Life

Sharon Braithwaite and Amarachi Orie, CNN (CNN) — An outdoor installation of the “Venus of the Rags” artwork by Italian contemporary artist Michelangelo Pistoletto has been destroyed in a suspected arson attack in the center of Naples, authorities said Wednesday. A police investigation is underway to ascertain the cause of the fire, which broke out

Ivana Kottasová, CNN (CNN) — Milan Kundera, the Czech writer who became one of the 20th century’s most influential novelists but spent much of his life in seclusion, rarely engaging with the public, died in Paris on Tuesday, according to the Moravian Library in Brno. He was 94. “Milan Kundera, a Czech-French author who is

By Chris Lau and Jake Kwon, CNN (CNN) — A giant panda at a South Korean zoo has given birth to the country’s first twin cubs. The palm-sized female pandas were born at the Everland Resort theme park southeast of the capital Seoul on July 7, the zoo said in a statement Tuesday. Video posted

By Oscar Holland, CNN (CNN) — Bulgari has apologized for listing Taiwan and China separately on some of its websites, after Chinese social media users accused the luxury jeweler of treating the island as an independent country. The outcry, which was later fueled by Chinese state media, saw netizens threatening to boycott the Italian brand’s

By Leah Dolan, CNN (CNN) — On Monday July 3, Italian tennis star and Men’s Singles contender Jannik Sinner arrived on the center court at Wimbledon with a custom Gucci duffle bag slung across one shoulder. It was a far cry from the typically non-descript kit bags: the brand’s iconic monogram pattern featured Sinner’s name

By Jake Tapper, CNN (CNN) — I originally had been reluctant to set my latest novel in the 1970s. I was wrong. That was one wild and weird decade. “The Hellfire Club,” my first novel, published in 2018, set my protagonists, Congressman Charlie Marder and his zoologist wife Margaret, right in the thick of the

By Oscar Holland, CNN (CNN) — A serene Dubai mosque, a Singapore skyscraper bursting with trees and a panda breeding research facility in Chengdu, China, have been named among the world’s best new buildings. The eye-catching structures are among almost 250 completed projects shortlisted in this year’s World Architecture Festival (WAF) Awards, which will culminate

By Tom Page, CNN (CNN) — In a corner of northeast France, the ground rumbles with industry. After multiple false starts and much political back and forth, work is underway on the Seine-Nord Europe Canal (SNEC), a €5.1 billion ($5.5 billion) project designed to break up one of the continent’s major transport bottlenecks. The ambitious

By Joshua Mellin, CNN Tokyo (CNN) — Furuya Yamato is always in motion. On weekends in Tokyo, you’ll find the bearded, pony-tailed 50-year-old behind the counter of his food truck, Tacos 3hermanos, where hundreds of faithful customers line up and wait for a rare delicacy in Japan: authentic Mexican street tacos. On the first day

By Karla Cripps and Eru Ishikawa, CNN (CNN) — A 17-year-old Canadian was brought in for questioning for allegedly carving a name into a wooden pillar at a UNESCO-listed temple in the historic city of Nara, Japan, according to local police. The alleged incident took place at the centuries-old Toshodaiji Kondo temple complex on the

By Maureen O’Hare, CNN (CNN) — In travel news this week: epic cruise experiences around the world, crocodile ramen and other wild food trends hitting Asia, plus tourist misbehavior in Italy and the airline passenger who found the plane floor soaked in blood. The new cruise era Construction is complete on the world’s biggest cruise

By Heather Chen, CNN (CNN) — Influencers who pose naked on top of sacred mountains. Reckless tourists who ride motorbikes around the island without helmets performing daredevil stunts. When it comes to misbehaving tourists in Bali, Niluh Djelantik has seen and heard it all. These are just a few “hugely unacceptable but too common forms

By Nicole Mowbray and Oscar Holland, CNN (CNN) — Prominent architect David Adjaye has stepped back from several roles and upcoming projects following allegations of sexual harassment or assault lodged against him by three unnamed former employees in the Financial Times. As well as relinquishing an advisory position with London Mayor Sadiq Khan, the Ghanaian-British architect

By Senay Boztas (CNN) — The Dutch government is returning 478 objects looted during colonial times to Indonesia and Sri Lanka. Following multiple claims from Indonesia, Sri Lanka and Nigeria, the Dutch Secretary of State for Culture and Media Gunay Uslu announced the decision Thursday to repatriate objects including the “Lombok treasure,” consisting of 335 objects from Lombok, Indonesia, the

By Samantha Tse, CNN Paris (CNN) — In the week leading up to the fall-winter haute couture shows in Paris, there was national unrest over a police killing of 17-year-old teenager Nahel Merzouk in a suburb of the city. People were protesting and getting arrested, stores were being looted and fires being started — how

By Jamiel Lynch, CNN (CNN) — After a parent spotted a cracked steel support pillar at the top of a North Carolina roller coaster last week, Carowinds amusement park said in a statement Thursday that its maintenance team is working with the damaged ride’s manufacturer. The Charlotte-based amusement park and Bolliger and Mabillard Consulting Engineers

By Sharon Braithwaite and Eve Brennan, CNN (CNN) — The tourist who was filmed apparently carving his name into a wall of Rome’s 2,000-year-old Colosseum late last month has sent a letter of apology to the local prosecutor’s office, his defense lawyer told CNN on Thursday. “I admit with the deepest embarrassment that only after

By Nell Lewis, CNN (CNN) — A windswept Arctic fox, a murmuration of birds facing a snowstorm in the Himalayas, and a man and a boy in a flooded living room are among the images recognized in this year’s Prince Albert II of Monaco Foundation’s Environmental Photography Award. The prize, in its third edition, hopes

By Leah Dolan and Lianne Kolirin, CNN (CNN) — More than 8 million people on TikTok have watched Elizabeth Olsen share her family’s often repeated mantra: “‘No’ is a full sentence.” Instilled in her by her older twin sisters, two show business veterans, Olsen insists that sometimes “you can just say no.” Shakira, who was

By Tamison O’Connor (CNN) — Chloé creative director Gabriela Hearst is stepping down after three years at the Richemont-owned brand, the label confirmed in a press release. Her last show for the label will be on September 28. No successor has been named, though Chloé has hired Chemena Kamali, a former Saint Laurent design director for women’s ready-to-wear, to lead

By Julia Buckley, CNN (CNN) — Pondering on the cleanliness of airplanes is not something most of us like to think about when flying. But while you might think your neighbor using a sick bag is as bad as things can get, one man was confronted by bodily fluids of a different kind when he

By Elizabeth Wells, CNN Editor’s Note: A version of this story appears in CNN’s Meanwhile in the Middle East newsletter, a three-times-a-week look inside the region’s biggest stories. Sign up here. (CNN) — Turkey is seeking the repatriation from Denmark of what it says is the severed head of a nearly 2,000-year-old Roman statue that was stolen

By Brandon Griggs, CNN (CNN) — It squats on the Las Vegas skyline like an enormous spaceship, black and mysterious – until night falls, when it will glow like the Earth from space. The MSG Sphere won’t open to the public for almost three more months, when U2 christens the entertainment venue with a series

By Oscar Holland, CNN (CNN) — “Everyone — rich or poor, man, woman or child — can use it or any part of it,” read a leaflet introducing Britain’s public healthcare system in 1948. “There are no charges, except for a few special items. There are no insurance qualifications. But it is not a ‘charity.’

By Lamide Akintobi and Ayanda Ntuli, CNN (CNN) — A place for women, by women: that’s what Umoja, a village in Samburu County, northern Kenya, represents. It looks much like other tribal settlements or manyattas – with surrounding grasslands and huts, where communal living is the norm – except for one thing. It’s void of

By Christina Zdanowicz, CNN (CNN) — Festivalgoers got more of an adventure than they bargained for Sunday when a roller coaster ride got stuck at a fair in Wisconsin, leaving them hanging upside down for hours. Eight passengers were left suspended when a mechanical failure stalled the ride at the Forest County Festival in Crandon,

By Leah Dolan, CNN Paris (CNN) — On Monday evening in Paris, American designer and Council of Fashion Designers of America (CFDA) chairman Thom Browne debuted his first haute couture collection in front of an audience of 2,300. But only 300 of them were real people. In a CNN exclusive backstage visit to the Palais

By Tamara Hardingham-Gill, CNN (CNN) — He set off on a two-year cycling trip around the world with a friend shortly after graduating from high school in 2021. But just a few months into the journey, Adam Swanson from Minnesota, who was 17 at the time, found himself traveling solo. Now, after a “few years

Jessie Yeung, CNN (CNN) — The new tallest building in Japan is here — and the gleaming skyscraper is part of an expansive “modern urban village” in central Tokyo, years in the making. The tower, with gently curved edges and a crown resembling flower petals, reaches 330 meters (1,083 feet) in height, with 64 floors

By Sara Smart, CNN (CNN) — Seven people were injured on a Hawaiian Airlines flight to Sydney, Australia, on Friday when the plane was buffeted by severe turbulence, the airline confirmed. The turbulence struck about five hours after the plane departed from Honolulu Friday afternoon, a Hawaiian Airlines spokesperson told CNN. When the nearly 11-hour

By Oscar Holland, CNN (CNN) — Photographer Felipe Romero Beltrán’s depiction of a migrant facility in Spain oozes with the boredom and malaise of life in legal limbo. His young subjects are seen smoking cigarettes, lifting weights and trimming one another’s hair. Other images show them hanging out in a grubby yard or lying around

by Victoria Woodcock Isla del Rey, Menorca (CNN) — On the tiny Menorcan island of Isla del Rey, Christina Quarles is sitting under a canopy of olive trees. While birds chirp loudly overhead and the sea splashes at the shore a few feet away, the Los Angeles-based artist talks of her new exhibition with Hauser

Feride Yalav-Heckeroth, CNN (CNN) — Rize province, on the Black Sea coast near Turkey’s northeast border with Georgia, is still largely unknown to many international travelers. Yet it is here that some of the country’s most untouched alpine terrains continue to fascinate nature lovers who want to take the road less traveled. Away from Rize

By Tara Subramaniam, CNN (CNN) — A Filipino ad agency has come under fire for using footage of other countries in a promotional video for the country’s new tourism campaign, “Love the Philippines.” Days after the campaign launched on June 27, the Department of Tourism (DOT) said it was investigating allegations that the video contained

By Kate Springer, CNN (CNN) — Chutatip “Nok” Suntaranon still remembers the moment she first saw Ziv Katalan in vivid detail. It was September 2006 on a Thai Airways flight from Bangkok to New York City. A Business Class flight attendant, Suntaranon was roaming the cabin and greeting guests as they settled into their seats.