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Lea Tran

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The dazzling legacy of Boston fashion icon Yolanda Cellucci

A local fashion icon, businesswoman and supporter of the arts, Yolanda Cellucci continues to inspire those in Boston’s fashion scene even after her recent death.

“She was loved throughout the city, and beyond that she was just an amazing woman,” said Jane Conway, a friend and former model for Cellucci.

Cellucci, who died in September at 91, had a glamorous approach to fashion, often seen in all white with feather headpieces, rhinestones and spiked heels, even in her later years.

“I make jokes...

Photo exhibit offers — and questions — an idealized view of postwar America

A new photography exhibit at the Harvard Art Museums presents an idealized view of life in postwar America – and then raises questions about that vision.

“The Way We Never Were” features 70 photos taken across the country by hired photographers and drawn from the American Professional Photographers Collection at Harvard University. These images – from weddings, school dances, family breakfasts and other events – depict daily life in America during the 1950s.

The show also brings attention to h...

Boston Book Festival returns to Copley Square with more than 50 authors

Book lovers will gather Saturday in Copley Square for the 18th annual Boston Book Festival, which will feature more than 50 authors.

“This is just a beloved tradition in this city,” said Carlin Carr, the festival’s executive director.

The festival partners with the Boston Public Library to host panel sessions across the Copley Square area, including the Copley library branch, the Old South Church and the Goethe-Institut.

Authors will cover a wide range of genres from fiction and nonfiction to...

A timely tale opens up the 50th season of the Boston Lyric Opera

Boston Lyric Opera opens its 50th season Friday with “William Tell,” a story about a community coming together to fight authoritarianism.

“This felt like a great piece right now in Boston, the city of revolution,” said Nina Yoshida Nelsen, artistic director for BLO, who will perform the part of Hedwige, William Tell’s wife.

The story is one that we’ve seen repeated throughout history. The four-act show follows the legendary archer William Tell gathering his community to fight for freedom again...
The Week UK •

The trifle revival

Nostalgia for trifle has led to a “sudden resurgence” in sales of the classic British dessert, said The Times. Made with layers of “sherry-soaked sponge, fruit, custard, whipped cream and jelly”, the traditional pudding is even popping up on the menus of fancy restaurants.The origins of the dish go back to the late Tudor period but the cake base layer was only added to the recipe in the mid-18th century. Today, the dessert is no longer “just a festive centrepiece” but instead the “ultimate nosta...
The Week UK •

How AI could change your trip to the doctors

Almost three in 10 Britons now use AI chatbots to get health advice. And UK medical-policy experts are concerned that this could create confusion, undermine trust in GPs and other healthcare workers, and make it more difficult to take an informed decision about your health.The warning, from The Academy of Medical Sciences, comes as Open AI rolls out ChatGPT Health in the US. It allows users to “securely connect” their medical records and wellness apps to “ground conversations” in their own healt...
The Week UK •

Why young people keep getting lost up mountains

Social media feeds full of hiking content and glorious views have contributed to a growing interest in the outdoors among young adults. But a worrying number of young people have also needed rescuing from mountainous regions.Hiking influencers have become an “inadvertent source of inspiration” for their followers to take treks “without understanding the scale of the challenge” and that are “beyond their skill set”, said The i Paper.Hiking posts can make the “toughest climbs look like a walk in t...
The Week UK •

The best family days out for the summer holidays

Get the kids out of the house and keep them entertained this summer with these fun, memorable activities around the UK.Although bats are associated with Halloween, the best time to see the nocturnal creatures “fluttering around” is actually in the summertime, said The Guardian. One of the “most atmospheric ways” to see bats is on the Bat Safari Punting tour along the River Cam. Catch a trip with a local wildlife guide on a Friday or Saturday evening until the end of September for a chance to hea...
The Week UK •

An Odyssey-inspired adventure

If you have watched Christopher Nolan's adaptation of “The Odyssey” and feel inspired to embark on an epic journey of your own, consider visiting these stunning locations where key scenes of the movie were filmed. The director and his crew shot in six countries to bring Odysseus’ voyage to life, from the sand dunes of Morocco to the rugged cliffs of Scotland.Begin your journey where it started for Odysseus, at his home, Ithaca. Instead of filming on the actual Greek island in the Ionian Sea, Nol...
The Week UK •

The surprise heroes of wildfire prevention: goats

As firefighters battle wildfires that have already burned nearly 300,000 acres in southwest Spain and France, the search is on for ways to prevent fires of this scale in the future. One solution might be in the hands – or hooves – of goats.Goats might sound like unlikely firefighters, but their role is preventative. They actually provide a “cost-effective and environmentally sound way” to clear shrubbery that would “otherwise feed a wildfire instead of a hungry herd”, said the Los Angeles Times....
The Week UK •

Why Hitler’s birthplace has been turned into a police station

“No remnants of Nazi influence remain” at Salzburger Vorstadt 15, the building in the Austrian town of Braunau where Adolf Hitler was born in 1889, said The New York Times. The former guesthouse has now been remodelled into a police station, in an estimated £15 million renovation that concludes a “years-long effort” to prevent the site from becoming “an attraction for Nazi sympathisers”.The Austrian government acquired Salzburger Vorstadt 15 from its previous private ownership in 2016. It then r...
The Week UK •

Moonshot’s Kimi K3, the Chinese AI model spooking Silicon Valley

US dominance of the AI landscape is receding with the release of Kimi K3, the newest model developed by a Chinese start-up called Moonshot AI.Kimi K3 is as “powerful as the most advanced AI systems” from the US, such as OpenAI and Anthropic, while being “cheaper to run”, said The Telegraph. It is available for people to freely download and is an “open-weight model”. This allows developers to download it, modify it and run it on their own servers for free, “positioning it for easier adoption and...
The Week UK •

Iran war is harming rare wildlife

As the US and Iran continue to trade blows in the Middle East, the consequences of the intense bombings threaten Iran’s already “fragile biodiversity”, said The Associated Press.Historically, Iran has had a “deep connection” with its wildlife, being one of the first countries to form an environmental protection agency, although “decades of mismanagement and years-long drought” had already put a strain on conservationist work.Iran’s geographical location gives it a “wide range of climates” that h...
The Week UK •

Best places to watch August’s total solar eclipse

On 12 August, there will be a total solar eclipse over parts of Europe for the first time in almost 30 years. For a few moments, parts of Greenland, Iceland, Spain, Russia and Portugal will experience total darkness in daylight hours.It happens when the Moon passes directly between the Sun and the Earth, completely blocking the Sun’s brightness and plunging “daylight momentarily into darkness”, said National Geographic. It’s a “rare” moment “when Nature switches off the Sun just enough for us to...
The Week UK •

Will Yemen’s Houthis open new front in Middle East conflict?

Yemen’s Iran-aligned Houthi militia has announced it is closing the Bab al-Mandab Strait to Saudi ships, in a “maritime embargo” that could further disrupt global energy supplies. The strait, a strategic gateway linking the Red Sea with the Gulf of Aden, is one of the world’s most important oil transit routes. And, in recent days, Iran has reportedly been calling on the Houthis to block the strait to all oil tanker traffic passing through it.Closing off the Bab al-Mandab “chokepoint” on the sea...

2026: The year of Zendaya – Boston University News Service

By Lea Tran


Boston University News Service


As we approach the high season for entertainment releases, it seems we may be seeing a few of the same faces in the projects to come: Timothée Chalamet, Robert Pattison, Anne Hatheway, to name a few. But as more trailers are released and billboards are put up, it seems that actress Zendaya might take the win for the most movie poster features in 2026. Zendaya has already had a highly covered 2026 with her engagement to Tom Holland and the misinfor...
The Week UK •

Spend a long weekend in the Lake District

The Lake District has so much to offer beyond its “spectacular panoramic views”, said Condé Nast Traveller. Famed for its impressive lakes and rugged mountains, the Unesco World Heritage site also has a “fantastic culinary scene” and “activities galore” to keep the whole family entertained, come rain or shine.For some historical sightseeing, visit the “turreted grey knuckle” of Wray Castle, a masterclass in Victorian Gothic Revival architecture built in 1840, said Condé Nast Traveller. It is als...
The Week UK •

Why AI behaves differently in different languages

A recent study conducted by Anthropic, the creator of Claude, analysed the AI chatbot’s responses across different languages. It found that if you want a friendlier tone, you may want to switch your language settings.Anthropic compared data from more than 300,000 anonymised conversations in a two-week period during May 2026, said The Decoder. The company looked into samples from the top 20 languages of Claude.ai and their three models: Sonnet 4.6, Opus 4.6 and Opus 4.7. The results showed Claude...
The Week UK •

Why French adults are taking homework to the beach

This is the summer of “cerebral pursuits” in France, with “a big rise” in the sale of “holiday workbooks”, said The Times. With their “cahiers de vacances” – an adult spin-off from school revision guides – grown-ups are “brushing up” algebra, history and grammar on the beach.Holiday workbooks were originally designed to help schoolchildren to keep up with their studies over the long summer break. But the new adult versions are a real hit: you only have scan bookshop shelves to see “the scale of...
The Week UK •

Christopher Nolan’s best films of all time

Christopher Nolan’s much-anticipated mythic action epic “The Odyssey” is out this week. Count down to its release by watching or rewatching some of the director’s greatest hits.The word of the summer in 2023 was “Barbenheimer”, as the blockbusters “Barbie” and “Oppenheimer” both hit the big screen. “Oppenheimer”, definitely the darker half of the double feature, is Nolan’s “profoundly unnerving” retelling of the life of J. Robert Oppenheimer (Cillian Murphy) and the part he played in developing...
The Week UK •

Two major archaeological sites uncovered in Egypt

The Byzantine city, in the Dakhla oasis region, was a “remarkably preserved secret”, said the Egypt Independent. Eighteen tombs were also uncovered from the Marina el-Alamein archaeological site near Egypt’s northern coast.Aside from the historical knowledge gained from these sites, the discoveries could also attract more tourists to the country.The Dakhla oasis site could offer a “detailed glimpse” into urban development and economic activity in Byzantine Egypt, said The Independent. The ancien...
The Week UK •

The 10 best tearjerker films of all time

If you are after a good cry, these films will have you reaching for the tissues. From stories of survival and life-changing decisions to heartbreak and hope, here are some of the best tragic tales brought to the big screen.Director James Cameron became “king of the world” in the 1990s with this “wildly over-the-top weepie romance” between Rose (Kate Winslet) and Jack (Leonardo DiCaprio) on the so-called unsinkable ship, said Peter Bradshaw in The Guardian.Our heroine is “not suited for life in t...
Newton Beacon •

Newton to deploy 'smart meters' for more accurate electricity use data - Newton Beacon

Newton residents can expect their old electric meters to be replaced with smart meters in the coming months. 
Smart meters are digital devices that can measure electric usage on a more detailed level than older meters.
“They are basically digital meters that monitor your electricity use with a whole lot more granularity than the old meters that we have right now,” said Anna Vanderspek, electric vehicle program director for Green Energy Consumers Alliance, an energy advocacy group based in Massac...
Newton Beacon •

Council committee continues debating winter parking ban but postpones action - Newton Beacon

A City Council committee revisited Newton’s controversial parking ban on Wednesday but held off again on taking action.
It was the third time the item has been on the committee’s agenda since Feb. 18.
The winter ban prohibits cars from parking on any public roads in Newton from 2 a.m. to 6 a.m.  from Dec. 1 until March 31. A violation can result in a $25 fine. Last November,  city voters narrowly voted against repealing the ban.
Chair Tarik Lucas had asked committee members to bring goals to Wed...
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