🎨 Dive into the untold saga of Michelangelo in our premiere episode of 'Mysteries of the Masters'. Join Johanna on an enthralling journey through time, as we unravel the hidden life of Michelangelo Buonarroti. Witness the discovery of a secret chamber beneath the Basilica of San Lorenzo, revealing the artist's desperate hideout during his dramatic feud with the Medici family.
🔍 Why did Michelangelo, once a protégé of the Medici, turn against them, and how did this influence his legendary works like the Sistine Chapel, David, and Pietà? Explore the intricate web of Renaissance politics, artistic genius, and spiritual devotion that defined Michelangelo's life.💡 Key Moments:
The dramatic discovery of Michelangelo's forgotten hideaway in 1975.
Insights into the Medici family's rise and their controversial role in the Vatican.
Michelangelo's artistic evolution from a Medici favorite to a symbol of Florence's fight for freedom.
👁️🗨️ Did Michelangelo's early years in the Medici palace shape his future masterpieces? What secrets do the sketches in his hidden chamber hold? RELATED 5 hours ago
A look inside Michelangelo's 'secret room'
The BBC gets access to a secret room under the Medici Chapel in Florence, where Michelangelo took refuge during political upheaval. The small chamber, covered in his sketches, has opened to the public recently and offers a rare glimpse into the artist's genius.
It is a room full of sketches that Michelangelo once used to hide from Pope Clement VIII. #pope #vatican #francis #popefrancis #church #catholic #florence #art #michelangelo , 🔔 Subscribe to our ...
Israeli warplanes struck near Beirut for the first time in several days and airstrikes killed at least 13 people in central Lebanon on Friday, according to the Lebanese authorities, as diplomatic efforts to reduce the fighting between Israel and Hezbollah showed no sign of success.
Negotiations to reach a temporary truce between Israel and Hamas, Hezbollah’s ally in the Gaza Strip, also hit another impasse on Friday.
Hamas appeared to rule out the possibility of a limited cease-fire in order to exchange hostages held in Gaza and Palestinian prisoners, according to a statement released through the group’s official media.
The UN Special Rapporteur on the Occupied Palestinian Territories has called for UN member states to consider suspending Israel.
The Biden administration had sent key envoys including the C.I.A. director to the region this week, in a push to at least generate some momentum in talks to end Israel’s war against Hamas in Gaza and its spiraling conflict with Hezbollah in Lebanon.
But the envoys departed the region on both fronts without any apparent or immediate results in either conflict. Hezbollah, the powerful Lebanese armed group backed by Iran, continued to fire scores of rockets and drones at Israel, setting off air-raid sirens across the country’s north. The Israeli strikes in Lebanon caused “massive destruction” and flattened buildings, according to Lebanese state media. The strikes near Beirut hit the southern outskirts of Lebanon’s capital, a cluster of neighborhoods known as the Dahiya, where Hezbollah largely holds sway. In central Lebanon, Israeli jets bombarded targets in several villages, killing at least 13 people and wounding 26, according to the Lebanese health ministry, which does not distinguish between combatants and civilians.
The Israeli military has widened its campaign against Hezbollah in recent days, expanding beyond Lebanon’s border villages and the militant group’s strongholds to port towns and cities where the group has supporters, including Baalbek, Tyre and Sidon. Israel’s fight with Hezbollah began after Hamas led the Oct. 7, 2023, attack into Israel last year, killing about 1,200 people and taking another 250 hostage. Hezbollah then began firing on Israeli positions in solidarity, leading to months of cross-border exchanges, until Israel dramatically escalated its attacks into Lebanon, killing the group’s longtime leader in late September and starting a ground invasion on Oct. 1.
Neither Israel nor Hezbollah, despite the heavy blows the group has been dealt, has indicated a willingness to back down.
The militant group’s new leader, Naim Qassem, suggested on Wednesday he was open to finding terms for a truce only “with the conditions that we see as appropriate and suitable.”
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel, in turn, may be waiting for the results of the U.S. presidential election next week before deciding what approach to take in the war, analysts say.
Amos Hochstein, the Biden administration’s lead envoy on the Lebanon talks, left Israel after meeting with Mr. Netanyahu and other Israeli leaders alongside Brett McGurk, another senior U.S. official. Political analysts said his swift return to Washington — rather than heading to Beirut for further diplomacy — suggested that the negotiators were not close to an imminent deal. Najib Mikati, the caretaker prime minister of Lebanon, said Friday that the renewed Israeli airstrikes in Beirut indicated that the Israel had rejected “all efforts being expended for a cease-fire.” He pledged again to implement the long moribund United Nations resolution that ended the previous war between Israel and Hezbollah in 2006.
On Thursday, Mr. Netanyahu had told graduating officers at the Israeli military’s command school that Israel was determined to “enforce security, thwart attacks against us, and act against the arming of our enemies.”
“Hezbollah will not sit on our northern border, at positions a few meters from our border, from which it could invade. This will not happen anymore,” Mr. Netanyahu said in a televised address.
Deadlock has similarly prevailed in cease-fire talks between Israel and Hamas, which have been fighting now for over a year.
Negotiators had sought to jump-start talks over the past few weeks to reach at least a temporary truce in the wake of Israel’s killing of Yahya Sinwar, the leader of Hamas, in October.
Egypt publicly issued a new proposal on Sunday for a two-day cease-fire to free a small number of hostages in exchange for Palestinian prisoners.
On Thursday, William J. Burns, the C.I.A. director and a top American negotiator, met with officials in Cairo.
But the following day, the Hamas statement indicated that the Palestinian armed group was sticking to its consistent, month-slong stance:
Wolff claims the recording shows Trump’s divide-and-conquer approach to management during his first term in office. Wolff says the excerpt is a mere fraction of some “100 hours of Epstein talking about the inner workings of the Trump White House and about his long standing, deep relationship with Donald Trump” that he claims to have.
Leaked audio appears to reveal Jeffrey Epstein detailing inner workings of Trump White House
Journalist Michael Wolff releases recording allegedly featuring late billionaire pedophile gossiping about Republican’s first administration
Donald Trump, Melania Trump, Jeffrey Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell pictured together at Mar-a-Lago, Florida, on February 12 2000 (Getty)
With just four days of campaigning to go in the 2024 presidential election, Donald Trump is facing new claims about his past friendship with the late billionaire pedophile Jeffrey Epstein. Journalist Michael Wolff, who wrote three books about the Republican’s first administration between 2017 and 2021, has released an audio clip on his podcast Fire and Fury of what he says is Epstein talking in intimate detail about the inner workings of Trump’s Cabinet.
Wolff says the audio was recorded, to the best of his recollection, at the SoHo branch of Ladurée, a Manhattan patisserie, in 2017 when he met with Epstein, who died in a New York jail cell in August 2019, to discuss the prospect of writing his biography Speaking over the background bustle of the eatery, Epstein is heard in the audio telling Wolff how then-president Trump played his administration officials off against each other. “His people fight each other and then he poisons the well outside,”he says.
Offering examples, he names then-Trump officials Steve Bannon, Reince Priebus and Kellyanne Conway: “He will tell 10 people ‘Bannon’s a scumbag’ and ‘Priebus is not doing a good job’ and ‘Kellyanne has a big mouth – what do you think?’ “‘[JPMorgan Chase CEO] Jamie Dimon says that you’re a problem and I shouldn’t keep you. And I spoke to [financier] Carl Icahn. And Carl thinks I need a new spokesperson.’” Epstein continues:“So Kelly[anne] – even though I hired Kellyanne’s husband – Kellyanne is just too much of a wildcard. And then he tells Bannon, ‘You know I really want to keep you but Kellyanne hates you.’”
Responding to The Daily Beast’sreportingon the clip, Karoline Leavitt, the national press secretary for Trump’s 2024 election campaign, said:
“Michael Wolff is a disgraced writer who routinely fabricates lies in order to sell fiction books because he clearly has no morals or ethics.
“He waited until days before the election to make outlandish false smears all in an effort to engage in blatant election interference on behalf of Kamala Harris.
“He’s a failed journalist that is resorting to lying for attention.”
Speaking on the podcast, Wolff said of Trump and Epstein:
“Here are these two guys both driven by a need to do anything they wanted with women: dominance and submission and entertainment. And one of them ends up in the darkest prison in the country and the other in the White House.”
The best defensive ETFs are ideal for investors seeking out safety amid an uncertain market backdrop. Indeed, the Federal Reserve has started lowering interest rates from their highest level in decades. Inflation is nearing the central bank's 2% target, but rates still remain elevated, driving up costs for consumers and businesses. Plus, while plenty of indicators show most parts of the economy are healthy, continued weakness in the manufacturing sector has some worried about a possible recession on the horizon. It's worth admitting that over the very long term, stocks always recover and move higher. So, one way to get through volatility on Wall Street is to simply refuse to look at stock quotes for a few weeks or months and hope things look better on the other side.
But long-term investors worried about the outlook on Wall Street can also find relief in defensive ETFs, which help provide some cover in an uncertain market environment.
To come up with this list of the best ETFs with defensive qualities to buy, we looked at products that all offer different strategies but share a prioritization of stability over aggressive profit-making strategies. In a sunny economic environment where start-ups are booming and everyone is spending freely, these kinds of investments often lag behind. But when the storm clouds roll in and everyone runs for cover, it's these defensive ETFs that really hold their own. As Kiplinger contributor Mark Hake writes in his feature on the best defensive stocks,
"It's often the case that these companies are boring. But they are profitable and can keep growing even when economic conditions are rough. In any event, they have a long history of generating good profit margins and cash flow during a variety of economic cycles."
Of course, there's no guarantee that all the forecasts of doom and gloom will prove warranted. As always, each individual should always do their own research and invest based on their personal investing goals and strategy.
But if you're leaning toward this less risky approach to stocks and bonds, these defensive ETFs could be worth considering.
.gif)
.gif)
.gif)
.gif)
