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Henrietta Lacks’s Family Settles with Company That Used Her Cells

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Henrietta Lacks, a Black mother of five, was dying of cervical cancer in 1951, when doctors at Johns Hopkins Hospital in Baltimore took a sample of her cells without her knowledge or consent.

The invasive procedure led to a revolutionary discovery: Her cells were the first to reproduce in a laboratory, which no human cells had done before, allowing researchers to develop vaccines for polio and the coronavirus and treatments for disease including cancer, Parkinson’s and the flu.

But it would be more than two decades before her family knew that the cells were fueling research in laboratories all over the world, and even in space, creating an unparalleled medical legacy.

On Tuesday, which would have been Ms. Lacks’s 103rd birthday, some of her descendants gathered at a news conference after reaching a settlement with a biotechnology company that they had accused in a lawsuit of profiting from the cell line named for her, HeLa.

A grandson, Alfred Lacks Carter Jr., said, “it could not have been a more fitting day for her to have justice and for her family to have relief.”

“It was a long fight, over 70 years, and Henrietta Lacks gets her day,” he said.

The family’s lawsuit, which was filed in U.S. District Court in Maryland in October 2021, accused the company, Thermo Fisher Scientific, of selling the cells and trying to secure intellectual property rights on the products the cells had helped develop without compensating the family or seeking their permission or approval.

The terms of the settlement are confidential, lawyers for both parties said in a statement.

Thermo Fisher, which is based in Massachusetts, and the legal team for Ms. Lacks’s family released identical statements announcing the settlement.

“The parties are pleased that they were able to find a way to resolve this matter outside of Court and will have no further comment,” the statements said.

At the news conference, one of the family’s lawyers, Chris Ayers, suggested that similar lawsuits would follow.

“The fight against those who profit, and chose to profit, off the deeply unethical and unlawful history and origins of the HeLa cells will continue,” he said.

Ms. Lacks was 31 when she died in October 1951.

Eight months earlier, she had learned she had cervical cancer after being admitted to a racially segregated ward at Johns Hopkins Hospital in Baltimore. Doctors removed a sample of cells from the tumor in her cervix without her knowledge or consent and gave them to a medical researcher at Johns Hopkins University. The researcher found that her cells were the first to reproduce in a laboratory, outside the body.

Most cells die within days, but because Ms. Lacks’s cells continued to multiply, researchers and scientists could use them to do things such as test how the polio virus infects cells and causes disease.

Research using the HeLa cells has led to the development of treatments for diseases including cancer, Parkinson’s and the flu. The cells have also been used by researchers around the world and have been cited in more than 110,000 scientific publications, according to the National Institutes of Health.

Ms. Lacks’s family was not told about the world-changing discovery and did not find out about the cell line until 1973, according to “The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks,” a book by Rebecca Skloot that was turned into a movie featuring Oprah Winfrey as Ms. Lacks’s daughter Deborah.

Ms. Lacks’s descendants have said they are proud of her contribution but angry about how she was treated by the medical establishment. These frustrations have been made worse with the commercialization of her cells, they said.

The family’s lawsuit against Thermo Fisher said the company had “made staggering profits by using the HeLa cell line — all while Ms. Lacks’ Estate and family haven’t seen a dime.”

“Thermo Fisher Scientific’s choice to continue selling HeLa cells in spite of the cell lines’ origin and the concrete harms it inflicts on the Lacks family can only be understood as a choice to embrace a legacy of racial injustice embedded in the U.S. research and medical systems,” the lawsuit said.

Thermo Fisher tried to dismiss the case, arguing that the lawsuit was filed after the statute of limitations had expired, The Baltimore Sun reported. Lawyers for the family said the limit should not apply because the company continued to benefit financially from the cells.

Tiger Woods Joins PGA Tour Board in Concession to Player Demands

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Infuriated after being blindsided by the PGA Tour’s pact with Saudi Arabia’s sovereign wealth fund, a band of leading golfers has won a series of concessions from the beleaguered circuit’s commissioner — including the elevation of Tiger Woods to the tour’s board — in a star-driven rebuke of the tour.

The tour announced the changes on Tuesday, one day after dozens of top players wrote to Jay Monahan, the tour’s commissioner, and insisted on significant overhauls.

The demands detailed in the Monday letter amounted to a dramatic effort to reclaim power over a circuit that got its modern start after a player rebellion in the late 1960s. The players, including Woods, Patrick Cantlay, Rickie Fowler, Rory McIlroy, Jon Rahm and Scottie Scheffler, said that the secret negotiations toward a tentative deal with the Saudi wealth fund had defied the principle that the tour should be committed to players and run by them.

The addition of Woods to the board, one of several changes agreed to by Monahan with a signed acknowledgment, would allow the players to outnumber six to five the independent board members, who come from the worlds of business and law. In addition, the players want to change the board’s rules to avoid a repeat of the negotiations with the Saudis, in which a handful of independent board members acted without the backing of players on the board.

A final agreement with the Saudi wealth fund would not clear the board, the players insisted, without one of their advisers, Colin Neville of the merchant bank Raine, being able to review the tour’s files and the terms of the deal with the players.

“This is a critical point for the tour, and the players will do their best to make certain that any changes that are made in tour operations are in the best interest of all tour stakeholders, including fans, sponsors and players,” Woods said in a statement.

“The players thank Commissioner Monahan for agreeing to address our concerns, and we look forward to being at the table with him to make the right decisions for the future of the game that we all love,” Woods added. “He has my confidence moving forward with these changes.”

Sustained support for Monahan was no certainty entering the week. In a striking show of force, more than 40 players, including Woods, the five sitting members of the board and the 16 members of an important advisory council, signed the letter to Monahan.

Monahan quickly agreed to the players’ proposals. “I am committed to taking the necessary steps to restore any lost trust or confidence that occurred as a result of the surprise announcement,” he said in a statement.

Player outrage over the deal with the wealth fund began about as soon as it was announced in June. The tour hailed the agreement, which seeks to create a new for-profit entity combining the Saudi-backed LIV Golf league with the commercial operations of the tour and the DP World Tour, formerly the European Tour, as a step forward for a divided sport.

But players had, at most, hours of warning about the deal.

Instead, Monahan and two independent board members, James J. Dunne III and Edward D. Herlihy, handled the talks with the wealth fund on the tour’s behalf without informing other board members. A handful of players, including board members like McIlroy, were told of the agreement shortly before it was announced. Most of the rest of the tour’s players found out about it when it became public.

Time did not diminish their misgivings.

“We still don’t really have a lot of clarity as to what’s going on, and that’s a bit worrisome,” Scheffler, the world’s top-ranked player and a golfer normally eager to stay out of the tour’s internal politics, said last month. “They keep saying it’s a player-run organization, and we don’t really have the information that we need.”

In recent weeks, according to a person with knowledge of the deliberations, players have spoken privately about the changes they would want to see from the tour to which they had remained loyal. Monday’s letter to Monahan reflected those conversations, and Monahan swiftly agreed.

The commissioner and his tour have been the targets of ferocious criticism, in part because an agreement with the Saudis had seemed so improbable after a year marked by acrimony.

In 2022, LIV began poaching top tour players, including Brooks Koepka, Phil Mickelson and Dustin Johnson, starting an all-out war for the future of golf. Players sued the PGA Tour, saying it had illegally discouraged players from joining LIV, and the tour countersued. The tour also highlighted Saudi Arabia’s human rights record at every turn, with Monahan memorably asking on national television, “Have you ever had to apologize for being a member of the PGA Tour?”

The tentative agreement ended the litigation between the parties, but otherwise lacked many substantive binding commitments. That hasn’t halted the intense questioning about how the tour’s campaign against the Saudis so quickly morphed into an embrace that leaves the wealth fund poised to hold enormous sway over golf.

Lawmakers in both the House and Senate are targeting the tour’s tax-exempt status, and tour leaders went before a congressional subcommittee last month to answer questions about the agreement. The Department of Justice is scrutinizing whether the tour violated antitrust law, scrutiny that has already scuttled one part of the deal.

But the players have always been among the biggest roadblocks to a final agreement. When LIV offered exorbitant sums to players to defect — LIV’s chief executive, Greg Norman, has said that Woods turned down north of $700 million — many decided to stick with the tour. They spoke with disdain for LIV’s team golf concept, its weaker fields and even the length of its events, and joined the chorus accusing Saudi Arabia of using golf to burnish its image.

Then came the agreement and, soon, the uprising.

The tour said last week that Neville, the banker, would advise the players on a potential deal and that they would have a say in choosing a new independent board member to replace Randall Stephenson, the former AT&T chairman who resigned because of misgivings over the board’s lack of oversight of a major decision. The tour also said it was devising a “financially significant” plan to compensate players who did not take LIV’s money, and it signaled again that LIV players who want to return to the tour were likely to face penalties.

Monday brought a new set of demands and swift acquiescence from tour leaders.

A board seat for Woods is no guarantee of player unanimity, however. What the richest and best known players in the world want out of a final agreement could differ from what the fringe tour professionals, who are far more numerous, desire.

Woods, who won his 15th major championship in 2019 but has rarely played since because of major injuries, has declined to join LIV and bitterly criticized its style of play, but his views on a potential agreement with the investment fund are unknown. He has not said anything publicly about the tentative agreement, and his agent, Mark Steinberg, has not responded to multiple requests for comment.

No current player, though, commands as much public influence as Woods — just as no current player has as much private power as he does. Even during his convalescence, Woods has remained in close touch with some tour golfers, many of whom attribute the circuit’s financial success and contemporary popularity almost entirely to Woods.

“When Tiger speaks, his voice is very loud,” Gary Woodland, a U.S. Open winner who turned professional in 2007, said in an interview in June.

The players believe that Woods’s arrival on the board, which also includes the P.G.A. of America’s president, will do much to reassure the particularly restive ones in their ranks, some of whom have lately considered potential paths to challenge the tentative agreement with the wealth fund.

Players are expected to meet with Monahan next week, when the tour will hold an event in Memphis.

U.K.’s New Alcohol Taxes Are Aimed at Keeping Pubs Open and Votes Flowing

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When Britain’s prime minister, Rishi Sunak, a teetotaler, dropped in on a west London beer festival on Tuesday, he was looking for votes rather than pints while promoting a government policy that he said would ease the financial squeeze on some of Britain’s drinkers.

Yet not everyone is convinced by the new set of alcohol tax rates, which are expected to cut the cost of beer for pub-goers but which have angered many other Britons by raising the fees on most other alcoholic beverages.

As Mr. Sunak served a pint of beer at the festival, one bystander heckled him, crying out: “Prime minister! Oh, the irony that you’re raising alcohol duty on the day that you’re pulling a pint.” Another thought Mr. Sunak needed reminding that the drink he was pouring was “not Coca-Cola,” Sky News reported.

With high inflation rates eroding living standards in Britain, an election expected next year and Mr. Sunak’s Conservative Party trailing badly in the polls, his government was trying hard to put its best spin on what the new rules would mean for the average voter.

That includes what the government is calling a “Brexit pub guarantee” — a policy that it is touting as an example of the greater flexibility in setting tax rates that Britain gained by leaving the European Union.

“The duty for a pint in a pub will always be less than the duty for a pint in a supermarket,” Jeremy Hunt, the country’s finance minister, said in a video message filmed on a visit to a pub. “That is really to help pubs keep their heads above water, and we think that is a really positive thing.”

Duties on alcohol had been frozen since 2020, partly to help Britain’s pubs, which play a celebrated role in national life but which have been battered by the coronavirus pandemic, labor shortages and inflation. Thousands of them have closed in recent years.

Although higher taxes will now be levied on stronger drinks, the government says that about 38,000 pubs around the country will benefit from reduced taxes on alcoholic drinks poured on tap. It says that the duty that pubs pay on each such drink, including pints of beer and cider, will be up to 11 pence, or 14 cents, cheaper than in supermarkets.

It also described the shake-up as the biggest in the system in the last 140 years.

The changes, and other concessions for small producers, were welcomed by Barry Watts, the head of public affairs at the Society of Independent Brewers, a trade group. “Hopefully we will see more people because of this getting off their sofas returning to their bar stools to support their local community pub,” he said.

Tax on sparkling wine, which had been higher than that levied on still wine, will decrease, leaving it around 19 pence a bottle cheaper if retailers pass on the reduction. Still wine could increase 44 pence a bottle, and spirits and fortified wines will be subject to even bigger price increases.

On Tuesday, Mr. Sunak defended the changes by saying that the government was bolstering the economy “by cutting taxes for small producers so they can expand and employ more people.” He added that “most people would agree” that paying higher taxes for higher alcohol content is a “a common-sense principle.”

That sentiment was endorsed by the Institute of Alcohol Studies, a body that focuses on the effects alcohol has on society. The group said that it supported the shift to a more proportionate tax system related to the strength of drinks, but it argued that the duty rates were still set too low.

Yet Miles Beale, the chief executive of the Wine and Spirit Trade Association, an industry lobby group, noted that the sector faced other challenges, including constrained spending among much of the public, persistently high inflation and rocketing prices for glass.

“Amongst all this pressure, the government has chosen to impose more inflationary misery on consumers on 1 August, with the biggest single alcohol duty increase in almost 50 years,” he said.

There was disappointment, too, in Scotland, where the Scotch Whisky Association also condemned the change.

“The 10.1 percent duty increase is a hammer blow for distillers and consumers,” said Graeme Littlejohn, the association’s director of strategy. “At a time when inflation has only just started to creep downwards, this tax increase will continue to fuel inflation and make it more difficult for the Scotch whisky industry to invest in growth and job creation.”

For Mr. Sunak, though, any fallout will be political rather than personal, since his favorite drink — Mexican Coke — is nonalcoholic and will therefore be unaffected.

Going to Europe? Be Prepared for New Visitor Taxes.

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When Hester Van Buren, a deputy mayor of Amsterdam, recently proposed a 1 percent increase to the city’s tourist accommodation tax — which is already among the highest in Europe — her City Council colleagues responded with a single criticism: They wanted the increase to be even bigger.

“We have a lot of costs for the city, of course — for well-being, for livability,” Ms. Van Buren said in a recent interview at Amsterdam’s City Hall. “We don’t want to increase the taxes for our inhabitants. So we said, ‘Well, let the visitors pay some more.’”

Across Europe, many of Ms. Van Buren’s counterparts are having similar thoughts. After several years of steady growth in urban tourism leading up to the pandemic, many European cities have found new ways to tax visitors, who are at once an important source of revenue and — in some cases — a cause of headaches for residents.

And while there’s little evidence that tourist taxes do much to dampen visitor demand, the measures can raise significant funds for street cleaning, roadwork and other urban improvements that benefit visitors and locals alike.

Amid growing concerns about the negative impacts of tourist crowds, the revenue generated from tourism taxes can help to ensure that this important slice of many European economies maintains its social license to operate.

“The big question that’s on the mind of many local communities is ‘How can we capture the value of tourism?’” said Peter Rømer Hansen, a founding partner and the chief strategist at Group NAO, a Copenhagen-based tourism consulting agency. “Back in the day, it used to be that tourism was tax-free. Now it’s like, ‘No it’s not — you should tax tourism to capture some of that value to add to the community.’ It’s a paradigm shift.”

Tourism taxes are now widespread in Europe: Of the 30 nations surveyed in a 2020 report, of which Mr. Hansen was the lead author, 21 had taxes on tourist accommodations, usually in the range of .50 to 3 euros (about 55 cents to $3.30) per person per night. (In the United States, most states impose single-digit-percentage taxes on accommodations, but this varies widely — from zero tax on lodging in Alaska and California to a 15 percent hotel tax in Connecticut.)

Nations in southern and western Europe, where tourism tends to represent a larger share of the national economies, are more likely to have tourism taxes, Mr. Hansen said. But he expects northern European countries will soon impose similar levies, driven by factors like the climate crisis, the post-pandemic tourism surge and a growing interest in making tourism work for local communities.

“It’s part of this zeitgeist that we need to be more conscious and take better care of our local environment,” Mr. Hansen said.

In line with that trend, some European destinations that have long imposed tourism taxes have begun to increase their rates or impose additional levies.

Last year, the Barcelona City Council began imposing a “city surcharge” on visitors, over and above the accommodation tax (from €1 to €3.50 per night), which the government of Catalonia established in 2012. Barcelona’s new charge — which applies both to tourist stays and cruise visitors — is scheduled to rise to €3.25 from €2.75 on April 1 next year, said Jordi Valls, the City Council’s deputy mayor for tourism. This year’s surcharge is expected to generate €52 million, money that will be set aside for spending on public spaces and environmental protection, and to pay for the enforcement of laws regulating tourist rentals, among other activities.

It’s a similar story in the Croatian city of Dubrovnik — which, according to one index, had the highest ratio of tourists to residents of any European city in 2019. Dubrovnik has long imposed an accommodation tax, which now stands at €2.65 per person per night from April through September, dropping to €1.86 the rest of the year. But in 2019, the government announced a tax on cruise ships as well, after what the city’s mayor, Mato Frankovic, called “a very hectic situation.”

“The question from many of our inhabitants was, ‘What do we get from those cruise ships? They are not paying anything to the city of Dubrovnik,’” Mr. Frankovic said, adding that the cruise tax, which took effect in 2021, is expected to raise €750,000 this year, funds that will be spent to improve roads in the city. The mayor described the cruise tax as “a win-win.”

“The cruise companies and the cruise guests know where the money they pay is actually invested,” Mr. Frankovic said, “and the citizens of Dubrovnik clearly see the benefit of the cruise business.”

In Amsterdam, where tourist taxes are expected to generate €185 million this year, such benefits are perhaps even more evident. The city imposes two taxes: an accommodation tax, which has been in place since 1973, as well as a cruise tax, which was introduced in 2019. (The City Council recently adopted a proposal to ban cruise ships from Amsterdam’s ports. However, the measure isn’t expected to take effect until next year, at the earliest.)

The funds raised from both taxes are used to improve public spaces in parts of the city that attract few tourists, said Ms. Van Buren. In that way, she added, the tax ensures that people across Amsterdam enjoy the fruits of tourism.

Amsterdam’s accommodation tax now stands at 7 percent of the cost of accommodation for hotel stays, plus a flat fee of €3 per person per night. (Guests in short-term apartment rentals, which the city strictly regulates, pay a tax of 10 percent per night.) The City Council will meet in October to decide whether — and by how much — to increase the tax, which was most recently raised in 2018.

Ms. Van Buren believes there is support for an increase. She noted that Amsterdam residents paid €172 million just for trash collection and street cleaning last year, including in areas popular with tourists. It’s only fair, she said, to ask visitors to share the costs of keeping the city functioning.

She described the city’s tourism taxes as part of a package of measures intended to limit tourism growth in Amsterdam, which stopped marketing itself as a destination several years before the pandemic. But Ms. Van Buren acknowledged that the accommodation tax appeared to have only a slight dampening effect on visitor interest, a conclusion supported by Mr. Hansen’s 2020 report.

That doesn’t mean that taxes aren’t helping to shape tourism in the city. The extra charge of €3 per night was intended to ensure the measure would be felt by Amsterdam’s cheap hotels and the low-budget tourists who frequent them, Ms. Van Buren said, adding that such visitors, who often come for bachelor parties and the like, bring “a lot of problems.”

On that front, it seems the measure is having the desired effect. Henriette Zwart, the owner of Hotel Koffiehuis Voyagers, a lower-budget accommodation option in Amsterdam’s historic center, said the tourist tax had forced her to renovate so she could charge enough to cover her operating costs. She used to charge €100 per night for a room that could sleep three or four people, but when her hotel reopens after renovations in October, she will charge €200 for a room that can sleep only two.

“We look at the prices in this area, and everybody’s got high prices like that,” Ms. Zwart said.

“They don’t want the low-value tourist. They want the upper-class tourists, which is pretty discriminative,” she said of the city leaders. “If you have a low cost per person and a high tourist tax, then it’s almost not even motivating to run a business like that.”

Other major European tourist destinations, including Edinburgh, are considering new visitor charges.

This year, Manchester became the first British city to adopt a visitor fee when local hotel owners collectively began to impose an additional charge of 1 pound (roughly $1.27) per person per night. British cities don’t have the power to create the kinds of taxes that Amsterdam and Barcelona have introduced, said Bev Craig, the leader of Manchester City Council, so businesses introduced the charge themselves, with the support of local government.

The resulting funds will be used to clean the streets, run targeted tourism campaigns and prepare bids for major events that will attract even more tourists to Manchester, said Ms. Craig, who added that tourism has become a major employer.

“We think about the role tourism has in our city — be it for football, culture or history — and actually we want to grow that,” Ms. Craig said.

It’s a different story in St. Ives, a picturesque English coastal town that has been attracting tourists for more than a century. But growing crowds of visitors have begun to strain the town’s services and the patience of its residents, said Johnnie Wells, the mayor. Mr. Wells noted that St. Ives spends nearly one-fifth of its annual budget — about £200,000 — just on cleaning the town’s eight public toilet facilities, which visitors use much more than locals.

Facing the same taxing constraints as Manchester, the local council has decided to charge visitors 40 pence to use the toilets. Local leaders are also considering a “community charge” similar to the visitor charge imposed in Manchester.

Mr. Wells stressed that tourism is a huge part of the economy of Cornwall, the southwestern English county that is home to St. Ives and dozens of other popular seaside communities. The area used to rely on mining and fishing, but as those industries have fallen away, tourism has become an increasingly important source of jobs and income.

“People always moan about the holiday industry, but it’s what we Cornish folk do,” Mr. Wells said, adding that residents’ frustration with tourists “is becoming an issue.” But he thinks a visitor charge, if they can pull it off, would be a positive step.

“If locals can feel that their town is being improved because the tourists are coming, it’s going to help bridge that gap and create a bit better feeling between the two,” he said.

Paige McClanahan, a regular contributor to the Travel section, is writing a book about the tourism industry.

Follow New York Times Travel on Instagram and sign up for our weekly Travel Dispatch newsletter to get expert tips on traveling smarter and inspiration for your next vacation. Dreaming up a future getaway or just armchair traveling? Check out our 52 Places to Go in 2023.

“Emani Cosmetics” Continues Their Ascent to The Top of The Skincare Sector -Introduces “Sleep & Renew Serum” – Super Anti-Aging Serum With 0% Water and Over 85% Fermented Probiotics

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Emani combines science, technology, and vegan ingredients to replenish what aging skin craves and needs.

Laguna Hill, California, July 31, 2023, Out of the thousands of skincare companies, only a very few are utilizing state-of-the-art processing turning raw ingredients into highly bioavailable materials for skincare products. Emani has a patented Proprietary 3-Step-Fermentation process that breaks down nutrients into smaller molecules.

Whether it’s acne or loss of collagen, their Fermented Serum Collection and skin-caring Foundation Collection feed skin everything it needs to bring dull and stressed skin back to life.

Emani combines fermented ingredients + natural ingredients.

Fermented ingredients:

  • Patented Ginseng Adventitious Root Ferment Extract
  • Fermented collagen (yeast)
  • Fermented probiotics (lactobacillus)

Natural/Organic extracts:

  • Aloe Barbadensis
  • Avocado Oil Extract
  • Calendula Officinalis Flower
  • Olive Extract (Oil)
  • Chamomile Flower Extract
  • Copernica Cerifera (Caranuba)
  • Cucumber Fruit Extract
  • Grape Seed Extract
  • Green Tea Extract
  • Glycine Soja (Soy) Protein
  • Helianthus Annuus (Sunflower) Seed Oil
  • Jojoba Oil

During a recent interview, an Emani spokesperson made these comments, “Our scientific formulas contain a high concentration of probiotics, fermented ginseng and other active ingredients at skin-friendly pH levels to ensure that all of the ingredients were recognized by the skin and easily absorbed.

Probiotics and fermented ingredients are made up of tiny molecules that are much smaller than traditional skincare ingredients, they absorb quickly onto skin and promote skin elasticity, combats acne, and slows down the effects of aging.”

Important to note that just because an ingredient is listed on a label does not mean that the dosage is sufficient to cause therapeutic effects. Emani’s Research & Development Department scours the scientific literature to ensure that proper dosages are used.

Emani’s Sleep & Renew Serum: Sleep & Renew Serum is excellent for all skin types including dry, mature, sensitive, acne-prone, combination, and normal.

Super Anti-Aging Serum with 0% water and over 85% fermented probiotics, apple and papaya fruit extracts to promote cell turnover, collagen production and flood your skin with nutrients for vibrantly looking skin.

Sleep & Renew can be used for post peel, laser treatments, micro-needling care where newly developing skin needs rich nutrients to help aid in cellular renewal and microbiome strengthening.

Easy to use, not complicated skin care systems. Emani serums can be used with any skin care regime, under makeup and sunscreen. Emani is safe to use on acne and after laser or skin treatments.

About The Founder:

Michelle Doan is the founder and creator of Emani Vegan Cosmetics, a beauty brand that is dedicated to creating solutions for acne, aging, and hormonal skin types. Michelle suffered from cystic acne most of her life and going through menopause, it has changed the DNA of Emani.

Everybody’s life and skin go through big changes as they reach the big 40, even more so after 50. Emani’s fermented, probiotic skincare and their next-level beauty products turn back the clock for rapidly aging skin. They combine science, technology, and vegan ingredients to replenish what aging skin craves and needs.

Michelle is deeply committed to making a positive, soul-level impact and sharing tools so others can feel happy in their skin.

For more information, please visit:  https://emani.com/

Media Contact:

Emani Cosmetics
Attn: Media Relations
24881 Alicia Parkway Ste. E164,
Laguna Hill, California 92653
(949) 532-9774
hello@emani.com

A New Era of Soccer Moms Navigates a Rapidly Changing Game

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When Iceland’s Sara Bjork Gunnarsdottir took maternity leave from her French team, Olympique Lyonnais, in 2021, the team refused to pay her full salary. So with the help of FIFPro, the global players’ union, she filed a claim with FIFA, global soccer’s governing body, and won a landmark judgment. Gunnarsdottir called it “a wake-up call for clubs.”

Sarai Bareman, the head of women’s soccer at FIFA, helped create those new rules, which mandate that clubs grant pregnant players a 14-week maternity leave paid at two-thirds salary and ensure they have a spot on the roster when they return. Now Bareman, a former player, has a young child of her own, a toddler who could be seen running around FIFA’s main hotel in Auckland during the World Cup.

Bareman said eight players had registered with FIFA to have their children travel with their teams at the World Cup, and that several others had made private arrangements. The support they receive, and their visibility, was uncommon even a decade ago.

“I think it’s very much driven by North America, because we’ve seen some very high-profile returning mothers,” she said. “I honestly feel that has influenced a lot of other female players around the world to be more publicly open about the fact that, yes, they’ve got kids, too. Their kids are there. That’s a massive, massive part of their life.”

Morgan had Charlie in 2020, and returned to the sport just in time for the Tokyo Olympics in 2021, often wearing a gold ring with the word “MAMA” that she bought for herself as a reminder of her priorities. Since then, she has regularly included Charlie in her postgame celebrations on the field, carrying her around to see the fans and letting her frolic on the grass. Morgan’s 10.1 million Instagram followers are treated to regular updates on Charlie, including one last week with photos of them after they had been reunited after several weeks apart. “She made it, and my heart is full,” Morgan wrote in the post.

Ukrainian troops describe brutal, grinding battle

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STORY: This video released by the Ukrainian army shows its soldiers in battle near the village of Staromaiorske, which was recaptured from Russian forces last week.

The marines who fought in the battle, Ukraine’s biggest advance in weeks, said that fighting was brutal, their timing was off, and that the invaders were ready for them.

“The Russians waited for us. They shot anti-tank weapons and grenade launchers at us. My car drove over an anti-tank mine, but everything is well – the vehicle held the hit, and everyone was alive. We unloaded and ran towards the cover. Because the most important is to find cover and then move on.”

Kyiv’s current counter-offensive is backed by billions of dollars in Western military aid, equipment and training.

But war-stories of the battle of Staromaiorske, recounted to Reuters near the frontline in southeastern Ukraine, give an indication of why this highly-anticipated operation has proven slower and bloodier than expected.

“We advanced slowly but surely. What can I say – they shoot, everything flies. It was scary, but we moved on. Nobody backed up. Everyone did a great job. Many of us didn’t come back. But we mostly preserved our strength.”

The Russians have had months to prepare their fortifications and sow minefields, while the Ukrainians lack the air superiority that their NATO allies normally expect in their training drills.

Ukrainian commanders say the deliberately slower pace is needed to avoid high casualties.

Russia on Monday announced that Ukraine’s counteroffensive was not going as planned.

Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu, speaking at a military conference in Moscow, said Ukraine was (quote) “desperately hurling new forces” into attacks on Russian positions, but had failed to advance.

“Over the past month, due to the successful actions of our troops, the enemy’s losses totaled more than 28,000 servicemen.”

Shoigu said Ukraine was wasting billions of dollars of weapons supplied by the West.

“Amid the failure of the so-called ‘counter-offensive,’ the Kyiv regime, backed by its Western sponsors, has focused on carrying out terrorist attacks on civilian infrastructure.”

On Monday, two people were killed and four injured – according to Russian officials – in Ukrainian shelling of the city of Donetsk… which is under Russian control.

Some 250 miles to the West, smoke billowed from a gaping hole in an apartment building…. Seen here, in video posted on social media by President Volodymyr Zelenskiy.

According to Ukraine, a Russian missile attack – on the city Zelenskiy grew up in – killed at least six people and wounded dozens more.

Teen Competitive Cyclist Dies After Being Hit by Car

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Magnus White, a 17-year-old “rising star” in competitive cycling, has died after being hit by a car in Colorado while he was training for the world championships, the state police and U.S.A. Cycling, the sport’s governing body, said.

White excelled in cyclocross, an international sport in which racers compete on a course of multiple surfaces, including pavement and trails, and carry their bicycles over off-road obstacles. He was a junior member of U.S.A. Cycling, the Colorado Springs-based organization said.

White was struck by a car on Saturday in Boulder County, which has a population of about 320,000 and is in the north-central part of the state known for its rugged mountains, foothills, trails and the University of Colorado campus in Boulder.

He was on a north-south stretch of Highway 119 known as the Diagonal, which runs between Boulder and Longmont. The road is so frequently used by cyclists that local and state authorities are working on a long-term plan to add a separate bike trail in the middle of it.

At about 12:30 p.m., White was riding his endurance road bicycle southbound on the shoulder of the highway when a Toyota Matrix struck him from behind, ejecting him from the bicycle, Trooper Gabriel Moltrer, a public information officer for the Colorado State Patrol, said on Monday. White was taken to a hospital, where he was pronounced dead, Mr. Moltrer said.

There was no indication that drugs, alcohol or excessive speed were involved, and the driver was not injured in the accident, which took place northeast of Boulder, Mr. Moltrer said.

White was a junior member of the 2023 Cyclocross World Championship team, U.S.A. Cycling said. He was making final preparations before leaving for Glasgow to compete in the Junior Men’s Mountain Bike Cross-Country World Championships on Aug. 10, it said.

“He was a rising star in the off-road cycling scene,” the organization said, “and his passion for cycling was evident through his racing and camaraderie with his teammates and local community.”

Cyclocross was invented about 100 years ago in Europe as an off-season training regimen for road-bike racers. Its appeal gained momentum in the United States in the early 2000s.

Most competitors modify their road bikes with knobby tires and other structural alterations to allow for better clearance as they navigate paved roads, hills, stairs and other obstacles during the race.

“Since the cyclocross season generally takes place from September to February, races are often times plagued with adverse weather conditions such as snow, rain, wind and mud — all of which add to the sport’s allure,” U.S.A. Cycling said.

White started cycling when he was 8, and the sport became his “greatest joy in life,” his family said in a statement. He received competitive training with Boulder Junior Cycling, which develops young athletes in the sport. White was spurred on by his Colorado childhood of cycling and skiing, he wrote on his website, and later developed into an ambitious athlete who was emerging on the international stage.

On his Instagram account, White described the rugged challenges of the sport, whether pushing through a muddy ride, battling food poisoning or overcoming a snapped chain during a race.

In 2021, White won the U.S.A. Cycling Cyclocross National Championships, and in 2022, he participated in his first world championship in Fayetteville, Ark., placing 25th in the junior division. In 2023, he competed in his second world championship in Hoogerheide, the Netherlands, coming in 20th in the under-19 group.

“These global events provided me with a deeper understanding of the international dynamics of the sport and allowed me to measure myself against the world’s best riders,” White wrote.

White had described the upcoming mountain bike race championship in Scotland as a “new and exciting chapter of my cycling career.”

Louise Levy, Who Was Studied for Her Very Long Life, Is Dead at 112

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Louise Levy, who along with hundreds of others 95 and older was part of a study to understand how their genetic makeup led to their good physical and cognitive health during extremely long lives, died on July 17 in Greenwich, Conn. She was 112.

Her daughter, Lynn Neidorf, confirmed the death, at a hospital. She said Mrs. Levy had broken a hip two months ago but, after surgery and rehabilitation that had her moving with a walker, had developed an infection that weakened her.

“She was a light of positivity,” Ms. Neidorf, who is in her 70s, said by phone. “She had that quality babies have: People were drawn to her. They wanted to be around her.”

Mrs. Levy lived independently in a senior living community in Rye, N.Y, until two years ago, during the pandemic, when she moved into its assisted living facility.

When she celebrated her birthday last year, she told The Rye Record, “I’m glad I can still speak and have my sense of humor, but I would caution you not to try and live to be 112!”

At her death she was the oldest known living person in New York State, according to LongeviQuest, which maintains a database of supercentenarians, people who have lived into a 12th decade.

Mrs. Levy was one of more than 700 people, all 95 or older, recruited since 1998 to participate in a study by the Institute for Aging Research at the Albert Einstein School of Medicine in the Bronx to learn the genetic reasons for their unusually long, healthy lives.

“It’s not luck,” Dr. Nir Barzilai, an endocrinologist who directs the institute, said by phone. “They exceeded luck. The biggest answer is genetics.”

Using the blood and plasma of the test group, all Ashkenazi Jews — a comparatively homogeneous population whose genetic variations are easier to spot — the institute’s Longevity Genes Project has discovered gene mutations that are believed to be responsible for slowing the impact of aging on people like Mrs. Levy and protecting them against high cholesterol, heart disease, diabetes and Alzheimer’s disease.

“The most striking thing about them is they had a contraction of morbidity,” Dr. Barzilai said. “They are sick, as a group, for very little time at the end of their lives.”

He added, “Did they do what we know we should do — exercise, diet and sleep and have social connectivity? The answer is mostly no. Sixty percent were smoking. Less than 50 percent did much household activity or biking. Fifty percent were overweight or obese. Less than three percent were vegetarians. So they weren’t special in that sense.”

The goal of the research is the development of drugs that would imitate what the centenarians’ genes do to protect their health.

Louise Morris Wilk was born on Nov. 1, 1910, in Cleveland. Her father, Louis, was a photographer and a movie theater manager. Her mother, Mollie (Morris) Wilk, was a homemaker. The three later moved to New York City, where Louis illustrated film posters.

Louise attended but did not graduate from Hunter College. In 1939, she married Seymour Levy, who sold housewares for a company founded by his father. He later took over the company, and Mrs. Levy became his office manager when he moved the business into their house in Larchmont, N.Y.

She continued to work into her 90s for the man who acquired the company after her husband died in 1991.

“Not full time, you know — two, three days a week for an hour or two until my car conked out,” she told WCBS Radio in 2019.

Mrs. Levy did not have heart disease, diabetes or Alzheimer’s disease but was treated for breast cancer and smoked cigarettes for decades, until 1965, when the U.S. Surgeon General put health warnings on cigarette packs.

Even as her hearing, eyesight and mobility diminished in recent years, she stayed active with tai chi and stretching classes, playing bridge and knitting sweaters for hospitalized babies. She began losing her short-term memory only in the last six months.

Mrs. Levy believed that her low-cholesterol diet, positive attitude and daily glass of red wine contributed to her extended good health. “Everybody says ‘good genes,’” she told the Canadian newspaper The National Post in 2012, “but I don’t think it’s good genes.”

She may have been onto something.

“There is more than one way to get to 100,” Dr. Barzilai said, “but some of them are genes that are related to cholesterol.”

In addition to her daughter, Mrs. Levy is survived by her son, Ralph, who is also in his 70s, four grandchildren and six great-grandchildren.

Ms. Neidorf, who believes her own good health may be tied to the same genetic makeup as her mother’s, recalled that the two were nonetheless different types of people.

“I was much more fresh and disobedient than she was,” Ms. Neidorf recalled. “She was sugar and spice and everything nice. I held her in great admiration because she never tried to make me be like her. She accepted who I was and believed in me.”

Dancing Till Dawn at a Music Festival in Albania

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More than a dozen sweaty people in various states of undress giggled as a capoeira instructor directed us to crawl around on the floor. Make eye contact, he told us as we tried to follow the flow of one another’s bodies. But it was hard not to stare at the sparkling blue Ionian Sea.

On one side of an open-air pavilion in Dhermi, a village on the Albanian Riviera, those waters glimmered under the summer sun, free of the yachts that crowd the Croatian and Greek shorelines to the north and south. On the other side, palm trees dotted the landscape. Behind them loomed the lush, green Ceraunian Mountains.

A sound check interrupted the class, an abrupt reminder of the larger reason we capoeira novices had gathered: Kala, a weeklong music-and-wellness festival. I was part of a crowd of about 3,500 mostly young people, resplendent in transparent flare pants, crop tops and cowboy boots, who had descended on Dhermi in late May and early June to sway and spin in the moonlight, hypnotized by the beats, and to pack our days with Kundalini yoga, breath work, massage and capoeira classes.

Across four stages, D.J.s like Hunee and Antal, CC:Disco!, Grace Sands and Daphni performed nightly, spinning techno and electronic beats mixed with funk, disco, jazz and more. A fifth stage, open during the daytime, beckoned from Gjipe, a canyon with soaring red cliffs, a short, scenic boat ride away.

In Dhermi, restaurants served fresh, delicious seafood and drinks at reasonable prices. Kala’s weeklong packages, which included tickets and accommodations, started at $370. (Similar U.S. festivals this year charged about $200 to $400 for a two- or three-day ticket, without lodging.) Residents joined in the fun, blasting their own music from bars, cars and balconies at night. And in the morning, some hung-over revelers were surprised to find themselves face to face with wandering goats on the village streets.

“I’ve gone from Ibiza, which got really built up, to Croatia, which got really busy. And I’ve spent a lot of time in India, and now Goa is super busy, too. And Greece is so expensive now,” said Annabel Turbutt-Day, 38, a corporate affairs director from London who drove to Kala from Tirana, Albania’s capital, with her partner and three friends. “Albania is still a little bit undiscovered, and a bit more affordable.”

Since its debut in Albania in 2018, Kala has helped drive a boom in international tourism in Dhermi. Three more events have joined Dhermi’s summer dance card, with support from Mainstage Festivals, the company that runs Kala, including the upcoming Ion Festival, which takes place there from Sept. 6 to 13. The tourism season in Dhermi, which used to last about six weeks, now runs from the end of May through September.

Dhermi’s landscape was integral to Kala’s appeal: The beaches where people sunbathed during the day turned into parties that lasted till sunrise — and the cycle repeated every day.

Each open-air stage was its own little world — a cozy cove, a platform jutting into the sea, a vast space surrounded by palm trees. When I got tired of bobbing my head to the music in one spot, I could weave down the street through shouting, laughing festivalgoers and slip into a different crowd swaying to a different set.

Spontaneous parties formed in the streets, too. One evening, after hours of dancing, I devoured a slice of pizza while watching a trio of locals and visitors join hands and spin in a circle, first to Albanian songs and then to Justin Bieber’s “Sorry.”

Dhermi’s rising popularity has mirrored Albania’s as a whole. In 2022, a record 7.5 million people visited the country, spending around $3.1 billion, compared with 6.4 million and $2.4 billion in 2019, according to the Ministry of Tourism and Environment. And in the first three months of 2023, Albania experienced a 54 percent jump in visitors compared with the same period in 2019, according to the World Tourism Organization.

Many of those tourists head straight for the resort towns and beaches of the Albanian Riviera, which are drawing European sun-and-sea seekers who find the Greek island of Corfu and Dubrovnik, Croatia, too expensive and crowded. On Instagram and TikTok, influencers compare Albania’s seascape to that of the Maldives or Bali.

At the same time, history buffs are flocking to Albania’s ancient Greek and Roman ruins, Ottoman-era architecture and the tens of thousands of repurposed concrete bunkers built by Enver Hoxha, who ruled the formerly Communist country with an iron fist for four decades. UNESCO World Heritage sites like the prehistoric ruins of Butrint and deep, ancient Lake Ohrid add to the attractions.

Outdoorsy types come to bicycle along the wild Vjosa River and hike in the Albanian Alps. Nearly 300 government-certified agritourism operators offer farm tours, wine tastings and homemade meals at properties growing cherries, walnuts, plums, quince and more.

Today’s tourist-friendly environment stands in sharp contrast to the Albania of the early 1990s as it emerged from four decades of isolation as one of the poorest countries behind the Iron Curtain. An economic crisis and a near descent into civil war followed. In early 1997, during a popular uprising, an estimated 550,000 weapons were looted from armories and at least 2,000 people died as government forces cracked down and insurgents battled. The United Nations finally sent in a multinational force to restore order. But all this left Albania with a reputation as a crime-ridden, dangerous country.

“The image of Albania was not the real one,” said Mirela Kumbaro, the country’s minister of tourism and environment. “It was only the bad parts.” Now, Albania want to show its “real face,” she said.

“Kala is one of our best ambassadors,” said Ms. Kumbaro, who had dropped by the festival for a news conference, following in the footsteps of other officials, including Prime Minister Edi Rama, who showed up to the first Kala in 2018 and later sent a pallet of free beer.

Development in the Dhermi area has accelerated at a breakneck pace: Half of the adjacent village of Drymades seems to be a construction site. The influx of foreign visitors to a place that only a few decades ago was sealed off to the world has brought both prosperity and challenges.

“It’s been a 100 percent transformation,” said Erjon Shehaj, 46, whose family opened a 10-table restaurant in Dhermi in 2016. “When we started, there was nothing.” Today, they own and operate the Empire Beach Resort, a luxury hotel on the same land where the small restaurant once stood. The resort hosted the biggest stage of the festival and was booked solid all seven days.

“I’ve never encountered so many tourists in Albania,” said Anisa Koteci, 33, a lawyer, who was born in the country then emigrated with her family to London when she was 8. Returning to Albania for Kala for the first time in four years, she said, has been “a bit of a shock to the system.” The abundance of foreign visitors made her excited and happy, she said, but she also worried that Albania might become known as just a party destination. She called the wave of tourism a “stress test” for her homeland.

In Dhermi, the electricity or water was sometimes turned off at hotels without warning, and bathrooms in restaurants and bars were left uncleaned for long stretches. On the second day of the festival, one local shopkeeper wiped her brow and grumbled as she surveyed an endless line of impatient bathing-suit-clad tourists waiting to buy chips, water, beer and sunblock. She was running the grocery store and the adjacent currency exchange alone, she explained, because her brother had stayed up all night registering local SIM cards for tourists.

The flood of visitors is also raising fears about possible harm to the region’s flora and fauna. In the city of Vlore, about an hour’s drive from Dhermi, an airport construction project the government promotes as a way to bring more tourists to the Albanian Riviera has faced protests from environmental groups that say it could endanger sanctuaries for birds like flamingos and pelicans.

Tomi Gjikuria, 34, an entrepreneur and a D.J. who grew up in Dhermi, said he was happy with all the new business and hoped for more visitors, but wondered how all the new construction would affect the landscape.

“When I was a child, there was no tourism,” said Mr. Gjikuria, who operates a campsite called the Sea Turtle Camp on land that his family owns in Drymades.

“I have 5,000 square meters where I put a campsite,” he said. “I could have built a casino, but I don’t want to cut down the trees.”

Despite all the challenges of development, residents of Dhermi have kept the welcome mat out — even if it sometimes has had a few wrinkles.

Alan Crofton, the manager and director of Mainstage Festivals, recalled the fall of 2017, when he and Rob Searle, Kala’s creative director, went to Gjipe Canyon to ask the owner of a local campsite if they could use its beach during Kala. The man they met insisted that before they agreed to anything, they needed to break the ice by toasting each other with a shot of raki, a local liquor. One shot turned into several, until finally the man told Mr. Crofton and Mr. Searle — by then quite buzzed — that he would lease them a space for the festival, Mr. Crofton said.

But when Mr. Crofton and Mr. Searle returned several months later, they found out that their raki-toasting host was not actually the landowner. He was the security guard who looked after the campsite in the winter.

Andrea Kumi, 47, founded Havana Beach Club, a place that helped draw some of the area’s first waves of tourists, after moving to Dhermi, his father’s hometown, when he was 24. Mr. Kumi, who grew up in Vlore and Athens, began inviting world-famous D.J.s to perform at the club about 15 years ago.

Today, besides the Havana Beach Club, Mr. Kumi owns two other restaurants. As the area continues to change, Mr. Kumi said, everybody is trying their best to be gracious and helpful hosts. As an old saying in Albania goes: “Our house belongs to God and guests.”

He illustrated this point with a story. In 2009, Mr. Kumi persuaded the Dutch D.J. Tiësto to perform in Dhermi. There were no luxury hotels, so, eager to please, he rented a three-story, 80-foot yacht for Tiësto to sleep on, but the D.J. started feeling seasick as soon as he boarded.

All the hotel rooms in the area were booked with the thousands of guests who’d come to see Tiësto perform, so Mr. Kumi offered up his own bedroom in his family’s house in the hills. Tiësto accepted, and the next day, Mr. Kumi said, the D.J. joined his parents and nephew for homemade pancakes.

Follow New York Times Travel on Instagram and sign up for our weekly Travel Dispatch newsletter to get expert tips on traveling smarter and inspiration for your next vacation. Dreaming up a future getaway or just armchair traveling? Check out our 52 Places to Go in 2023.

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