Guilty Pleasures
By Associated Press
Taylor Swift donates $5 million toward hurricane relief efforts
Taylor Swift has donated $5 million to Feeding America to support relief efforts in the aftermath of Hurricanes Helene and Milton.
The nonprofit announced the pop star’s donation Wednesday with a “Thank You” graphic resembling a friendship bracelet, a favorite accessory that Swift’s fans trade at her concerts.
Feeding America is “incredibly grateful” for the donation, CEO Claire Babineaux-Fontenot said in a statement.
“This contribution will help communities rebuild and recover, providing essential food, clean water, and supplies to people affected by these devastating storms,” the statement continued. “Together, we can make a real impact in supporting families as they navigate the challenges ahead.”
The organization also encouraged fans and supporters to “join Taylor” in contributing to relief efforts.
Swift’s longtime friends, actors Blake Lively and Ryan Reynolds, also donated $1 million to Feeding America to support the hurricane relief efforts. Babineaux-Fontenot said in a statement that the couple’s “longtime support of Feeding America in times of crisis” has helped provide basic needs for several past natural disasters.
Swift has a long history of donating to nonprofits in the wake of natural disasters or tragic events, including a tornado that hit Tennessee in 2020 and a shooting in February 2024 at the Kansas City Chiefs’ Super Bowl victory parade.
Her philanthropic relationship with food banks became a quiet hallmark of her record-breaking Eras Tour, with the singer donating the equivalent of hundreds of thousands of meals to different food banks across cities she played in.
Hurricane Milton made landfall in Florida as a Category 3 storm Wednesday, bringing misery to a coast still ravaged by Helene.
Han Kang wins the Nobel Prize for literature. She’s the first South Korean to do so
STOCKHOLM | South Korean poet and novelist Han Kang was awarded the Nobel Prize in literature Thursday for a poetic and unsettling body of work that the Nobel committee said “confronts historical traumas and exposes the fragility of human life.”
A slow-burning international literary star who has won multiple awards in South Korea and Europe, Han is the first Asian woman and the first South Korean writer to win the Nobel literature prize. She was awarded for books, including “The Vegetarian” and “Human Acts,” that explore the pain of being human and the scars of Korea’s turbulent history.
Nobel literature committee member Anna-Karin Palm said Han writes about “trauma, pain and loss,” whether individual or collective, “with the same compassion and care.”
“And this, I think, is something that is quite remarkable,” Palm said.
Nobel committee chairman Anders Olsson praised Han’s “empathy for the vulnerable, often female lives” of her characters.
“She has a unique awareness of the connections between body and soul, the living and the dead,” Olsson said.
Han is the second South Korean national to win a Nobel Prize. Late former President Kim Dae-jung won the peace prize in 2000 for his efforts to restore democracy in South Korea during the country’s previous military rule and improve relations with war-divided rival North Korea.
Speaking to the Swedish Academy by phone, Han said she had just finished having dinner with her son at home in Seoul when she got a call with the news.
She said she was both “honored” and surprised to become South Korea’s first Nobel literature laureate.
“I grew up with Korean literature, which I feel very close (to),” said Han, whose father and brother are both novelists. “So I hope this news is nice for Korean literature readers and my friends, writers.”
As for celebrating the win, she said: “I’m going to have tea with my son and I’ll celebrate it quietly tonight.”
Han wins the Nobel at a time of growing global influence of South Korean culture, which in recent years has included the success of films like director Bong Joon-ho’s Oscar-winning “ Parasite,” the Netflix survival drama “Squid Game” and the worldwide fame of K-pop groups like BTS and BLACKPINK.
Han, 53, won the International Booker Prize for fiction translated into English in 2016 for “The Vegetarian,” an unsettling novel in which a woman’s decision to stop eating meat has devastating consequences.
Accepting that award, Han said writing novels “is a way of questioning for me.”
“I just try to complete my questions through the process of my writing and I try to stay in the questions, sometimes painful, sometimes — well — sometimes demanding,” she said.
Han made her publishing debut as a poet in 1993; her first short story collection was published in 1995 and her first novel, “Black Deer,” in 1998.
Works translated into English include “Greek Lessons” — about the relationship between a woman who can no longer speak and a teacher who is losing his sight — “Human Acts” and “The White Book,” a poetic novel that draws on the death of Han’s older sister shortly after birth. “The White Book” was an International Booker Prize finalist in 2018.
“Human Acts” — which Olsson, the Nobel committee chair, called a work of “witness literature” — is based on the real-life killing of pro-democracy protesters in Han’s home city of Gwangju in 1980. The book won Italy’s Malaparte Prize in 2017.
Her most recent novel, “We Do Not Part,” is due to be published in English next year. It also confronts a chapter in South Korea’s 20th-century history, which saw the country endure war, the division of the Korean peninsula and dictatorship. The novel deals with a 1948-1949 uprising on Jeju, an island south of the Korean mainland in which thousands of people were killed.
Anders Karlsson, a lecturer at London’s School of Oriental and African Studies who has translated Han into Swedish, said he was “overjoyed” at the Nobel accolade.
He said Han’s “poignant, condensed” prose is able to describe “difficult and dark passages in South Korean history … in quite open and inviting language that engages and does not deter the reader.”
The literature prize has long faced criticism that it is too focused on European and North American writers of style-heavy, story-light prose. It has also been male-dominated — Han is only the 18th woman among its 120 laureates.
Six days of Nobel announcements opened Monday with Americans Victor Ambros and Gary Ruvkun winning the medicine prize. Two founding fathers of machine learning — John Hopfield and Geoffrey Hinton — won the physics prize. On Wednesday, three scientists who discovered powerful techniques to decode and even design novel proteins were awarded the chemistry prize.
The Nobel Peace Prize will be announced Friday and the economics award on Monday.
The prize carries a cash award of 11 million Swedish kronor ($1 million) from a bequest left by the award’s creator, Swedish inventor Alfred Nobel. The laureates are invited to receive their awards at ceremonies on Dec. 10, the anniversary of Nobel’s death.
‘The View’ co-hosts come out swinging at Trump a day after he insulted them
NEW YORK | The hosts of ABC’s “The View” clapped back at Donald Trump on Thursday, a day after the Republican nominee for president insulted co-hosts Sunny Hostin and Whoopi Goldberg.
“I have a personal legal note,” said Hostin. “Donald Trump, I want to thank you for personally telling so many lies and committing so many alleged crimes and providing us with material on a daily basis. You help us do our jobs and I’m so appreciative.”
On Wednesday, Trump, campaigning in Pennsylvania, called Hostin, who is Black and Latina, “dumber than Kamala,” saying: “That is one dumb woman. Sorry. I’m sorry, women, she’s a dummy.”
Later, he turned on Goldberg, who is also Black, calling her “demented.” Trump claimed he once hired Goldberg to perform and accused her of having a “foul mouth.”
“She was so filthy, dirty, disgusting, half the place left. I said I’d never hire her again,” he said. “She was so dirty. Every word was filthy, dirty. What a loser she is.”
Goldberg on Thursday wore it as a badge of honor. “I was filthy and stand on that fact. I have always been filthy. And you knew that when you hired me.” Goldberg said Trump hired her four times: “How dumb are you?”
The Trump barrage came after the daytime talk show hosted his opponent in the presidential race, Vice President Kamala Harris, for an interview Tuesday.
The co-hosts walked onto the set to the song “Dirty” by Christina Aguilera. “It’s one of the words that you-know-who used when he was talking about me in particular but he was talking about us at his rallies,” Goldberg said.
Hostin, a lawyer and senior legal correspondent for ABC News, quipped at Trump: “I admit, I may not have spent as much time in a courtroom as you have.” Then, referring to him being found liable for sexual abuse, she said, “I’ve had a history of prosecuting sex offenders, so thank you for keeping people like us in business.”
Trump has refuted the idea that his rhetoric is problematic, even as polls show he is viewed less favorably by women than by men. “The women want to see our country come back,” he said. “They don’t care.”
Sean ‘Diddy’ Combs to make 1st appearance before trial judge in sex trafficking case
NEW YORK | Sean “Diddy” Combs is set to make his first appearance before the judge who is expected to preside over the hip-hop powerbroker’s trial on sex trafficking charges.
Combs will be taken to Manhattan federal court from a Brooklyn jail for a Thursday afternoon appearance before Judge Arun Subramanian.
The hearing is expected to result in deadlines being set for lawyers on each side to submit arguments that will establish the boundaries for a trial that Combs’ lawyers want to start in April or May. Prosecutors have not expressed a preference for when the trial might occur.
The judge was assigned to the case after another judge recused himself based on his past associations with lawyers in the case.
Combs, 54, has pleaded not guilty to charges lodged against him last month. Those charges included racketeering conspiracy and sex trafficking based on allegations that date back to 2008.
An indictment alleges Combs coerced and abused women for years with help from a network of associates and employees while silencing victims through blackmail and violent acts including kidnapping, arson and physical beatings.
Late Wednesday, lawyers for Combs submitted court papers blaming the government’s Department of Homeland Security for a leak to the media of a video of Combs punching and kicking his former protege and girlfriend, the R&B singer Cassie, in a hotel hallway in 2016.
The lawyers claimed that the video aired by CNN in May along with other alleged government leaks “have led to damaging, highly prejudicial pretrial publicity that can only taint the jury pool and deprive Mr. Combs of his right to a fair trial.”
After the video was broadcast, Combs posted a social media video apologizing, saying: “I was disgusted when I did it” and “I’m disgusted now.”
Federal prosecutors responded to the defense lawyers’ claims by telling the judge in a letter that the government was not in possession of the video before it was aired on CNN.
Combs’ lawyers have been trying unsuccessfully to get the founder of Bad Boy Records freed on bail since his Sept. 16 arrest.
Two judges have concluded that Combs will be a danger to the community if he is freed. At a bail hearing three weeks ago, a judge rejected a $50 million bail package, including home detention and electronic monitoring, after concluding that Combs could tamper with witnesses and obstruct the continuing investigation.
In an appeal of the bail rulings to the 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, lawyers for Combs on Tuesday asked a panel of judges to reverse the bail findings, saying the proposed bail package “would plainly stop him from posing a danger to anyone or contacting any witnesses.”
They urged the appeals court to reject the findings of a lower-court judge who they said had “endorsed the government’s exaggerated rhetoric and ordered Mr. Combs detained.”
—From AP reports
