Epic Universe opening day draws international visitors
FOX 35's Morgan Parrish joins FOX 35's Garrett Wymer's LIVE coverage of Epic Universe grand opening coverage speaking with guests driving into the park from Argentina and out-of-state from the American northeast.

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Eater
28 minutes ago
- Eater
The Strip's Biggest Food Hall Just Opened — Here's What to Eat
A new food hall has opened on the Las Vegas Strip — the latest in a citywide boom of food halls that bring together local favorites, national chains, and celebrity chef brands under one roof. And Via Via, which debuted Monday, June 9 at the Venetian Resort, might just be the city's most exciting one yet. While some Las Vegas casinos have traded buffets for brand-new food halls, Via Via took a different approach — transforming its existing food court by swapping out familiar mall staples like Bonanno's and Fatburger for buzzy, sought-after restaurants from across the country. One standout is Howlin' Ray's, the cult-favorite Los Angeles spot known for its Nashville-style hot chicken. Its fans once lined up for hours to get fried chicken sandwiches, and even nine years after opening its first location in LA's Chinatown, lines are still a common sight on weekends. James Beard Award nominee and New York Times best-selling author Mason Hereford is bringing a double dose of New Orleans flavor to the Las Vegas Strip. His cult-favorite spots, Turkey and the Wolf and Molly's Rise and Shine, are now slinging sandwiches and breakfast hits at Via Via. Turkey and the Wolf, the sandwich slinger that Bon Appétit crowned America's Best New Restaurant in 2017, is known for its offbeat menu — think double-decker collard green sandwiches and chicken pot pie-stuffed empanadas with tarragon buttermilk. Right next door, Hereford's Magazine Street breakfast spot, Molly's Rise and Shine, serves up playful takes on the morning classics, like a Grand Slam McMuffin stacked with sausage patties, American cheese, grilled onions, and house-made English muffins. Also at Via Via, acclaimed New York noodle spot Ivan Ramen serves some of the city's most enjoyable noodles on the Las Vegas Strip — a critic once declared its ramen 'so good it will make your eyes explode.' But the menu goes well beyond ramen, offering a lineup of inventive, izakaya-style small plates like asparagus with miso nuta and stracciatella, spicy pickles, and wagyu pastrami buns. Some may remember chef Ray Garcia, the talent behind ¡Viva! at Resorts World, and his B.S. Taqueria from its stint at the short-lived Sundry food hall in southwest Las Vegas, where it served tacos, small bites, and a deep tequila list that rivaled full-service bars. Now, the concept returns with a fresh take at Via Via. On the menu are dishes like chile-rubbed al pastor, wood-fire grilled cauliflower, and house-made chorizo, all tucked into freshly pressed heirloom corn tortillas. The Lower East Side's Scarr's Pizza has been serving pies for nearly a decade, but even its newest location drew lines around the block when it opened in 2023. Owner Scarr Pimentel grinds his own flour in-house to create the ideal foundation for a simple, perfect slice of cheese 'za. All'Antico Vinaio, the legendary sandwich shop from Florence known for its round-the-block lines, square-cut schiacciata bread, and towering stacks of cured meats and cheeses, opened its second Las Vegas location at the food hall. The first outpost debuted at UnCommons last year. Lastly, the hospitality group behind Death & Co. — the influential cocktail bar that helped define the modern cocktail renaissance — is bringing its latest concept to Las Vegas. Close Company, which debuted in Nashville just a couple of weeks ago, offers the same high-caliber cocktails as its predecessor but in a more relaxed, neighborhood-style setting. It marks the first Las Vegas venture for Gin & Luck, the team behind Death & Co. locations in New York, Los Angeles, Denver, Washington, D.C., and Seattle. Via Via is the latest addition to Las Vegas's ongoing food hall boom. At the Miracle Mile Shops inside Planet Hollywood, Tacotarian recently opened inside the new Miracle Eats food court, which is slowly filling out with other vendors like Irv's Burgers and Fat Sal's. Like the Venetian, Caesars Palace also gave its food court a glow-up, replacing its functional but forgettable stalls with celebrity names like Bobby's Burgers by Bobby Flay and Guy Fieri's Chicken Guy. Off-Strip, the short-lived Sundry, which famously closed exactly one year after opening last June, is being replaced by a popular Hawaiian food hall focused on Asian street food. And newcomer H-Mart has brought its own built-in food hall packed with Korean and other Asian favorites. Via Via follows in the footsteps of Proper Eats at Aria, bringing together talent that already draws crowds in cities across the U.S. With names like Howlin' Ray's, Ivan Ramen, Turkey and the Wolf, and Death & Co. — and menus this stacked — Via Via isn't just a food hall; it's a cheat sheet for what's hot in American dining right now. See More: Vegas Restaurant News Vegas Restaurant Openings
Yahoo
an hour ago
- Yahoo
Newsom Posts AI-Generated Videos Mimicking Star Wars' Emperor Palpatine Reading Trump Tweets
Gavin Newsom cast aside subtlety today in his war of words — and now lawsuits — with President Donald Trump. The California Governor's Press Office posted two seemingly AI-generated TikTok videos with a voice that sounds a lot like Star Wars' Emperor Palpatine (played by Ian McDiarmid) reading recent military-minded posts from the president related to the unrest in Los Angeles. More from Deadline Gavin Newsom Seeks Immediate Order To Block Donald Trump's Federal Troop Patrols In Los Angeles Donald Trump Responds To Gavin Newsom's Dare To Arrest Him, Says He 'Would Do It' If He Were The Border Czar CNN Correspondent Detained By LAPD, Camera Crew Arrested The first features a very marital, John Williams-sounding score playing over animated images of storm troopers mobilizing on the ground as star destroyers float overhead. The ominous voice reading Trump's words begins, 'A once great American city, Los Angeles, has been invaded and occupied by illegal aliens and criminals…' You can watch it below. A ONCE GREAT AMERICAN CITY HAS BEEN OCCUPIED! — Governor Newsom Press Office (@GovPressOffice) June 10, 2025 The second video features footage from the imperial attack on the rebel base from the beginning of The Empire Strikes Back. The Trump text used in the video warns that 'Los Angeles would have been completely obliterated' if not for his interventions. Watch it below. LOS ANGELES WOULD HAVE BEEN COMPLETELY OBLITERATED! — Governor Newsom Press Office (@GovPressOffice) June 10, 2025 Newsom is, of course, taking a page from Trump's playbook here. The president is fond of posting AI-generated video and images related to current news events. In February, as conflict raged in Gaza, the president posted AI video that featured a transformed Gaza full of beaches, skyscrapers and gold Trump statues, with odd appearances from an AI-generated Elon Musk and Trump sipping a cocktail at the beach with a topless Benjamin Netanyahu. The posting garnered heavy criticism from the PLO and neighboring Arab nations. Best of Deadline Sean 'Diddy' Combs Sex-Trafficking Trial Updates: Cassie Ventura's Testimony, $10M Hotel Settlement, Drugs, Violence, & The Feds A Full Timeline Of Blake Lively & Justin Baldoni's 'It Ends With Us' Feud In Court, Online & In The Media Where To Watch All The 'John Wick' Movies: Streamers That Have All Four Films


Atlantic
an hour ago
- Atlantic
The Growing Belief in ‘Love at First Sight'
The idea seems so old-fashioned, so sentimental: that you could fall for someone 'at first sight,' deeply and instantly. It's straight out of the classic romance dramas—Jack's gaze freezing when he sees Rose on the Titanic's deck; The Notebook 's Noah lighting up and asking, 'Who's this girl?' when he spies Allie across the amusement park. As a general rule, the stuff of popular love stories is not the stuff of real life. We know this, right? Not right, I guess. This year's 'Singles in America' survey —conducted annually by the dating company Match and the Kinsey Institute, and released today—found something surprising: Of the roughly 5,000 single American adults polled, 60 percent said they believe in love at first sight, a nearly 30 percent increase from 2014. Almost half of the respondents (people ages 18 to 98, from all over the country) said they'd experienced the phenomenon themselves. I didn't expect this, not only because the validity of the concept has been questioned for years, but also because it's such a dreamily romantic notion—a hopeful one, really. And these days, the common narrative about dating (and what I've found, to some degree, in my own reporting) is that many people are burned out, tired of the apps, and generally feeling pessimistic. This spike in belief even startled some of the researchers: Amanda Gesselman, a Kinsey Institute psychologist, told me that the results 'sort of blew me away.' But once Gesselman stepped back and thought about the finding, she said, it made some sense to her. In 2014, dating apps were relatively new. Couples tended to meet through friends or family; people would get to know each other for a while before pairing off. In more recent years, Gesselman has consistently found that swipe-based dating apps are the main way that partners meet—across age, gender, race, income, and geographic region. That style of dating has people in the habit of making quick calls, judging whether they have chemistry with a stranger after just one date. Paul Eastwick, a UC Davis psychologist who studies romantic attraction and wasn't involved with the survey, told me the same thing: 'Online dating has a lot of 'We met—no. We met—no. We met—no. We met—no. We met—oh, that was a good one!'' In other words, the slow burn has become less common. Instead, two other experiences may have become more common: the plainly bad first date, where a lack of connection is immediately apparent; and the kind of date about which a person might one day say: 'We knew right away.' Whether that latter scenario is truly love at first sight depends on what you mean by love —and, okay, also what you mean by sight. Eastwick has found that some people do feel strongly about a romantic prospect from the get-go: if not at first glance, then straight from the point of a first conversation. And when things click, he said, those feelings can run deeper than physical attraction. (If love at first sight was just thinking someone was hot, I'd experience it every day walking down the streets of New York City.) In a 2018 study of undergraduate students, Eastwick asked participants to reflect on their past relationships and describe how they'd felt at different points over the course of their time with their former partners. About a fifth of people said they'd been smitten upon meeting; they'd felt an instant bond, found some niche shared interest, couldn't stop talking. To be fair, that's the same portion of people who felt 'when I first met this person, I thought they were trash'—Eastwick's words, not mine! Nonetheless, he concluded that something like love at first sight, though not the norm, 'is real. It happens.' Of course, these were prior relationships; evidently, falling in love quickly doesn't mean that a relationship is going to last. What psychologists refer to as 'passionate love' —the buzzy, dizzying rush of early infatuation; the feeling of craving, even addiction—is neurologically distinct from 'compassionate love,' which tends to set in after a year or two and doesn't involve the same elevated cortisol and serotonin levels. And besides, maybe the participants who reported experiencing love at first sight were simply projecting that narrative retroactively. Capturing people's feelings in real time, as they first get together, is difficult, Eastwick said. He has tried asking participants in other studies to tell him as soon as they've met someone promising—and they have. But, he said, 'what you mostly get is: 'I'm really excited about this person!' And then when you check in a week later, they're like, 'Who now?'' Right around this point in our interview, the 'Singles in America' finding started to sound a little concerning to me; love at first sight, however possible, didn't seem like something to bank on. I imagined a nation full of people going on first date after first date: thirsty people crawling on their hands and knees, longing for a feeling that only a fifth of Eastwick's participants experienced and that hadn't even kept them together. A world with this many first dates is not a world I want to live in. 'I'm screaming into the void, being like, 'Hey, everybody, there was a way we used to date,'' Eastwick told me. ''You just kind of hung out with people and saw what happened.'' Relative to our era of snap judgments, he said, the old way of dating was 'democratizing.' But Gesselman remains optimistic. Online dating may have primed people to expect too much too soon, but at least it hasn't destroyed their romantic idealism. Ten trillion swipes later—I'm guesstimating—the 'Singles in America' participants haven't given up. 'The overwhelming majority of singles in our survey reported that they believe that love can last forever,' Gesselman told me. 'They believe there's someone out there for them.' Those ideas fit under an umbrella that psychologists call 'destiny beliefs,' a faith in predetermined bonds (as opposed to 'growth beliefs,' or the idea that a relationship requires maintenance and labor). Gesselman knows that such mystical thinking might set up unrealistic expectations. She also suspects that it can motivate people to commit to a relationship. Eastwick found that the participants who reported feeling the most romantic interest at the very start of a relationship also described feeling romantic interest for the longest amount of time. They were also less likely to have initiated the breakup. If you believe you've found your soulmate, after all, you might try especially hard to make it work. Love at first sight may be a high bar to clear. And holding such an ambitious standard could mean staying single for longer, or forever. But maybe fewer people these days are worried about that. Maybe they have full lives and want a relationship only if it's extraordinary. Partnership used to be a stricter societal norm than it is today; different possibilities for how to live a 'good life' are, little by little, opening up. Today's singles may know that love at first sight isn't all that likely. Perhaps more of them have the luxury of holding out for it anyway.