Evacuation flight with 160 Indians diverted to Kuwait after Iranian strikes shut airspace
The Islamic Republic had threatened to retaliate in the wake of the American decision to join forces with Israel in attacking Iran's nuclear facilities in Fordo, Natanz and Esfahan.
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USA Today
11 minutes ago
- USA Today
Princess Lilibet makes adorable cameo in Duchess Meghan's As Ever teaser: Watch
Duchess Meghan is making her business a family affair. The British American royal and entrepreneur, 43, shared a behind-the-scenes teaser for her As Ever lifestyle brand, which launched in April to fan acclaim, in an Instagram post June 23. The clip featured an adorable appearance from the Duchess of Sussex's daughter, 4-year-old Princess Lilibet. The brief montage showed close-up shots of various fruits (some of As Ever's products have included raspberry and apricot spreads), as well as a shot of Meghan writing down a motivational quote: "Note to self: Let's do something extraordinary today!" Then, in one outdoor scene, Lilibet can be seen standing beside the duchess on a footbridge as the mother-daughter duo appears to marvel at something below. "A little behind the scenes of @aseverofficial," Meghan captioned the post. "Hope you enjoy your treats when they arrive this week! 🍯" Princess Lilibet is 4: Duchess Meghan shares sweet new photos with Prince Harry Meghan shares Princess Lilibet, her second child, with husband Prince Harry. The Sussexes are also parents to 6-year-old son Prince Archie. In celebration of Lilibet's fourth birthday on June 4, Duchess Meghan shared a series of never-before-seen photos of the young royal on social media, including a throwback photo of Harry gazing tenderly at a newborn Lilibet. "The sweetest bond to watch unfold 💕 Daddy's little girl and favorite adventurer," Meghan wrote at the time. In a separate post, she gushed: "Happy birthday to our beautiful girl! Four years ago today she came into our lives — and each day is brighter and better because of it." 10 bingeable memoirs to check out: Celebrities tell all about aging, marriage and Beyoncé Meghan first teased As Ever in March 2024 when she made a buzzy return to Instagram after a yearslong social media hiatus to introduce fans to the lifestyle project, formerly named American Riviera Orchard. The duchess later revealed she renamed the brand As Ever because the previous title, a reference to her and Harry's Montecito residence, "limited me to things that were just manufactured and grown in this area." The first As Ever drop sold out in under an hour and one product — the limited-edition wildflower honey with honeycomb for $28 — had fans buzzing, selling out in less than five minutes. The featured products in the company's first collection included $12 herbal tea in three flavors: hibiscus, peppermint and lemon ginger. As Ever is produced alongside Netflix, which also distributes Meghan's lifestyle show "With Love, Meghan." The series premiered in March and was quickly renewed for a second season. Contributing: Taijuan Moorman and Jay Stahl, USA TODAY
Hindustan Times
13 minutes ago
- Hindustan Times
A look at Al Udeid Air Base, the US military site that Iran attacked
Iran retaliated Monday for the U.S. attacks on its nuclear sites by targeting Al Udeid Air Base, a sprawling desert facility in Qatar that serves as a major regional military hub for American forces. This satellite image from Planet Labs PBC shows Al Udeid Air Base outside of Doha, Qatar.(AP) No American or Qatari personnel were harmed, the U.S. military's Central Command said, noting that the two forces worked together to defend the base. A Qatari military officer said one of 19 missiles fired by Iran was not intercepted and hit the base, but President Donald Trump said in a social media post that 'hardly any damage was done.'. As of this month, the U.S. military had about 40,000 service members in the Middle East, according to a U.S. official. Many of them are on ships at sea as part of a bolstering of forces as the conflict escalated between Israel and Iran, according to the Washington-based Council on Foreign Relations research and policy center. Bases in the Middle East have been on heightened alert and taking additional security precautions in anticipation of potential strikes from Iran, while the Pentagon has shifted military aircraft and warships into and around the region during the conflict. The U.S. has military sites spread across the region, including in Qatar, Bahrain, Iraq, Israel, Egypt, Jordan, Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, Syria and the United Arab Emirates. Here's a look at Al Udeid Air Base in Qatar: Al Udeid hosts thousands of service members The base hosts thousands of U.S. service members and served as a major staging ground for the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq. At the height of both, Al Udeid housed some 10,000 U.S. troops, and that number dropped to about 8,000 as of 2022. The forward headquarters of Central Command, it also was used in the fight against the Islamic State group in Iraq and Syria. Al Udeid is built on a flat stretch of desert about 20 miles (30 kilometers) southwest of Qatar's capital, Doha. Over two decades, the gas-rich Gulf country has spent some $8 billion in developing the base, once considered so sensitive that American military officers would say only that it was somewhere 'in southwest Asia.' Trump has visited Al Udeid Trump visited the air base during a trip to the region last month. It was the first time a sitting U.S. president had traveled to the installation in more than 20 years. Al Udeid cleared its tarmacs Last week, ahead of the U.S. strikes on Iranian nuclear facilities, Al Udeid saw many of the transport planes, fighter jets and drones typically on its tarmac dispersed. In a June 18 satellite photo taken by Planet Labs PBC and analyzed by The Associated Press, the air base's tarmac had emptied. The U.S. military has not acknowledged the change, which came after ships off the U.S. Navy's 5th Fleet base in Bahrain also had dispersed. That's typically a military strategy to ensure your fighting ships and planes aren't destroyed in case of an attack.
Mint
20 minutes ago
- Mint
It's not just Labubu dolls. Chinese brands are booming
Labubu dolls are hard to come by. Even at the giant flagship store of their maker, Pop Mart, in Shanghai, throngs of customers are told they need to wait a week or longer. The grimacing elvish creatures, which come in 'blind boxes" that keep buyers in suspense over which one they might get, sell for as little as $20. But a rare variety sold for $150,000 at an auction on June 10th. It is not just Chinese children trying to get their hands on the dolls; celebrities including David Beckham, a British football player, and Rihanna, an American pop star, have recently gone public with their appreciation. The Labubu craze has sent Pop Mart's shares up by 170% since the start of the year. It is one of a growing cohort of Chinese consumer brands whose popularity is surging. For decades Chinese shoppers tended to look overseas for the latest trends in cosmetics, fashion, hospitality and more. Now they are flocking to local luxury firms, high-end make-up brands and milk-tea shops. What is more, many of these brands are gaining a devoted following abroad. Western brands should be worried. It is an odd time for a boom among Chinese consumer products. Sputtering economic growth has caused household spending to weaken. Yet the strain on Chinese shoppers' wallets is one of the factors propelling local brands. As consumers have become more price-sensitive, cheap but decent quality homegrown brands have thrived. Many urban Chinese coffee drinkers, for example, have found local chains such as Cotti or Luckin just as good as Starbucks, an American company, but often half as expensive. Laopu Gold, a Chinese maker of luxury jewellery, has found success selling elegant bracelets and earrings that tend to be cheaper than those offered by Tiffany & Co, another American stalwart. Songmont, a local handbag brand, has launched a costly advertising campaign in airports across the country pitting itself against foreign competitors that are often twice as expensive, or more. Part of Pop Mart's success with Labubu dolls has come from targeting frugal spenders with high-quality, 'emotive" products, says Lina Yan of HSBC, a bank. Yet consumer downgrading is only part of the explanation for the buzz around Chinese brands. In many cases shoppers are paying just as much or more for local equivalents. For instance, the best-selling products at Chagee, a tea chain that went public in New York in April, are tea lattes that sell for 15-20 yuan ($2-3), on par with Starbucks's top products in China. The group has marketed itself as a premium brand, not a budget one, notes Han Zhang of Deutsche Bank, another lender. The fastest-growing segment of electric vehicles in China is not the cheapest but those priced at between 200,000-400,000 yuan, considered 'entry-level luxury". Foreign carmakers have long dominated this market segment, but many popular new models in this range are from local rivals such as NIO and Li Auto. Chinese consumers are also now far less enamoured with foreign goods simply because they are foreign. Laopu's rapid rise is proof of that. The firm, which sells intricate gold jewellery with a distinct Chinese flair, has managed to keep its sales per store above 300m yuan, at least 50% higher than most of its foreign rivals. Its share price is up by more than 2,000% since it listed in Hong Kong about a year ago. It is one of only a small number of homegrown luxury brands in China. The industry has long been dominated by foreign firms. But most of them are now doing poorly in the country. Western luxury brands once filled a gap simply because there were no real local alternatives, says Amber Zhang of BigOne Lab, a research firm. However, 'that doesn't mean Chinese consumers naturally resonate with the design or cultural message of those Western brands." Rather than trying to appear Western, both Laopu and Chagee have flaunted their Chineseness. It has worked. Fans argue that, despite its lower prices, Laopu's materials and design are of higher quality than most foreign offerings. This points to another shift in spending habits in China: shoppers are better informed about products today than they used to be, mainly thanks to social media. Many feel that they have been fleeced by foreign companies that were able to sell at inflated prices purely by not being Chinese. Today young women scour the labels of cosmetics brands to find local products with the same active ingredients as foreign ones but at lower prices, notes an industry analyst. That has helped yet another hit Chinese brand, a cosmetics maker called Mao Geping, which raised $300m in an initial public offering in Hong Kong in December. Its share price has soared by about 250% since then. Homegrown cosmetics companies have been trying to steal share from foreign firms such as L'Oréal and Estée Lauder for years, but have struggled to compete at the pricier end of the market. Mao Geping, which is named after its founder, a famous make-up artist, has become the first local company to make it onto the list of the top ten high-end make-up brands in China. Whereas foreign firms tend to focus on China's largest cities, local brands operate farther afield. Many got their start in smaller inland cities. Chagee opened its first store in the city of Kunming, in the southwestern province of Yunnan, in 2017, and most of its shops remain outside rich coastal areas. Mixue, a cold-drink chain, started as a shaved-ice stand in one of China's poorer provinces. The country's most popular fast-food brands have mainly expanded in smaller cities before trying their luck in places such as Beijing and Shanghai. Hoteliers are doing the same. H World, a Chinese hotel chain, will open about half of its new properties in third- and fourth-tier cities over the next year, says He Jihong, its chief strategist. Foreign hotel chains are much less active in small cities. This could be one factor keeping H World's hotels fuller than those of foreign rivals. Its occupancy rate was above 80% last year, while the figure for Marriott International, an American chain with a large presence in China, fell below 70%, making the country one of its worst performing regions. The focus on small cities is important because spending there appears healthier than in big cities. Purchases of fast-moving consumer goods, such as packaged food and beauty products, expanded by 5.5% in 2024 in cities with fewer than 1m people, whereas they shrank by 4.6% in the biggest cities, according to Bain, a consultancy. Foreign brands in China are scrambling to fend off their new competitors. Lavazza, an Italian coffee chain, has tried selling salted-duck-egg coffee, with limited success. Some Western businesses, including Starbucks and Häagen-Dazs, an ice-cream chain owned by General Mills, an American food giant, are reportedly sounding out local investors for their Chinese operations in an effort to inject new ideas. The competitive threat is not contained to China. Pop Mart now has stores in more than 20 countries, including at least 37 in America. Mixue can be found across South-East Asia. Chagee will have more than 1,300 shops outside China by the end of the year, up from almost none four years ago. And analysts believe that the more foreign recognition these brands get, the more popular they become within China. The social-media craze in the West over Labubu dolls is thought to be adding to their local cachet. For decades retail trends swept into China from abroad. Those days may be ending.
