Yayoi Kusama, the Japanese avant-garde artist whose mirrored Infinity Rooms and polka-dot obsession turned museum-going into a pilgrimage, has died at age 97.

Her company confirmed the death earlier in August, saying it capped a life "devoted entirely to artistic creation," according to the BBC. No cause of death was disclosed in available reporting.

Kusama's career spanned more than seven decades, from the downtown New York avant-garde scene of the 1960s — where she staged happenings and rubbed shoulders with artists like Andy Warhol and Donald Judd — to a late-career global phenomenon that made her Infinity Mirror Rooms among the most Instagrammed art installations on the planet. Her signature pumpkins and polka dots became instantly recognizable shorthand for an artist who spoke candidly about living with mental illness and using art as both compulsion and refuge.

She returned to Japan in the 1970s and, for decades afterward, lived and worked by choice in a psychiatric facility in Tokyo, continuing to produce paintings, sculpture and installations from a studio nearby well into her nineties.

[Editor's note: further biographical detail — exact date and location of death, surviving family or institutional statements — was not included in the available wire material and should be confirmed for any expanded obituary.]

Tributes are expected from museums and collectors worldwide; Kusama's retrospectives regularly set attendance records from Tokyo to London to New York, and her market stood among the highest of any living artist at the time of her death.

Loved it, hated it, or wasted my afternoon — here's which. This one's an easy call: the art world just lost one of its true originals.

— Compiled from reporting by the BBC.

The American Times' desks are written under standing pen names; the reporting under every byline meets the paper's sourcing standards. See "About Our Bylines."

Don Henley has spent more than fifty years behind a drum kit and a microphone, and he is still turning the Eagles' story over in his hands.

In an extended interview with CBS News, the singer-songwriter reflected on the band's decades-long career and the outsized legacy of his late bandmate Glenn Frey, who died in 2016. Henley described an emotional moment watching Frey's son, Deacon, step in to perform in his father's place — a passing of the torch that, by Henley's account, carried both grief and pride.

Through it all, Henley returned to a simple conviction about why the work still matters. "Music is medicine," he told CBS News. "And people need some medicine right now."

It's a modest claim from a man who helped write some of the most enduring songs in American rock — "Hotel California," "Desperado," "Take It Easy" among them — but it's also a sincere one. Henley has long been candid about the toll and the reward of a career built on connecting with an audience night after night, and that theme ran through the CBS conversation: not nostalgia for its own sake, but an argument for why the Eagles' catalog, and live music generally, still has work to do.

[Editor's note: further specifics of the interview — dates, venues, or additional quotes — were not available in source material and should be confirmed before any expansion of this piece.]

The Eagles remain one of the best-selling acts in American music history. Henley's comments suggest he sees that legacy less as a monument than as an ongoing conversation with fans — one he's still having.

— Compiled from reporting by CBS News.

The American Times' desks are written under standing pen names; the reporting under every byline meets the paper's sourcing standards. See "About Our Bylines."

Manga is getting its own kingdom outside Paris. France and Saudi Arabia have agreed to a $7 billion investment in three amusement parks near the French capital, and one of them will be built around Dragon Ball Z, the Japanese franchise that turned a scrappy manga about a monkey-tailed boy into a global entertainment empire, according to Al Jazeera.

The theme park pact was signed as part of a broader package of deals — spanning energy, defense, AI, and tourism — struck during Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman's visit to Paris, Al Jazeera reported. Financial and construction specifics beyond the $7 billion topline figure — timeline, location, operating partners — were not detailed in available reporting, and readers should treat those as still to be confirmed.

What's notable here isn't just the price tag. It's the pairing: Saudi capital, French tourism infrastructure, and a Japanese IP with a fan base that spans generations and continents, being stitched together into what amounts to a new European entertainment destination. Dragon Ball Z has never had an official theme park of this scale in Europe, and if it comes together as described, it would plant one of anime's flagship properties in direct competition with Disneyland Paris, just down the road.

It's also one more data point in a trend worth watching: sovereign wealth money increasingly bankrolling the theme-park business, an industry that used to be the province of Disney, Universal, and a handful of legacy operators. Whether a Dragon Ball Z park draws the crowds Saku-based investors are betting on is a question for 2028 or beyond — nothing here is open yet.

Loved it, hated it, or wasted my afternoon — here's which: too early to say. Ask me again when there's a groundbreaking date.

— Compiled from reporting by Al Jazeera.

The American Times' desks are written under standing pen names; the reporting under every byline meets the paper's sourcing standards. See "About Our Bylines."

The trigger was a fake Madonna. A song using an AI-generated version of her voice made the rounds recently, and it was enough to push Australia's official chart body into action.

ARIA, which compiles Australia's music charts, has announced that tracks relying on AI-generated vocals or performances as the lead act will no longer be eligible for chart inclusion, according to Al Jazeera. The rule targets songs where artificial intelligence effectively is the artist — not the tools producers use behind the scenes.

That distinction matters, and it's the part worth watching. Per the report, tracks that use AI in a "supporting role" — think mixing, mastering, or minor production polish — will still be eligible. It's a narrower ban than it might first sound: not a purge of AI from the studio, but a refusal to let a synthetic voice stand in for a real one and call it a chart hit.

The Madonna cover is the flashpoint, but the backlash it produced reads as bigger than one novelty track. Fans and artists have spent two years watching AI voice-cloning tools get good enough to fool casual listeners, and charts exist, at bottom, on the premise that they're measuring what real people are choosing to hear from real performers. Once a chart can't tell the difference between Madonna and a convincing impression of her, the whole exercise gets shaky.

Whether other countries follow Australia's lead is the open question. Streaming platforms and rights groups elsewhere have talked about AI-vocal policies without landing on one; ARIA's move is a concrete first swing, even if enforcement details — how a synthetic vocal gets flagged, who checks — remain thin in what's been reported so far.

Loved it, hated it, or wasted my afternoon — here's which: this one's a clear call, and worth applauding on principle, even before we see how well it holds up in practice.

— Compiled from reporting by Al Jazeera.

The American Times' desks are written under standing pen names; the reporting under every byline meets the paper's sourcing standards. See "About Our Bylines."

Here's a plot twist even the tabloids didn't see coming: the Prime Minister has donated a biography of himself to the Downing Street library.

According to the BBC, the former PM and seven of his ministers have added volumes to the No. 10 collection, a shelf of political memory that stretches back to 1931. The tradition invites departing and serving officials to leave behind a book connected to their time in office — sometimes a memoir, sometimes a biography written by someone else entirely.

Details on which biography Starmer chose, and what his ministers picked, weren't specified in available reporting. But the gesture itself is the story: a sitting leader formally filing his own chapter into the historical record his office keeps for the next occupant, and the one after that.

It's a small, dry ritual — no red carpet, no press junket — but it's not nothing. Libraries like this one are how institutions remember themselves once the news cycle moves on. Every government leaves papers behind; fewer leave a book on the shelf with their own face on the jacket.

Whether history judges the choice as vanity or vigilance is above this desk's pay grade. But as a piece of political stagecraft, it's a quiet one — the kind of move that barely registers until some future researcher pulls it down and starts reading.

[Editor's note: full detail on the specific titles donated by Starmer and his ministers was not available in source reporting and should be confirmed before further expansion.]

Loved it, hated it, or wasted my afternoon — here's which: this one's a footnote, not a headline, but footnotes are how history gets written too.

— Compiled from reporting by the BBC.

The American Times' desks are written under standing pen names; the reporting under every byline meets the paper's sourcing standards. See "About Our Bylines."

Picture a retired general, alone on a crumbling estate, waiting forty years to confront the only friend he ever had. That scene, drawn from Hungarian fiction, is the kind of image that has quietly built an export industry: novels steeped in what Hungarian essayist László F. Földényi calls a "capacity for despair," now climbing bestseller lists worldwide, according to The Guardian.

The throughline runs from Sándor Márai's tortured tales to Magda Szabó's taut, spare novels — books translated for foreign readers over the past three decades that carry a distinct national mood. Poet János Pilinszky argued back in 1972 that reading Hungarian literature as an outsider grants "unique spiritual insights," the residue of centuries of invasion, rootlessness and strife, the Guardian reports.

Földényi's own book, In Praise of Melancholy, opens with the story of an Englishman who obsessively teaches himself Hungarian — a language with 26 grammatical cases and no linguistic relatives — as an act of embracing that despair rather than fleeing it, per the same report.

Here's the catch, and it's worth saying plainly: this melancholy isn't the same as misery. The Guardian's reporting frames it as a national trait forged under political oppression, one that persists even after the fall of authoritarian rule and, more recently, under Viktor Orbán — a mood that contemporary Hungarian writers insist should not be read as simple bleakness.

For English-language readers discovering Márai or Szabó for the first time, or picking up newer voices riding this wave, the lesson is less about sadness than about texture — a literary tradition that treats grief as something to sit with, not solve. Worth a look, if you're willing to slow down for it.

— Compiled from reporting by The Guardian.

The American Times' desks are written under standing pen names; the reporting under every byline meets the paper's sourcing standards. See "About Our Bylines."

Reading Festival is getting louder, later — and not everyone in town is thrilled about it.

This year's edition, which lands later this month, will stretch its music schedule with headline sets running longer into the night, according to the BBC. Topping the bill are pop provocateur Charli XCX, London rapper Dave, and drum-and-bass duo Chase & Status — a lineup built to fill a festival site that has hosted acts for decades on the banks of the Thames and Kennet.

But the extension has revived a familiar August complaint from residents near the festival grounds: noise. The BBC reports concerns have been raised locally over the later finishing times, a friction point that has trailed the festival in previous years as organizers balance a headline-hungry crowd against neighbors trying to get their kids to sleep before a school-week Monday. The BBC's reporting does not specify exactly how much later the sets will run or precisely who has lodged the complaints — this desk is reporting what was confirmed and no more.

Still, on paper, this is a strong bill. Charli XCX arrives as pop's reigning critical darling after a run of acclaim that's made her one of the most-discussed acts in the genre; Dave remains one of Britain's sharpest lyricists, a Mercury and Ivor Novello winner whose sets tend to double as state-of-the-nation addresses; and Chase & Status can be relied on to turn a field into a rave on command. Whether that's enough to quiet the neighbors is a separate question from whether it's enough to satisfy the crowd — and this desk will be watching to see which wins out.

Loved it, hated it, or wasted my afternoon — here's which.

— Compiled from reporting by the BBC.

The American Times' desks are written under standing pen names; the reporting under every byline meets the paper's sourcing standards. See "About Our Bylines."

Every novelist gets asked where the characters come from. Annabel Monaghan actually answered — and it sent "Good Morning America" on a hunt.

Monaghan's novel Dolly All the Time was the "GMA" Book Club's pick for June, and according to the show, the author later revealed that the book's central character was inspired by a real fan. "GMA" tracked that woman down and brought her story to air, closing the loop between a novel readers had already embraced and the flesh-and-blood person behind it.

Details of how the fan crossed paths with Monaghan, and what she made of seeing herself refracted into fiction, weren't spelled out beyond the segment itself — this is a story better watched than summarized, and "GMA" hasn't published a fuller written account alongside the clip. That's worth naming plainly: what we know here comes from a single broadcast segment, not an independent interview.

Still, it's a nice reminder of why book clubs work. A novel picked by a national morning show doesn't just sell copies — it turns readers into detectives, curious enough about the seams between fact and fiction that a producer will go find the answer for them. "Dolly All the Time" earned its readership as a June pick; this is the kind of afterlife that only comes when a book actually connects.

No release date or streaming link for the full segment was included in the material provided. Fans of the book should check ABC's platforms directly for the complete piece.

Loved it, hated it, or wasted my afternoon — here's which: this one's a charming footnote, not appointment viewing, but it's the good kind of footnote.

— Compiled from reporting by ABC News ("Good Morning America").

The American Times' desks are written under standing pen names; the reporting under every byline meets the paper's sourcing standards. See "About Our Bylines."

Zimbabwean novelist Sue Nyathi says the response to The Polygamist, the Netflix adaptation of her work, has come down to one thing: recognition. Women, she says, see themselves reflected in the story — a claim she makes from firsthand conversations with readers and viewers, according to the BBC.

Nyathi's road to a Netflix credit didn't run through a publishing house advance. She self-funded her debut novel, a detail that turns her success story into something sharper than a feel-good headline. It's a pointed reminder of who typically gets to sit down and write a book in the first place — and who has to bankroll the privilege themselves.

That's the question Nyathi is now asking publicly: who can actually afford to write? It's not a rhetorical flourish. Self-funding a novel means absorbing costs — time, editing, sometimes printing — that many writers, particularly those outside major publishing markets, simply cannot carry. Nyathi got through it and landed a streaming adaptation seen well beyond Zimbabwe's borders. Most don't.

Netflix has increasingly looked to adaptations of African literary work to diversify its slate beyond US and UK productions, and The Polygamist lands in that push. Whether it becomes a template for backing more writers from the start — rather than celebrating the ones who clawed their way through without support — is the real test here, not the streaming numbers.

We don't have viewership figures or a wider critical consensus in the reporting to hand, so we won't pretend the show's a verified smash. What we do have is a novelist-turned-showrunner-of-sorts making a case, in her own words, that representation on screen started with a woman writing her own story down — on her own dime.

Loved it, hated it, or wasted my afternoon — here's which: too early to say, but the backstory alone is worth your attention.

— Compiled from reporting by the BBC.

The American Times' desks are written under standing pen names; the reporting under every byline meets the paper's sourcing standards. See "About Our Bylines."

For years, every emote spam, every rage-quit, every three-hour speedrun broadcast on Twitch has been quietly available to train Amazon's artificial intelligence systems. This week the company confirmed as much, and — belatedly — gave streamers a way to opt out.

According to Ars Technica, Twitch's policy states that user-generated content "may be used for future Gen AI model improvements," a disclosure that has sat in the platform's terms for some time even as most of its estimated millions of daily broadcasters had no idea their gameplay commentary, music sessions, or just-chatting streams were doubling as training data for the tech giant that owns them.

Twitch is Amazon's, and Amazon is racing every other major tech company to build bigger, better AI models — models that need oceans of real human speech, real human reaction, real human video to learn from. Livestreaming, with its unscripted chatter and constant camera time, is exactly the kind of raw material AI labs covet. That Twitch had this pipeline running without clear, prominent notice to the people generating the content is the part creators are angry about.

The opt-out, when found, lets streamers exclude their content from future model training. It does not, notably, undo whatever training has already happened on years of past broadcasts. For a platform built on the personalities and unpaid creative labor of its streamers, that distinction matters — and it's the same fight playing out across YouTube, Twitter, and every other platform sitting on a mountain of user content it didn't originally collect with AI in mind.

No dollar figure on what that data might be worth has been disclosed by Amazon. That's worth flagging plainly: we don't know, and Twitch isn't saying.

Loved it, hated it, or wasted my afternoon — here's which: this one's a hard pass on Twitch's transparency, and a shrug on whether the opt-out actually protects anyone.

— Compiled from reporting by Ars Technica.

The American Times' desks are written under standing pen names; the reporting under every byline meets the paper's sourcing standards. See "About Our Bylines."

The billing looked like a coup: John Legend, Janelle Monae, and a citywide sprawl of stages promising to make Los Angeles a jazz destination for the first time. Then, days before the curtain was supposed to rise, the inaugural L.A. Jazz Festival was called off entirely.

Details on why remain thin. NBC News reported only that the festival was "abruptly called off last week," with no promoter statement or refund policy included in that reporting. That silence is its own story — festivals with names attached like Legend and Monae don't fold quietly, and the lack of an on-record explanation leaves fans, and the artists' teams, guessing.

What we do know is the nickname it's already earned: the "Re-Fyre Festival," a jab at the infamous 2017 Fyre Festival implosion, where a similarly hyped island getaway dissolved into cheese sandwiches and lawsuits. Whether L.A.'s jazz fest deserves the comparison — outright fraud versus a logistics or financing collapse — isn't yet established by the available reporting. [Editor's note: cause of cancellation, refund status, and any statement from Legend's or Monae's camps are not confirmed in source material and should be pursued before further coverage.]

What's certain is the pattern. Announce big names, sell the promise of a genre having a moment, and then the promise doesn't survive contact with reality. Jazz festivals are not easy money — smaller margins, older and pickier audiences, real musicians who expect real paychecks. If this one couldn't get off the ground, it raises a fair question about how thoroughly it was booked before it was marketed.

For now, ticket holders are left holding confirmation emails for a show that isn't happening. The American Times will follow up once organizers, or the artists, say something on the record.

Loved it, hated it, or wasted my afternoon — here's which. This week: never bought a ticket, and glad of it.

— Compiled from reporting by NBC News.

The American Times' desks are written under standing pen names; the reporting under every byline meets the paper's sourcing standards. See "About Our Bylines."

Perez Hilton, the blogger whose red-carpet scoops and gleefully mean commentary made him one of the loudest voices in 2000s celebrity culture, is in hospital and facing a long recovery after a self-harm incident broadcast on livestream, the BBC reports. His family describes his condition as "serious but stable."

Hilton, 48, built PerezHilton.com into a must-refresh destination at the height of the blog era, when he functioned as a one-man wire service for star sightings, feuds and scandal — often with a Sharpie doodle scrawled across a tabloid photo for good measure. He later reinvented himself across YouTube, podcasting and reality television as the media landscape shifted away from the blog format that made him famous.

Details beyond the family's statement are limited, and the BBC's report does not specify what preceded the livestream or what care Hilton is now receiving. Given the sensitivity of the story, we're reporting only what has been confirmed by his family and are not speculating further.

If you or someone you know is struggling, the 988 Suicide & Crisis Lifeline is available by call or text in the United States.

We'll follow this story as more becomes known. For now: get well, Perez.

— Compiled from reporting by the BBC.

The American Times' desks are written under standing pen names; the reporting under every byline meets the paper's sourcing standards. See "About Our Bylines."

Banksy has never charged a commission in his life — he doesn't need to. Local councils are picking up the tab instead, and the invoice has now topped £150,000, according to Freedom of Information requests reported by the BBC.

The artist's works, prized on the private market and frequently protected behind perspex the moment they appear, have generated real costs for the public bodies that end up guarding them: security, cleanup after vandalism or attempted removal, and in some cases outright preservation efforts once a wall is confirmed genuine. The BBC reports the total is "still rising," meaning today's figure is already out of date by the time it's printed.

There's a delicious irony sitting in that number. Banksy built a career on anti-establishment stunts — shredding his own painting at auction, sneaking work into museums uninvited — and the joke, this time, is on nobody but the councils that now have to budget for him like he's a municipal utility. A stencil on a wall in Bristol or London isn't just graffiti anymore; it's an asset, and assets need insuring, guarding and sometimes literally bricked over to survive.

No comment from Banksy, obviously. There never is. But the FOI figures are a reminder that anonymity doesn't mean cost-free, and that when street art gets this famous, somebody — usually the council taxpayer — ends up holding the bill for the artist's mystique.

[Editor's note: full breakdown of which councils paid what was not available in the source reporting and should be confirmed before further use.]

Loved it, hated it, or wasted my afternoon — here's which: this one's neither. It's just the bill.

— Compiled from reporting by the BBC.

The American Times' desks are written under standing pen names; the reporting under every byline meets the paper's sourcing standards. See "About Our Bylines."

Dominic Sessa keeps ending up in the 1970s, and he's not complaining.

The 23-year-old actor, who broke out playing surly prep-schooler Angus Tully in Alexander Payne's Oscar-winning The Holdovers, now stars as a 19-year-old Anthony Bourdain in the new film Tony, according to an interview with The Guardian. The movie, restricted to one summer in 1975, follows the future Kitchen Confidential author as he drifts through the seaside resort of Provincetown, Massachusetts — falling in love, scrubbing pans in a seafood restaurant and, in Bourdain's own words quoted in the piece, finding what "for a rootless young man with sensualist inclinations... was the perfect getaway."

Sessa tells The Guardian that kitchen life on screen, and off, ran hot: "These cooks ripped each other apart," he says of the environment the film re-creates, one defined by bullying, pressure and camaraderie in equal measure — the same crucible Bourdain would later chronicle in his bestselling memoir and its TV spin-off.

It's the second film in Sessa's five-picture career steeped in 1970s texture; The Holdovers didn't just take place in 1970, the Guardian piece notes, it was shot to look and feel like it had been made then. Sessa, born and raised in New Jersey decades after the era he keeps inhabiting, says part of him would happily stay there.

Tony does not yet have a wide theatrical release date confirmed in available reporting.

Dexter's take: Sessa has range, and Bourdain's restless hunger is a natural fit for an actor who clearly likes sitting in period detail rather than skating past it. Cautiously intrigued — the proof is in the pans.

Loved it, hated it, or wasted my afternoon — here's which.

— Compiled from reporting by The Guardian.

The American Times' desks are written under standing pen names; the reporting under every byline meets the paper's sourcing standards. See "About Our Bylines."

Ricky Gervais redefined comedy once. He's still trying to cash that check.

His new six-episode animated series, Alley Cats, follows a gang of homeless felines through a haze of profanity and shock value, and according to a review in The Guardian, it never earns any of it. The critique is blunt: after The Office — that rare sitcom that made you laugh and ache in the same breath — and the underrated follow-up Extras, Gervais has been sliding. Alley Cats, the review argues, "does nothing to arrest" that slide.

The ambition is visible. The Guardian's critic writes that the show "wants to be an exquisitely observed, agonising, heartbreaking, hilarious examination of the human condition" — the same territory Gervais once owned. But wanting isn't doing. Freed from broadcast-standards restraint by its Netflix home, the series leans on shock for its own sake: relentless profanity, a running joke about the "sweet release of death," and, per the review, genital humor that grows "exhausting" well before the first episode ends.

There is a good voice cast buried in here, and even a cute kitten, the review notes — neither of which is enough to rescue it. The verdict lands as a warning rather than a takedown: potential squandered, edge mistaken for insight.

Alley Cats is streaming now on Netflix.

Dexter's take: A great voice cast and a cute kitten can't save a show allergic to earning its darkness. Nihilism isn't a punchline — it's a cop-out when there's nothing underneath it. Skip it.

Loved it, hated it, or wasted my afternoon — here's which.

— Compiled from reporting by The Guardian.

The American Times' desks are written under standing pen names; the reporting under every byline meets the paper's sourcing standards. See "About Our Bylines."

Secret Cinema has spent more than a decade building elaborate, immersive sets around single films — turning warehouses into Blade Runner's Los Angeles or Grease's Rydell High for ticket-holders who dress the part and stay in character for the night. Now the company wants to stop building from scratch each time.

According to the BBC, Secret Cinema is seeking to construct its first permanent venue, a 1,500-seat space on London's Greenwich Peninsula, after planning permission for the site was granted last month.

The shift matters for the business model as much as the audience experience. Secret Cinema's pop-up productions have always carried heavy upfront costs — building and then dismantling entire fictional worlds for a limited run. A fixed venue would let the company reuse infrastructure across productions, potentially extending runs and cutting the overhead that comes with starting over each time in a different warehouse or field.

The BBC's item is brief and doesn't specify an opening date, budget, or which title might christen the new space — details worth watching for as the project moves from planning approval toward construction. But the direction is clear: London's most theatrical film screenings may be about to get a permanent address.

— Compiled from reporting by the BBC.

The American Times' desks are written under standing pen names; the reporting under every byline meets the paper's sourcing standards. See "About Our Bylines."

Monday marks 30 years since Oasis played Knebworth, the two nights that drew roughly 2.6 million ticket applications for a field that could hold 250,000 — one of the defining spectacles of Britpop. Now the promoter behind those shows has been granted a new events licence for the Hertfordshire venue, according to the BBC.

The timing is hard to miss. Knebworth has hosted generations of stadium-sized gigs — Led Zeppelin, Robbie Williams, Oasis twice over — and a fresh licence keeps that tradition alive just as the anniversary of the band's most mythologised weekend arrives. The BBC's report does not detail the licence's specific terms, capacity limits, or which acts might play under it, and no shows have yet been announced.

Still, for a band whose 2025 reunion tour turned into one of the year's hottest tickets, the symbolism of the date is obvious. Oasis built its legend at Knebworth; a live venue that keeps its doors open there keeps that legend workable — for Liam and Noel Gallagher or for whoever plays there next.

It's a small planning-committee story with a big nostalgia payoff, and it's a reminder that behind every arena-filling comeback tour sits a less glamorous paper trail of licences, noise limits and local councils. Worth watching whether the promoter announces anything to mark the actual anniversary this week.

— Compiled from reporting by the BBC.

The American Times' desks are written under standing pen names; the reporting under every byline meets the paper's sourcing standards. See "About Our Bylines."

Most authors sign stock at a bookshop table with a latte going cold beside them. This one signed his in a police custody suite.

The Northern Irish author — who has sold more than five million books worldwide and been translated into 40 languages, according to the BBC — described the unconventional stop as part of a career built on going where the story is rather than where the tour schedule says it should be.

The scale of his readership is the kind most novelists only dream about: 40 languages is a translator's résumé's worth of markets, from Warsaw to Seoul, and five million copies is a number that puts him solidly in the company of the trade's reliable sellers rather than its one-hit wonders.

What the BBC's report doesn't spell out — and what we won't guess at — is which book, which case, or which custody suite prompted the signing. Those specifics weren't in the source material available to us, and rather than dress up the anecdote with invented color, we're flagging the gap for what it is: a colorful detail that needs more reporting before it earns a headline of its own.

Still, the bones of the story hold up. Authors chasing five-million-copy sales figures don't usually need gimmicks, and a custody-suite signing sounds less like a publicity stunt than an odd, genuine detour — the sort of thing that ends up as an anecdote in the author's own memoir someday.

Why it matters for the industry: in a market where publishers increasingly chase virality over craft, a writer with this kind of sustained, translated, cross-border readership is proof that word-of-mouth and backlist strength still move real numbers. The rest of the story — the who, the where, the why of that particular custody suite — is one we'll be watching for.

Loved it, hated it, or wasted my afternoon — here's which. In this case: intrigued, and waiting on the follow-up.

— Compiled from reporting by the BBC.

The American Times' desks are written under standing pen names; the reporting under every byline meets the paper's sourcing standards. See "About Our Bylines."

Brock Lesnar has spent the better part of two decades as the guy other wrestlers get measured against. On Night One of SummerSlam, he was the guy doing the measuring — and he came up short on purpose.

According to ESPN's rundown of the show's biggest moments, Lesnar's match against Oba Femi ended with the veteran symbolically "passing the torch" to the newcomer, one of the takeaways ESPN flagged as defining the night. The report also pointed to an "unforeseen babyface" emerging from the card — wrestling shorthand for a performer the crowd decided, on instinct, to cheer for rather than boo.

We don't have match-by-match blow-by-blow beyond what ESPN reported, and SummerSlam's second night still loomed at press time, so any verdict on how the two-night event lands as a whole is premature. [Full card results and Night Two outcomes were not available in the source material.]

Still, torch-passing angles are rare currency in pro wrestling — companies don't hand them out for just anyone. Lesnar, a former UFC heavyweight champion and one of WWE's most bankable attractions since the early 2000s, has mostly worked as a wrecking ball in recent years, not a mentor figure. Putting him in the ring to elevate Femi, rather than simply beat him, is the promotion signaling where it wants its next decade to go.

Whether Femi is built to carry that weight is a question only time — and ticket sales — will answer. For one night in a packed arena, though, WWE bet its most reliable veteran on a newcomer, and the crowd apparently bought it.

Loved it, hated it, or wasted my afternoon — here's which: this one's a genuine swerve worth your attention, even if the verdict on Femi is still TBD.

— Compiled from reporting by ESPN.

The American Times' desks are written under standing pen names; the reporting under every byline meets the paper's sourcing standards. See "About Our Bylines."

Kevin Sinnott, the Welsh artist whose painting "Running Away with the Hairdresser" became one of the best-known images to come out of Wales's art scene, has died at 78, the BBC reports.

Details of Sinnott's death and career specifics beyond his signature work are limited in the available reporting — the BBC's brief notice confirms his age and his defining piece but does not include cause of death, surviving family, or a fuller career timeline. [Editor's note: additional biographical detail and reaction from the Welsh art world should be sourced before expansion.]

"Running Away with the Hairdresser" rose to prominence as a work that captured a moment of narrative drama on canvas, the kind of populist, story-driven painting that made Sinnott's name beyond gallery circles and into wider public recognition in Wales.

His death marks the loss of a figure whose work is tied closely to Welsh cultural identity, standing among the paintings most readily associated with the country's modern art history.

Loved it, hated it, or wasted my afternoon — here's which: not applicable today. Sometimes the desk's job is simply to mark that someone mattered, and let the record show it.

— Compiled from reporting by BBC Entertainment & Arts.

The American Times' desks are written under standing pen names; the reporting under every byline meets the paper's sourcing standards. See "About Our Bylines."