audio is still perfecting its pedal and hopes to begin shipping the OnePedal in March 2026. So the team does have a little more time to nail the experience and ensure the hardware is durable enough to handle being stomped on. It’s a great concept, albeit an awfully ambitious one to execute for a new company.
The OnePedal is currently being crowdfunded on Kickstarter, where the gadget is being discounted from expected $550 retail price down to $499 at the time of writing. All crowdfunding campaigns carry an element of risk, and this is Groundhog Audio’s first product, so you’ll want to keep that in mind if you choose to back this campaign. However, it’s vastly exceeded its funding goal with more than 340 backers on board. If all goes to plan, orders are slated to ship worldwide next March. Shipping within the US is free, while international orders will cost extra depending on location.
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new video loaded: How Jared Kushner Re-emerged at the Center of the Israel-Hamas Peace Deal
Jared Kushner, the president’s son-in-law, had a single goal: Get to a yes first, and hash out the details later. Tyler Pager, a White House correspondent for The New York Times, describes Mr. Kushner’s role in cease-fire negotiations between Israel and Hamas.
By Tyler Pager, Christina Shaman, Laura Salaberry, Melanie Bencosme and Zach Wood
Iraqi farmer Umm Ali has watched her poultry die as salinity levels in the country’s south have reached record highs, rendering already scarce water unfit for human consumption and killing livestock.
“We used to drink, wash and cook with water from the river, but now it’s hurting us,” said Umm Ali, 40, who lives in the once watery Al-Mashab marshes of southern Iraq’s Basra province.
This season alone, she said, brackish water has killed dozens of her ducks and 15 chickens.
“I cried and grieved, I felt as if all my hard work had been wasted,” said the widowed mother of three.
Iraq, a country heavily affected by climate change, has been ravaged for years by drought and low rainfall.
Declining freshwater flows have increased salt and pollution levels, particularly in the south, where the Tigris and Euphrates rivers converge before spilling into the Gulf.
“We haven’t seen such high levels of salinity in 89 years,” Iraq’s Ministry of Water Resources spokesman, Khaled Shamal, said.
Last month, salinity levels recorded in the central Basra province soared to almost 29,000 parts per million compared with 2,600ppm last year, according to a Water Ministry report.
Freshwater should contain less than 1,000ppm of dissolved salts, while ocean water salinity levels are about 35,000ppm, according to the United States Geological Survey.
A man holds a bottle of water on the farm of Zuleikha Hashim Taleb (L) in the village of al-Mashab, where crops are affected by high water salinity. [Hussein Faleh/AFP]
The Tigris and the Euphrates converge at Basra’s Shatt al-Arab waterway “laden with pollutants accumulated along their course”, said Hasan al-Khateeb, an expert from Iraq’s University of Kufa.
In recent weeks, the Euphrates has seen its lowest water levels in decades, and Iraq’s artificial lake reserves are at their lowest in recent history.
Khateeb warned that the Shatt al-Arab’s water levels had plummeted and it was failing to hold back the seawater from the Gulf.
Farmer Zulaykha Hashem, 60, said the water in the area had become very brackish this year, adding that she must wait for the situation to improve to irrigate her crop of pomegranate trees, figs and berries.
According to the United Nations, almost a quarter of women in Basra and nearby provinces work in agriculture.
“We cannot even leave. Where would we go?” Hashem said, in a country where farmers facing drought and rising salinity often find themselves trapped in a cycle of water crisis.
The UN’s International Organization for Migration, which documents climate-induced displacement in Iraq, has warned that increased water salinity is destroying palm groves, citrus trees and other crops.
As of October last year, some 170,000 people had been displaced in central and southern Iraq due to climate-related factors, according to the agency.
Water scarcity pushed Maryam Salman, who is in her 30s, to leave nearby Missan province for Basra several years ago, hoping her buffalo could enjoy the Shatt al-Arab.
A man holds a handful of spoiled dates in the village of al-Mashab. [Hussein Faleh/AFP]
Rising salinity is not the only problem now, said Salman, a mother of three children.
“Water is not available … neither summer nor winter,” she said.
The Tigris and the Euphrates originate in Turkiye, and Iraqi authorities have repeatedly blamed dams across the border for significantly reducing their flows.
Iraq, a country with inefficient water management systems after decades of war and neglect, receives less than 35 percent of its allocated share of water from the two rivers, according to authorities.
Khateeb from the University of Kufa said, in addition to claiming its share of the rivers, Iraq must pursue desalination projects in the Shatt al-Arab.
In July, the government announced a desalination project in Basra with a capacity of 1 million cubic metres per day.
Local residents said the brackish water is also impacting fish stocks.
Hamdiyah Mehdi said her husband, who is a fisherman, returns home empty-handed more frequently.
She blamed the Shatt al-Arab’s “murky and salty water” for his short temper after long days without a catch, and for her children’s persistent rash.
“It has been tough,” said Mehdi, 52, noting the emotional toll on the family as well as on their health and livelihood.
