When people think about getting older, many picture an inevitable decline in health.
But that isn’t always the case. You can improve with age, both mentally and physically. This mindset may even be beneficial; having negative ideas about aging is linked to worse health outcomes, almost like a self-fulfilling prophecy.
While the aging process, like life as a whole, varies from person to person, research shows that there are aspects of brain health that can actually continue improving well past your midlife. Here are three examples of the silver linings to going gray.
Fewer regrets
Living without regrets is a common maxim but an uncommon reality. About 90% of people say they have at least one major life regret, research shows.
“Many of us might worry that we will reach the end of life and have these really big regrets that we can never resolve, and they may take some solace in knowing that that is a very, very common experience,” said Julia Nolte, an assistant professor of economic psychology at Tilburg University in the Netherlands.
But getting older seems to lessen both the sting and the frequency of regrets.
In a recent study published in the journal Emotion, Nolte and her colleagues analyzed how age affected feelings of major regret in 90 adults ranging in age from 21 to 89. Older adults reported they had fewer major regrets within the past year than younger adults. In fact, older adults were more likely to say they didn’t have any recent regrets. And when older adults did have a major recent regret, they were less likely to be about relationships or their dealings with other people.
In older adults, major regrets both recent and lifelong were more likely to be about missed opportunities or the road not taken. Also, older adults had fewer “hot” emotions such as anger or frustration in response to thoughts of what might have been.
“Older adults tend to be more likely to say, ‘I don’t have recent big regrets,’” and when they do, the negative emotions are less impactful, said Nolte, who conducted the study when she was a psychology graduate student at Cornell University. “I think that that’s something to look forward to and to help decrease these age-related negative stereotypes a lot of us carry.”
More knowledge
As you age, you might be more forgetful and slower at mental processing. But on average, older adults actually perform better on tests requiring knowledge or language.
For example, adults in their 70s and 80s scored higher on vocabulary knowledge than those in the 20s, 30s, and 40s, according to a large 2019 study.
Your ability to quickly reason through and adapt to new situations — called fluid intelligence — tends to peak in early to middle adulthood, around your 20s by some measures. But your ability to apply all your accumulated experiences, facts, and skills — known as crystallized intelligence — remains stable or continues to improve through the seventh decade of life, research finds.
A 2022 study, which followed almost 9,000 adults for up to 18 years, found normal age-related decline of fluid abilities was still largely linked with increased crystallized abilities.
As you get older, your hard-won knowledge and experience may still be growing.
More wisdom
Older people may not only continue to grow in knowledge, but also in wisdom.
Wisdom is a complex personality trait that includes having empathy and compassion, as well as the ability to self-reflect, self-regulate, and accept different perspectives, said Dilip Jeste, a geriatric neuropsychiatrist and president of the World Federation for Psychotherapy, who has researched wisdom since 2008.
Having higher wisdom is linked to better overall health and emotional well-being throughout the lifespan, research shows.
There’s evidence that older adults on average measure higher than younger adults on different components of wisdom, including empathy, emotional regulation, and self-reflection, Jeste said.
Not everyone who gets old is necessarily wise — there are many ready examples to the contrary. But by and large, “people who have these components of wisdom, as they get older, they tend to become wiser,” said Jeste, who wrote a 2025 review on wisdom and aging.
For example, during the isolation and uncertainty of the COVID-19 pandemic, everyone felt lonelier. But unexpectedly, older people generally fared better with their mental health than younger people.
When researchers asked why the older people had better resilience despite being at higher risk, “they said, we have been through problems like this before when we were growing up,” said Jeste, who wrote about this finding.
Ask a teen what they want to be when they grow up, and there’s a fair chance being an influencer is on their list.
Digital media and the people who star in it have been cultural mainstays for teens’ entire lives, so creating social media, video, or podcast content seems a natural, albeit nontraditional, career path. And now they can earn a college degree in that very field.
Arizona State University recently launched a new bachelor’s degree in content creation, offered through its Walter Cronkite School of Journalism and Mass Communication. The curriculum overlaps with that of ASU’s mass communication and media studies degree, with the major departure being a slate of specialized electives on podcasting, studio production, and on-camera presence.
ASU’s announcement was met with swift criticism from many sides — from people who feel content creation is not a legitimate profession to those who question the value of a college degree in launching a social media career.
But the ASU program is not the first of its kind.
And the university, which declined an interview request about the new program, is not the first to offer content-creation courses.
Universities, eager to compete for a shrinking student population, are rolling out new majors intended to prepare students for today’s careers. Whether they lead to jobs can be up for debate.
College courses in content creation have riled critics
Many higher education institutions have started offering classes focused on the burgeoning content-creation industry over the past couple years, and several have certificate or minor programs. Syracuse University, Quinnipiac University, and Colorado State University offer minors, and St. Bonaventure University announced a content-creation major last winter.
To Brooke Erin Duffy, a communication professor at Cornell University, these college programs represent an inflection point. During the past year, Duffy said, institutions in education and beyond have been acknowledging content creation as a viable career path — even if the term influencer itself hits a nerve.
On social media, influencers are everywhere, sharing shopping recommendations and lifestyle content or promoting beliefs about health or politics. Because even influencers with relatively small followings have loyal audiences, brands also often pay them to talk about products.
The image of a prototypical influencer, Duffy said, is usually a “young girl who is snapping selfies and just reaping in tremendous rewards for seemingly not doing anything.”
But that’s not the reality for many content creators, who are working on media production, audience retention strategies, brand partnerships, and business relationships associated with their online presence.
“It is a time-consuming, labor-intensive job that often doesn’t pay well — at least in the beginning,” Duffy said. “But a lot of that gets concealed behind … this assumption that it’s a dream job.”
The creator economy is booming, but not everyone reaps the riches
Even if someone has the skills to make it in content creation, it isn’t easy to break in.
Social media is already a crowded field, and it’s going to get even more competitive in the coming years, said Max Willens, a principal analyst at Emarketer who covers the creator economy.
Emarketer forecasts that social media creator revenue in the U.S. will climb above $20 billion this year, but Willens said it’s important to contextualize what that means for individual creators.
“The overwhelming majority of that money is not going into creators’ pockets,” he said, even though their content and their followers form the foundation of the lucrative field.
Influencers can earn money from social media platforms, which reward high engagement, and some earn commission if people buy a product they’re promoting. But the largest share of influencers’ earnings comes from sponsored content — getting paid to talk about a brand or product. Willens said he expects the amount brands spend distributing and amplifying creator content will eventually surpass the amount creators earn making it.
The idea that a specialized college degree will “suddenly turn people into viral content machines deserves a bit of a reality check,” Willens said.
Duffy noted that becoming an influencer often is perceived, incorrectly, as a path to get rich quick. Colleges that introduce content-creation degrees may be hoping to attract new students — and their parents — who are looking for “a job that will pay off,” Duffy said. “Whether or not it does is another story.”
A degree’s price is also a factor: At ASU, base tuition for Arizona residents is about $12,000 per academic year, excluding scholarships, but the total cost of attendance can exceed $37,000 after factoring in room, board, and other fees. For students from outside of Arizona, tuition is more than $35,000 and the total cost of attendance is around $60,000 before scholarships.
Creators see value and transferable skills in these programs
While many content-creation students may be hoping to become viral sensations, Phoenix-based creator Aiesha Beasley said she could see programs like ASU’s being valuable even to those without that dream.
“Having a digital presence and a personal brand is very important nowadays,” Beasley said. Building a platform and sharing that personal brand online can help a person network and gain entry to settings they may not have had access to otherwise, she said.
Beasley, who has been a full-time content creator for three years after more than a decade posting online, works with small businesses to help optimize their social media presence. She noted that ASU’s courses would teach several transferable skills in fields such as communications and marketing.
Content creator and actor Sammy Cristerna graduated from Arizona State University this spring with a degree in sociology and political science, but said he “absolutely” would have taken classes in the content-creation program and considered the major if it had been available.
The courses, Cristerna said, would have been useful in learning how to negotiate brand deals, maximize monetization opportunities, and cultivate and keep an audience. Some of those skills can be self-taught through experience, he added. Still, “it’s nice to have that formal education.”
The one thing Cristerna said he isn’t sure will translate in the classroom is personality.
To connect on camera, a person needs to have “good energy,” he said. “That’s hard to teach.”
Target Corp. has long struggled with its grocery identity: whether it wants to be a discounts-driven everyday chain or a cool, zeitgeisty retailer. Its latest big bet indicates it’s chosen the latter.
The company has been overhauling its grocery aisles since the spring, hoping the upscale Tarzhay success it once had with stylish apparel and home goods in the early 2000s can be revived in food. It’s expanding the size of the section by more than 20% in nearly 150 remodeled stores and more than 50% in 300 new locations, carving out additional space for fresh produce and trendy items while cutting back on some pantry staples that shoppers aren’t buying or can get elsewhere.
The strategy, intended to help reverse three years of weak sales, contrasts with what rivals in the $1 trillion U.S. grocery industry are doing. As competition intensifies, Walmart and Kroger are lowering prices across the board to appeal to inflation-weary, cost-conscious consumers. Target’s share is tiny in comparison, and the pressure is on to sell the right products at the right price or risk falling further behind.
At a Target store in West Hollywood, Calif., the coffee aisle is stocked with pink and green packages of collagen-infused strawberry matcha latte powder and mushroom-coffee brands Ryze and Everyday Dose. Nearby, healthier packaged food additions include gluten-free pumpkin spice cereal, sour melon candy made with less sugar, and Khloé Kardashian’s protein-dusted popcorn. Target is also broadening its Asian food selection, giving prime shelf space to sesame miso noodles, jars of chili crisp, and peach-flavored soju.
Several shoppers said they’d noticed new brands and layout improvements, but the changes hadn’t yet made a difference in how they shop at the chain.
“I’m just buying groceries out of the convenience of already being here,” said Emma Woods, 29, as she grabbed a few items, including Frosted Flakes and Yoplait, for an upcoming girls weekend. She said she still prefers to do the bulk of her food shopping at Whole Foods Market, Ralphs, and Trader Joe’s.
“The selection just isn’t as large as a larger grocery store that I could go to, and I think the prices aren’t as competitive,” the dancer from Los Angeles said. “For me, it might be a lost cause.”
Dwarfed by grocery rivals
The grocery makeover is a crucial piece of Target’s attempt to rejuvenate its operations and boost traffic. The retailer estimates the move will generate more than $2 billion in growth over the next few years.
Since 2023, revenue has been shrinking as shoppers spend at a slow pace because some of the merchandise hasn’t been resonating the way it did in the past. New chief executive officer Michael Fiddelke has pledged to improve Target’s product assortment, store experience, and technology, identifying food among the primary areas of focus along with baby, home, apparel, toys, gadgets, and sports.
Target for years has debated how much food to sell and how to pitch itself against competitors. It’s sold many packaged goods, which have a simpler supply chain, rather than a full-fledged offering. As a result, food has been an afterthought for many shoppers, tacked on to the end of their Target runs or a holdover in between their main grocery trips.
“I don’t think people wake up and say, ‘I need groceries, I’m going to go to Target,’” said Joe Feldman, an analyst at Telsey Advisory Group.
Target wants that to change and sees significant opportunity: More than half of its customers buy groceries when they shop at the chain. And food, which makes up less than 25% of its revenue, has been growing faster than most divisions.
So far this year, Target has added roughly 4,600 new food items — including probiotic coconut yogurt, mini rice cakes drizzled with chocolate, and frozen sour candy mixes — and more than 60 new brands during the second quarter. The retailer expanded the space allotted for Asian food products by about 75% and beefed up offerings of noodles and snacks in the category after sales rose more than 25% in the last year.
“Food and beverage is a powerful opportunity to make life easier for busy families and drive our business forward,” John Conlin, senior vice president of food and beverage merchandising at Target, said in a statement. Its grocery offerings, which have had strong sales momentum, are deepening customer loyalty and driving more frequent trips, he said.
But Target has substantial ground to make up. The retailer is dwarfed by Walmart, Costco, and Kroger, whose food businesses are roughly 12 times, six times, and five times bigger, respectively. Like Target, the three giants are increasingly selling trendier items — but they’re also using their scale to lower prices and emphasize value at a time when budget-conscious consumers are searching for bargains. U.S. food prices are expected to rise further in the back half of the year.
Shoppers buy groceries at a Walmart Superstore in Secaucus, N.J., in 2024. Walmart’s food business is roughly 12 times that of Target.Eduardo Munoz Alvarez
Walmart, known for offering affordable everyday goods, has said it will continue to lower prices. After announcing summertime deals in July, Walmart U.S. chief merchandising officer Julie Barber told staff that when the company leans on value, customers respond. “From beef and fresh produce to beverages, grilling essentials, toys and more, these investments reinforce what customers expect from Walmart: incredible value when it matters most,” she wrote in a memo viewed by Bloomberg News.
Kroger has pledged to make the biggest price cuts in years to compete more effectively. New CEO Greg Foran, a former Walmart executive, told Bloomberg that prices have to come down across thousands of items and that the company would save costs by importing merchandise and using technology more effectively. Costco, meanwhile, is lowering prices of eggs, beef, and other items.
Target lags many rivals when it comes to price. Identical national-brand food items cost about 5% more at the chain than they do at Walmart, according to data firm Attain, and one of the widest price gaps between the two is found in the snack section. It found that meat prices are relatively similar. Target said it’s priced competitively in food staples.
Curating a treasure hunt
Target is carving its own path. Instead of doing it all, the company is focusing on curation, a spokesperson said. It’s doubling down in areas where consumers are showing stronger interest, carrying an assortment of national, emerging, and store brands that reflects “evolving tastes, interests, and wellness needs.”
The hope is that refreshed food aisles filled with coveted, unique products will become the reason people visit. With some new items, Target said, shoppers are willing to spend more to try them.
Shoppers check out the food selection at a Target store at the Springfield Mall in Delaware County in 2009.CHARLES FOX / Staff Photographer
“It has never been able to crack it in food,” said Jackie Lewis, a market intelligence lead at consultancy Harvest Group. “They are finally embracing the mantra that works for them in the rest of the store: exclusivity, buzziness.”
The changes are helping attract more shoppers and creating a treasure hunt experience, with Target’s food sales growing in dollars and outpacing total company growth, according to Harvest Group’s analysis.
“I buy more here now than I did previously,” said Sean Wesslund, a 40-year-old human resources consultant, while shopping at a Target in Highland Park, Ill. The store recently began offering more sustainable, healthier options such as regenerative organic certified coffee, which he likes to purchase along with basics like cereal, granola bars, and cheese. He said he sees Target becoming a cross between Whole Foods and Albertsons.
At a Target in Falls Church, Va., Sam Fowler and his fiancée, Lindsay Nesmith, were perusing the display of noodles, including Buldak spicy ramen.
“Things we would go to H Mart for, they now have here,” said Fowler, a 26-year-old TV producer. The couple does most of their shopping for bulk goods at Costco, but will supplement at Target for meals they are cooking that evening.
Grocery is among a number of areas that Target is reworking. The company is adding new, exclusive items across its baby department and expanding concierge services where shoppers can get one-on-one guidance from experts. It’s launching beauty studios in hundreds of stores, and offering more trading cards and cell phone accessories across its entertainment, toys, and tech section.
In March, Fiddelke unveiled a $6 billion plan to reverse Target’s sales slump and to reclaim the retailer’s reputation as a place to go for affordable yet stylish apparel and home goods.
Target recruited fashion designer and TV personality Isaac Mizrahi this summer to fill the newly created role of creative director at large. Mizrahi has been brought in to mentor Target designers, advise on product design and innovation, and forge new partnerships.
Fiddelke is also remodeling Target stores and improving staffing. The company has more than 100 full-scale remodels underway, with a goal of reaching 130 this year, Fiddelke said Tuesday.
Second-quarter sales results released Wednesday suggest the changes are having an impact. The CEO said the latest quarter was “an important step forward in the plan we laid out earlier this year to open a new chapter of growth for Target.”
Target also reported an increase in the number of customers going to its stores and shopping on its website from May through July.
“We’re encouraged by the progress made so far, and we’re also clear-eyed about the important work still ahead,” Fiddelke said.
Executives at several upstart food brands said they’re encouraged by the revamp. Many have inked exclusive deals with Target, ensuring their products are sold only at the chain.
Snackish, a new clean-label potato chip brand, launched nationwide in June only at Target. The Snackish customer “wants to be the first one of her friend group to find the new thing that’s trendy” and is Instagramming her finds, founder Tara Bosch said. “We wanted to show up where she is and Target is where she shops.”
Scoot, a brand of frozen lemonade pouches, highlights on its packaging that it’s only available at Target, complete with the retailer’s bullseye logo. This summer, refrigerated dough brand Sweet Loren’s rolled out its first exclusive-to-Target item: a snickerdoodle cookie dough. The company was confident it would draw new customers into Target, founder and CEO Loren Castle said.
“These emerging brands, these better-for-you brands are actually what the Target guest is looking for,” she said. “It’s the reason they’re able to compete in grocery. It’s what they’re relying on to build the future.”
Shopper Joy Shaw isn’t so sure. She went to the West Hollywood Target for school supplies this month and figured she’d also grab “lunch box stuff” including string cheese, cheddar squares, Sun Chips, and Activia yogurt drinks. The 51-year-old nurse said she’d like to see a wider selection of produce and meat, noting she wasn’t able to find ground chicken.
“If they’re trying to be the go-to place for groceries, then they need to have the foundation of what we really need first,” she said. “Cool snacks, you can pretty much get anywhere else.”
For two centuries, Strancally Castle’s towers and parapets have overlooked a bend in the Blackwater River and a swath of Irish land as it passed from one wealthy family to the next.
It now joins the holdings of Mark Zuckerberg, one of the 21st century’s most prominent landowners, along with a place on an artificial island in Miami Beach, a large house in Washington, and compounds in California and Hawaii.
A spokesperson for Zuckerberg, the 42-year-old billionaire CEO of Meta, confirmed this week that he had bought the castle, a Gothic-style estate in Waterford County, a region of southeastern Ireland with about 130,000 people. The castle was built around 1830 and renovated in the early 2000s.
The purchase does not appear to be listed in Ireland’s property price register. The Irish Times, which reported the news Thursday, estimated that the estate could be worth $23 million to $35 million.
Around the middle of the 19th century, the estate was valued at 61 pounds, according to an entry about the castle in a University of Galway archive of landed estates that also mentions it contained an art collection and a library.
“Mark and his family look forward to caring for this historic home and visiting when traveling to Ireland,” said Brian Baker, the spokesperson for Zuckerberg.
The castle was built for a former member of Parliament, John Keily, according to Ireland’s National Built Heritage Service, which describes the building as both “muscular” and “dour.”
The estate has never left private hands, leaving the public to glimpse its interior only in historical archives. An entry about Keily on “The History of Parliament” website says the house was designed “on a lavish scale; it took a brisk walk of 4½ minutes to reach the dining room from the kitchen.”
The castle was most recently owned by Michael Alen-Buckley, the chairperson of the investment firm RAB Capital, and his wife, Giancarla Alen-Buckley, a member of the family behind the luxury Rocco Forte Hotels group.
“We leave our home of twenty-five years fondly and are grateful for the opportunity we have been given to save and restore Strancally Castle,” the couple said in a statement. “We are delighted that Mark and his family intend to build on our stewardship by continuing to invest in maintaining and enhancing the property and grounds as their home.”
It is not clear how much time Zuckerberg or his family (he has three daughters with his wife, Priscilla Chan) will spend in Ireland, but his company has a significant presence there.
Like many major U.S. companies, Meta uses an office in Dublin as its European headquarters, and about 1,500 employees work there. Ireland has become a hub for multinational corporations, both for its relatively low corporate income tax rate — 15% for big companies — and its history of allowing corporations to shift profits out of the country into places like Bermuda, Grand Cayman, and the Isle of Man.
Ireland’s status as a base for several technological giants has made it a key player in enforcing European Union regulations and, increasingly, a center of protest against the companies and their data centers.
Asked for comment about Zuckerberg’s purchase, the Waterford City and County Council extolled the area’s attractions — wild coastlines and mountains, picturesque festivals and towns — and the history of the county and city.
“Founded by the Vikings in 914 AD, Waterford is Ireland’s Oldest City that has been shaped by centuries of history and today it is evident that the county’s remarkable architecture keeps its past vividly present,” the council said in an email.
“We hope that Mr. Zuckerberg and his family fully enjoy all that Waterford has to offer.”
Margo Howard was a reluctant columnist, despite the encouragement of her mother, Eppie Lederer, the wildly popular advice maven known as Ann Landers, and a succession of admiring editors.
She lacked ambition, she was quick to say, as well as journalistic training. (She had dropped out of Brandeis University to marry her first husband.) But she was mouthy — a “mouth on a trolley,” as her father put it — and possessed of a tart wit.
When she divorced that first husband, she thought that a job might be nice, if it wasn’t too taxing, and in 1970 she began producing a frothy, thrice-weekly column called “Margo” for the Chicago Tribune. She wrote of mores on college campuses (“Parietal rules are so relaxed they’re prone”), the conundrum of marriage (“Marriages are all quite happy. It’s the living together afterward that’s so tough”), and playground hierarchies, deploying the phrase “the nanny mafia” to describe the action, after which novelist Tom Wolfe’s lawyers threatened to sue, saying she had stolen the phrase from him.
David Reuben, author of Everything You Always Wanted to Know About Sex (But Were Afraid to Ask), the 1969 blockbuster, also threatened a lawsuit after she compared the book’s style to a cross between Helen Gurley Brown and Popular Mechanics. (“I was only nervous once,” she wrote of their interview. “When he removed his cuff links and rolled up his sleeves.”)
Ms. Howard was proud, she said much later, that soon all her columns had to pass muster with the paper’s lawyers before publication.
“You are the star in my crown and the thorn in my side,” her exasperated editor told her.
Ms. Howard died on July 13. She was 86. Her daughter Cricket Coleman confirmed the death but did not give a cause or location.
Over the decades, Ms. Howard dipped in and out of the news business, and marriage. After ditching the wealthy businessperson whom she described as her “starter husband” and who was the father of her three children, she went on to marry three more times. Husband No. 2 was an undertaker — when she left him after three years, she gave him the family dog as consolation, which upset the children — and No. 3 was actor Ken Howard, whom she married in 1977.
The couple fell in love after she interviewed him for a column, after which she gave up newspapering for a spell. It was a mostly happy union and lasted more than a decade.
No. 4, a keeper, was Ronald J. Weintraub, a cardiologist whom she referred to variously as Dr. Pussycat and Dr. Perfect.
In 2014, Ms. Howard published a memoir of her matrimonial adventures, Eat, Drink and Remarry: Confessions of a Serial Wife.
“Writing is what Margo does between husbands,” editor James Hoge once teased.
But Ms. Howard’s most significant relationship was with her mother. Her first book, Eppie: The Story of Ann Landers (1982), told of how the twin daughters of Russian-Jewish immigrants became celebrated (and often feuding) advice columnists.
Esther Pauline Lederer was first to the game, winning a contest in the 1950s to write the “Dear Ann Landers” column for the Chicago Sun-Times. Soon after, her deeply competitive sister, Pauline Esther Phillips, known as Popo, began writing her own advice column for the San Francisco Chronicle, “Dear Abby.” The rivalry, as depicted by Ms. Howard, was one-sided, with Phillips sniping, often in public, at her sister, and Lederer doing her best to rise above, and frequently cutting off contact altogether.
“She was a girl who kept on trucking,” Ms. Howard said, describing her mother to an interviewer in 2003. “She sucked it up.”
When Jules Lederer, Lederer’s husband of 35 years, left her for a much younger woman, she soldiered on, even buying him clothes and food once he was in his new apartment. It had been a drawn-out process: He had enlisted his daughter to deliver the news of his affair and plans for divorce months earlier.
Unlike her mother, Ms. Howard never forgave him, and they remained estranged until just before his death.
Ms. Howard’s second book, A Life in Letters: Ann Landers’ Letters to Her Only Child, published in 2003, a year after her mother’s death, chronicled their intimacy through the decades. Her mother’s vivid, salty style, peppered with the Yiddishisms she grew up with, is enticing, as are her passions, which included the Democratic Party and anti-war activism, as well as the happiness and intellectual growth of her precocious daughter.
“One of the good things she passed on to me was that it’s almost immaterial what happens to you — it’s how you deal with it that matters,” Ms. Howard told Alex Witchel of the New York Times in 2003. “She’d say, ‘When things go seriously haywire, take a nap and then get busy.’ I went into a depression when she died, so I had my nap. It was time to get busy.”
Margo Lederer was born on March 15, 1940, in Sioux City, Iowa. Her father was a salesperson turned businessperson who would go on to found Budget Rent A Car. He wooed her mother, then Esther Pauline Friedman, who was affianced to someone else, while she was shopping for wedding veils.
The family lived in eight cities by the time Margo was 7, including New Orleans and Eau Claire, Wis., before moving to Chicago, where she would later settle as an adult, after her first marriage.
Throughout her peripatetic journalism career, Ms. Howard fielded many offers to write an advice column, including a plea from her mother to take over as Ann Landers. “Honey, I don’t want to work that hard,” Ms. Howard responded.
But in 1998, when economist Herbert Stein quit after a few months of writing “Dear Prudence,” the pithy advice column he had pioneered (and written anonymously) for Slate, the publication’s editor, Michael Kinsley, offered the column to Ms. Howard. The effort required would be minimal, he promised; she would have to answer only four letters twice a week.
As she told Vanity Fair, “I’d had a big life: I’d been analyzed, I’d been married — certainly more than once — and I decided that I would write from my experience.”
Her tone was sassy and wise, and “Dear Prudence,” which she wrote for eight years, was a hit.
To Turned Off in Kansas, a reader whose boyfriend’s underwear was problematic, Ms. Howard replied:
Dear Turned,
He wears the baggy briefs underneath? I offer you two suggestions. Since things are going over his head, try under his nose. Write him a short love note saying it would mean a lot to you if he — forgive the pun — bagged his lucky underpants and only wore boxers. Alas, the alternative is to forget it. Would you think Prudie salacious if she were to suggest that it’s what’s inside the briefs or boxers that counts?
— Prudie, briefly
In addition to her daughter Cricket, Ms. Howard is survived by her husband, Weintraub; another daughter, Abra Coleman; a son, Adam Coleman Howard; and seven grandchildren.
NEW YORK — Philanthropist Nancy Kissinger, onetime foreign policy researcher and wife of former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger, has died. She was 92.
She died Thursday at her home in Kent, Conn., Robert Johnson, manager of the property, told the Associated Press. The cause of her death was not disclosed. Johnson said she will be buried next to her late husband at Arlington National Cemetery at a later date.
The daughter of a New York City lawyer, she met Henry Kissinger while working for New York Gov. Nelson Rockefeller. The couple wed in 1974.
She was described by one profiler as a brainy, Blass-bedecked blond. She was often seen at high fashion openings and was a strong presence on the New York philanthropy scene.
“Nancy Kissinger can pick up the phone and get right through to the CEO. Nobody keeps her waiting,” philanthropist Judy Peabody said after chairing a successful hospital charity event in 1989.
Michael Bloomberg — the billionaire founder of the Bloomberg financial-news empire, former New York City mayor, and a friend of the Kissingers — said in a social media post that Nancy Kissinger “was a powerhouse of ideas and insights that she put to work throughout her life in government and philanthropy — and as Henry’s most valued and trusted adviser.”
He added, “She was the ultimate diplomat — as wise as she was discreet — and I know how completely Henry admired and loved her. Diana and I were fortunate to call her a dear friend, and to see their extraordinary partnership in action over the decades. We will miss her greatly.”
Nancy Kissinger made headlines in 1982 when she tried to throttle a woman who harassed her and her husband with insulting questions at Newark Airport. The couple was going to Boston, where Henry Kissinger was to undergo bypass surgery.
The woman, a leafleter for a group affiliated with politician Lyndon LaRouche, accused Nancy Kissinger of choking both her throat and her free-speech rights. Nancy Kissinger said she only wanted to protect her husband from upset.
A judge acquitted Nancy Kissinger of assault and called her behavior “a spontaneous and somewhat human reaction to an offensive question.”
The Kissingers met in the mid-1960s when he was a consultant for Rockefeller and she was on the staff of Rockefeller’s Commission on Critical Choices for America.
Henry Kissinger had joined the Nixon administration and was secretary of state when he and the former Nancy Sharon Maginnes married on March 30, 1974, in a civil ceremony in Arlington, Va.
After leaving Washington, they returned to New York and lived in homes in Manhattan and Kent, Conn.
The daughter of an Episcopalian Park Avenue lawyer, Nancy Kissinger grew up with two brothers and a horse on an estate in White Plains.
She attended Good Counsel Academy, a Catholic girls school in White Plains, and the exclusive Master’s School in Dobbs Ferry, from which she graduated in 1951. She returned to the school to teach history for two years after graduating from Mount Holyoke in 1955.
Graduate studies at the University of California at Berkeley followed before she went to work for Rockefeller.
The first deportation flight to Haiti since the Trump administration ended humanitarian protections for 350,000 people living in the United States landed Thursday in the Caribbean nation, and activists say immigration arrests are beginning to ramp up.
The flight carrying 170 people, ranging in age from 19 to 71, landed in Cap-Haitien, on the northern coast of Haiti. Commercial flights from the U.S. have been blocked from landing in the Caribbean nation’s primary airport in the capital of Port-au-Prince due to gang activity and reports of aircraft being struck by gunfire.
The federal government has been sending deportees back to Haiti on monthly flights, but Thursday’s removal was among the largest that community leaders said they had seen during the second Trump administration.
Many of the passengers had been detained by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement in the last three weeks, and at least one had recently lost temporary protected status, according to Guerline Jozef of the Haitian Bridge Alliance.
“People are losing TPS status and losing their asylum cases,” she said. “It’s become easier and easier to be taken and deported.”
The Department of Homeland Security did not respond to questions about the deportation flight.
For months, Haitians have been bracing for ICE to begin making arrests en masse, although the new enforcement push has unfolded slowly and quietly so far.
DHS has placed ankle monitors on Haitians who have lost their protected status. Arrests have also been made in communities home to large numbers of people from the violence-ridden Caribbean nation.
The U.S. Supreme Court cleared the way for the Trump administration to end humanitarian protections for Haitians in June, and in early August a federal judge took the final step in allowing the Trump administration to terminate the benefit for Haitians.
On Thursday, community leaders in Springfield, Ohio, said ICE arrested a well-known Christian pastor, Joubert Adrien. He was driving home when officers boxed in his vehicle at a gas station, the activists said. He had recently lost TPS, according to Vilés Dorsainvil of the Haitian Support Center.
The arrest has sent chills through Adrien’s congregation and the larger Haitian community, Dorsainvil added.
ICE officers have also been spotted making arrests over the last week in Springfield outside grocery stores and after traffic stops. Local residents and clergy members have been protesting the arrests, and a legal advocacy organization has been trying to help those detained.
Many Haitians in Springfield are now wondering if they will be the next to get arrested, community leaders said.
Springfield became a focal point during President Donald Trump’s 2024 campaign after he falsely claimed that Haitian residents there were killing and eating their neighbors’ pets.
The city includes a large number of the country’s middle class who worked as physicians, judges, and in other professions in Haiti, Dorsainvil said. They moved to Ohio after the country was plunged into chaos following the 2021 assassination of the country’s then-president, he said.
“That’s why they left Haiti,” said Dorsainvil, himself a former TPS holder. “They were not looking for work. They left because they were at risk.”
But in Springfield they have worked factory jobs, filled healthcare vacancies, continued their university studies, and started businesses. Now, instead of using their skills to benefit U.S. communities, Dorsainvil said, they face the possibility of being sent back to a place where they recently had urgent reasons to flee.
Dorsainvil said he is fielding dozens of calls each day from terrified neighbors who tell of ICE visits to their homes. He heard from a woman on Thursday who couldn’t find her husband on ICE’s detainee locator website and was panicking, believing that he could be on the deportation flight.
Deportees from the U.S. are especially vulnerable to kidnapping, extortion, and murder once they land in Haiti, Jozef said. Criminals think they have been given money by the Trump administration to self-deport or have savings from their time stateside, he said.
U.S. military personnel who served in Haiti recently testified in Congress on the country’s gang crisis and characterized the nation as a conflict zone.
Top Haitian government security officials have been kidnapped by armed groups. More than 1.4 million Haitians have been internally displaced and much of the population is going hungry.
“This isn’t a country where anyone should be deported right now,” said Savi Arvey of Human Rights First, an advocacy group tracking deportation flights. “We are gravely concerned this administration seems poised to intentionally take legal status from people in service of its mass deportation campaign and intentionally and knowingly deporting people to danger.”
TEL AVIV, Israel — A Palestinian teenager was killed Friday after Israeli settlers entered a village near the West Bank city of Hebron, local officials said, the latest in a surge of violence in the territory that has drawn international condemnation.
The rising settler violence against Palestinians in recent weeks has presented a mounting challenge for Israel’s military. It is responsible for maintaining law and order in the territory but has been hesitant to take forceful action against settlers.
The Health Ministry of the Palestinian Authority identified the victim as 17-year-old Kareem Shlaldeh. Palestinian and Israeli authorities offered differing accounts of events Friday.
Saad Shlaldeh, the mayor of the village, called Sair, said a large group of settlers had attacked the village around 10 a.m., killing one person and setting fire to property.
“These people are thugs and more,” he said in a phone interview, adding that his account was based on conversations with witnesses.
The Israeli military said soldiers were sent to the area of Sair following a report of Palestinians throwing rocks at Israeli civilians. The military added that the Israelis “were present in the area without advanced authorization.”
The statement said a “security official” had opened fire, causing “Palestinian casualties,” without clarifying whether the shooter was a soldier. Israeli civilians were also wounded in the incident, the statement added.
The events that led up to the settlers entering the village also remain unclear. Shlaldeh said he had no knowledge of Palestinians throwing rocks when asked about the Israeli military’s account.
Nabil Tharawa, 61, a resident of the area, said a second Palestinian was wounded and transferred to a hospital in Hebron. Khalid al-Sharif, an official at Ahli Hospital in Hebron, said a wounded person from Sair was brought to the emergency room.
The violence Friday came as tensions in the West Bank were running high after the Israeli government published a tender for the construction of houses in a West Bank settlement near Jerusalem. The project is referred to as E1.
Over the past day, 11 nations, including France, Canada, and Britain, issued a joined statement condemning Israel for the move. They said it “will undermine the prospect of the two-state solution by driving a wedge through the West Bank and harming the territorial contiguity of the Palestinian Territories.”
Much of the international community regards the West Bank as being a core part of any future Palestinian state.
For roughly two decades, the E1 plan wound its way through a bureaucratic Israeli zoning process. But intense international opposition, including from the Obama and Biden administrations, had mostly kept the project dormant.
That changed under the current Israeli government, the most right-wing in Israel’s history.
Ed Miliband, Britain’s foreign secretary, said the publication of the tender was “unacceptable and destructive” in a post on social media.
Gideon Saar, Israel’s foreign minister, fired back at Miliband, asserting that “the Jewish people have the right to live throughout the Land of Israel,” an apparent reference to all the land between the Mediterranean Sea and the Jordan River.
UNITED NATIONS — The United States has demanded that Cuba open up to private investment, and Cuba has passed sweeping reforms to encourage just that. So Cuba’s U.N. ambassador says he wants to know why Washington keeps piling on sanctions that stymie the very economic opening it has sought for decades.
Ambassador Ernesto Soberón Guzmán, in an interview this week with the Associated Press, directed his question to U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio, the main architect of the Trump administration’s Cuba policy:
“What are you afraid of? If you are so convinced that the Cuban government is an incompetent government, why do you need to implement almost every two weeks new sanctions?”
The U.S. State Department responded to a request for comment with a quote from Rubio saying new sanctions will continue to be announced every couple of weeks to close off “escape valves that they’re trying to create in every mechanism.”
Then on Thursday, the U.S. imposed more economic penalties on Cuban industries, targeting state-owned mining, metal, and construction companies.
Cuba has been pushed to the brink by an oil blockade imposed by the United States in January on top of a decades-old embargo, coupled with the escalating sanctions. The moves by President Donald Trump’s administration, meant to put pressure on the government by depriving it of funding, have worsened already debilitating blackouts, cut workers off from public transport, crippled infrastructure, and deepened shortages in medicine and food in the Caribbean island nation.
Guzmán said the sanctions are the main obstacle to Cuba opening up its economy. He said the impact of the U.S. measures — specifically the shortage of electricity and lack of fuel to run a business or travel — has turned off investors and tourists, a major source of Cuba’s income.
Some companies have pulled out of Cuba, including the Spanish hotel chain Meliá, which relied on tourist revenue and cited “significant operational, legal, economic, and financial difficulties” in explaining its decision to leave.
”Literally, the United States has done everything imaginable to try to prevent foreign investors,” said William LeoGrande, a professor at American University and a leading expert on U.S.-Cuba relations. ”When they say, `Well, we want to see Cuba open up to foreign investment,’ they’re being disingenuous. … It’s not possible for them to succeed without some kind of sanctions relief.”
The goal of Trump’s Republican administration, he said, is “not just to open up Cuba economically but to overthrow the Cuban government — to change the nature of the Cuban political system.”
Cuba announces major economic shift
John Kavulich, president of the U.S.-Cuba Trade and Economic Council, said Cuba had to make changes when it lost its economic lifeline with the U.S. ouster in January of Venezuelan leader Nicolás Maduro.
“The result is the Cuban government in the last eight months made more commercial, economic, and financial changes to the country than they have as a group since the revolution,” he said.
Nonetheless, the Trump administration keeps ratcheting up sanctions, putting more pressure on Cuba, which is responding by making more changes, Kavulich said.
“But from our standpoint, there are two parts missing: One is Cuba implementing by regulation everything that it’s announced, and secondly, the Trump administration allowing U.S. companies to have more access to the Cuban marketplace while these changes are underway,” he said.
The changes announced by Cuban President Miguel Díaz-Canel in June aim to significantly shift Cuba’s economy and industry, which have been strictly controlled by the socialist government since the 1959 revolution.
They include more space for private businesses, imports and exports without the state as an intermediary, free hiring of personnel, authorization for private banks, investment by Cubans abroad, and opportunities for fast-food chains to establish themselves on the island.
Guzmán said there are opportunities for investments in real estate, solar farms, and energy to help ease the country’s electricity shortage, as well as in marinas and the tourism industry.
Christopher Hernandez-Roy, acting director of the Americas program at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, recalled that the last economic opening under President Barack Obama’s Democratic administration “was later throttled by the Cubans themselves, who feared that the opening went too far and appeared to threaten political control.”
Today, he said, it appears the Cubans really do want economic reforms and outside investment. Díaz-Canel’s economic reforms are not impossible, but U.S. sanctions “significantly constrain their prospects for success,” Hernandez-Roy said.
He noted the irony that U.S. pressure ”is helping push the Cubans toward greater economic liberalization out of necessity, while simultaneously limiting the resources and access necessary for those reforms to actually improve the economy.”
Rubio says Cuba’s leaders ‘don’t know what they’re doing’
In late June, after the reforms were announced, the U.S. slapped sanctions on five state companies, three linked to a business conglomerate run by Cuba’s Revolutionary Armed Forces. Best known as GAESA, it is believed to command nearly 40% of Cuba’s gross domestic product.
Rubio, a former U.S. senator from Florida whose parents were born in Cuba, did not appear to be impressed by the newly announced economic changes. He last month called Cuba “a failed state” with “a bad economic model.” He said Cuba’s leaders “don’t know what they’re doing” and “don’t know how to fix their economy.”
“I think the challenge that Cuba has faced for the last 15 years is they want to somewhat improve their economy, but they’re afraid that if they improve it too much they’ll lose political control over people,” he said.
The United States is prepared “to do what we can do to effectuate a positive change in Cuba because it directly impacts our national security” since it is only 90 miles from the U.S. mainland, Rubio said. “And we want Cuba to be prosperous. We want Cuba to be free.”
The Cuban ambassador said implementing the economic changes would be far easier without the sanctions, if American companies were involved in Cuba and if trade between the two countries was possible.
He said the good news is that talks are taking place between the United States and Cuba. He declined to give details of what he called “very sensitive conversations.”
“But the point here is that even when Cuba is changing a lot,” Guzmán said, “the U.S. government keeps the same policy of aggression towards the Cuban people.”
The Pentagon on Friday fired the publisher and the editor in chief of Stars and Stripes, the military newspaper funded by the Department of Defense that has long enjoyed editorial independence from the government, according to the publication’s outgoing editor in chief.
The Defense Department sent a separation notice to publisher Max Lederer, who announced his retirement this week, telling staff in a parting note he had disagreed with decisions from Pentagon top brass.
Under Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, the publication’s independence has come under threat during the second Trump administration as top Pentagon leaders have derided the newspaper as “woke.”
Erik Slavin, the editor in chief, said he and reporter Lara Korte also received separation notices Friday.
Slavin said he and Korte were fired for participating in a CBS News interview, during which he said any hypothetical censorship of the military newspaper would cross a red line.
“I stand by the principle that Stars and Stripes should remain independent for service members,” Slavin said in a Friday interview with the Washington Post.
In the interview with CBS’ Sunday Morning, Korte discussed the increasingly tense relationship between the publication and the DOD. “I am working for Stars and Stripes. Not for the Pentagon,” she said. “Not for any administration. Not for any policymaker. I am here to cover the military community.”
“I consider it a great privilege to live alongside members of the military and share their stories,” Korte wrote in a Friday statement. “These firings are a shame for the institution and service members, who swore to defend the Constitution and deserve the right to a free and independent press.”
Lederer did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
The Pentagon confirmed the firings and said the three employees have a five-day period to appeal. They declined to offer further comment.
In April, the Pentagon fired the Stars and Stripes ombudsman, a role charged by Congress with safeguarding the paper’s editorial independence.
