Latest news with #HotChocolate
The Age
08-08-2025
- Lifestyle
- The Age
The chocolate addiction you don't need to quit this winter
Do I need to kick my wardrobe addiction to chocolate? The only time that I will endorse rich, dark chocolate over delicious, crumbly white chocolate is when it comes to winter dressing. While colour forecaster Pantone named paler 'Mocha Mousse' the colour of 2025, I find its duskier relative far more intriguing. Chocolate lends itself to tonal dressing, with multiple layers creating a satisfying symphony of colour; paler shades can result in a disappointing wall of, well, beige. To avoid off-notes, though, pay close attention to different textures, such as pairing suede with wool and thick cotton. The result is 'warmer' than black and less vulnerable to grime than cream. In the past, brown was revived by designers keen to create a bohemian, '70s mood on the runway, but, thanks to dresses and coats at The Row, Zimmermann, Saint Laurent and Christopher Esber, it has been elevated to luxury status alongside black and navy blues. Lean into the glamour with gold accessories or add further lustre with a glimpse of pearl. In other words, leave the macramé necklaces at home. If a top-to-toe brownout feels too ambitious, maintain the semi-formal feel by introducing some black basics or take the colour to the street by wearing it with denim. Worried about chocolate being too 'this year' and having an in-built expiry date that coincides with fireworks ushering in 2026? Just keep brown and carry on: Pantone has identified 'Hot Chocolate' as one of the standout colours at London Fashion Week's Autumn/Winter 2025/26 collection.
Sydney Morning Herald
08-08-2025
- Lifestyle
- Sydney Morning Herald
The chocolate addiction you don't need to quit this winter
Do I need to kick my wardrobe addiction to chocolate? The only time that I will endorse rich, dark chocolate over delicious, crumbly white chocolate is when it comes to winter dressing. While colour forecaster Pantone named paler 'Mocha Mousse' the colour of 2025, I find its duskier relative far more intriguing. Chocolate lends itself to tonal dressing, with multiple layers creating a satisfying symphony of colour; paler shades can result in a disappointing wall of, well, beige. To avoid off-notes, though, pay close attention to different textures, such as pairing suede with wool and thick cotton. The result is 'warmer' than black and less vulnerable to grime than cream. In the past, brown was revived by designers keen to create a bohemian, '70s mood on the runway, but, thanks to dresses and coats at The Row, Zimmermann, Saint Laurent and Christopher Esber, it has been elevated to luxury status alongside black and navy blues. Lean into the glamour with gold accessories or add further lustre with a glimpse of pearl. In other words, leave the macramé necklaces at home. If a top-to-toe brownout feels too ambitious, maintain the semi-formal feel by introducing some black basics or take the colour to the street by wearing it with denim. Worried about chocolate being too 'this year' and having an in-built expiry date that coincides with fireworks ushering in 2026? Just keep brown and carry on: Pantone has identified 'Hot Chocolate' as one of the standout colours at London Fashion Week's Autumn/Winter 2025/26 collection.
The Independent
30-06-2025
- Entertainment
- The Independent
‘I was chewed up and spat out – fighters deserve better': Danny Roberts on starting fresh after post-UFC pain
Being a professional fighter does not guarantee the lavish lifestyle many may portray it to. For British ex- UFC star Danny Roberts, he knows this all too well. 'I was a kid that came from a tough upbringing, a lot of adversity and abuse.' The Croydon-raised brawler grew up without a father figure and came into the sport not to build a personal brand or take over the world, but to provide a certain life and be 'the man that he didn't have' for his children. Roberts, 37, spent close to eight years fighting under the UFC banner. In that time he had 14 bouts, one of which in 2022 came against current welterweight champion Jack Della Maddalena. But it's since his departure that things have come into perspective on the MMA industry as a whole. 'Hot Chocolate' has not fought since his final UFC outing, a wild clash against Jonny Parsons in his home city in July 2023. His eventual cut in January of this year was far from the perfect end, with the UFC toying with his future to leave his source of income in limbo for over a year. 'My last fight in the UFC, I got fight of the night,' he told The Independent. 'Then I got told I was to have another fight, but it got to the point where a year had passed by. If I would have turned around and just left then, I could have probably been back where I needed to be a lot sooner. But that is what it is. 'As far as the UFC is concerned, I had an absolutely phenomenal time. It's part of my life that I'm never ever going to forget. But there is definitely a lot of ups and downs and a lot of things that could be better for the athletes – look after the athletes better and have their best interests in mind, because we're at the bottom of the food chain. It's like crabs in a bucket. 'Everyone's fighting to get to the top, and if you're not at the top, you ain't got s***. That's not good enough. We're talking about the premiership organisation of the world. The 20 years of your f****** life you give to be a part of that, training every day and being away from friends, family, relationships to be able to do what you can do. It's not very stable – it's like the one per cent of the one per cent.' Close to two years out of the cage, it looked like he would be making his return in the fledgling GFL, which was fronted by major names including Tony Ferguson, Alexander Gustaffson and Uriah Faber. However, the star-studded promotion collapsed before it even began, cancelling its inaugural two events, the first of which included Roberts's planned clash against Neiman Gracie. 'This is one of the things all fighters have issues with,' he said. 'There is no governing body, there is no one that can look after our best interests, so it's very hard. We get used, we get chewed up, we get spat out, and the only thing that we have is to look after ourselves. 'As fighters we're very hopeful, very ambitious, very driven, so you go and give us some sort of magic in front of us, our eyes light up. The GFL was that. It looked like it was legit.' Roberts has since found stability in the PFL and is set to make his promotional debut on 5 July, assuming the villain role as he main events against undefeated hometown hero Patrick Habirora in Brussels, Belgium. 'Creating the upset is something I relish,' he says, repeatedly expressing his gratitude to the company for the opportunity. However, he has not lost sight of the wider issues with MMA, an industry where inequality and poor communication with its 'pawns' are rife. To Roberts, unionisation would be a way to combat these problems. 'There should be,' he says when asked if the sport should have a union. 'Can you look at any other sport in the world [that doesn't have unionisation]? This isn't me trying to badmouth, I'm just speaking the gospel truth about it. 'We put our livelihoods on the line and miles on the clock. We do irreversible damage to our bodies. Yes, it's obviously our choice to do that, but it's one of the hardest ways to go and earn a paycheck, and whether you've got to be tapped in the head or just delusional to do that, we should still be valued. 'We're athletes also. We're doing what we need to do to be able to get the best for our families, and I've experienced – within a few months of leaving UFC – scraping around to find pennies to pay bills. When that comes as a realisation, it's not good.' Problems with the fighting world he may have, but Roberts is not yet ready to step away from the cage for good. 'My heart and my head are still very much in this game.' Retirement is not on his mind as he embarks on his latest career chapter in PFL, seeking to 'shoot for the stars and succeed'. But with 15 years on his professional fighting stopwatch, Roberts is fully aware that outside of the cage, the room for improvement is endless.
Hamilton Spectator
27-05-2025
- Hamilton Spectator
Venturing into Khutzeymateen: Canada's only grizzly bear sanctuary
Hidden deep in northwest B.C.'s coast lies the lush inlet of the Khutzeymateen, bustling with grizzly bears and other rich fauna. Created in 1994 as the first specially protected area for grizzly bears and their habitat in Canada, it is widely regarded as the densest natural grizzly bear habitat in North America. The sanctuary is located about 45 kilometres northeast of Prince Rupert and only is accessible by boat or plane. The Gits'iis tribe of the Lax Kw'alaams Band has been the steward of this region for thousands of years. The area became protected through an agreement with the B.C. Government and the Tsimshian First Nation three decades ago, and has helped conserve the grizzly bear population that calls the Khutzeymateen their home, as well as preserve the social, ceremonial, and cultural uses of the Coast Tsimshian who depend on the area. Two rangers from the Tsimshian Gits'iis tribe are situated at the K'tzim-a-deen Ranger Station at Khutzeymateen Inlet — K'tzim-a-deen translates to 'valley at the head of the inlet' in the Tsimshian language of the Gits'iis people. They keep track of bear sightings and any commercial activity, monitoring people's behaviours around the bears and staying involved in the ecology of the area. Each year from May to the end of July, Prince Rupert Adventure Tours takes passengers on their yellow catamaran to one of the only places on the planet where grizzly bears can be observed in their natural habitat, living freely in the wilderness. Khutzeymateen is also a vibrant haven for bald eagles, seals, sea lions, orcas, humpback whales and mountain goats, while coastal wolves also roam the rugged landscape. Nearby waters invite glimpses of majestic whales and playful dolphins, showcasing the area's rich biodiversity. The bears of Khutzeymateen Jasmine Newton, a tour guide with Prince Rupert Adventure Tours, mentioned that between the 40 to 50 bears that roam the 45,000 hectare sanctuary, some of them can be territorial. 'We've seen that happen with some of the females that we know really well. Hot Chocolate is a bear [and] she's got a son named Marshmallow who we watched almost every day last year, and so we've noticed kind of fluctuations with them. 'Usually grizzly bears will kick out their young at about two to three years, but she kicked him out a little bit early, and so we kind of saw them moving between different territories. Last year. He kept trying to follow her and get back on her good side and spend time with mom again, but she wouldn't let him.' The sanctuary mainly has grizzlies, but there have been sightings of black bears before, However, grizzlies do not like to associate with black bears, so when their paths do cross — typically at the beginning of the season right when grizzlies come out of hibernation — it can be fatal for black bears. 'Some of the bears are transitory, so they'll move in and out. Most of them are resident bears, we think so. They'll have their dens up in the alpine habitats, and they'll stay there for five months out of the year. The rest of the time, they're down along the shorelines hunting for salmon. 'From July onwards, they're looking for berries around this time of year, in the very beginning of the season. They like things like skunk cabbages and bulbous roots, and sedge grass is a really important part of their diet.' They forage for shellfish and clams and consume about 40 to 60 pounds of protein-rich sedge grass each day. Salmon is the most important part of their diet, while the other things they eat help sustain them. Newton shared that without salmon, the bears would not be able to build enough body fat to last through hibernation. Threats to the sanctuary's bears 'Grizzly bear habitat used to be all over North America, specifically in B.C. It used to go all the way down to Vancouver. But they've been pushed out of their territory by human encroachment, building cities and especially extractive industries like pipelines. This is one of the last intact grizzly bear habitats in North America,' said Newton. Overfishing in northern coastal waters also poses a significant threat to the grizzlies, the salmon populations and the sanctuary itself. 'Something that has been on my mind recently is that we have lots of bottom trawler licenses in the Chatham Sound. If you look at bottom trawling, it's a really unsustainable practice of fishing that contributes to a lot of the overfishing we see here, specifically for salmon,' said Newton. Bottom trawling was banned in all new Canadian Marine Protected Areas (MPAs) established after April 25, 2018. However, the ban does not apply retroactively to MPAs established before that date. 'Without the healthy salmon populations, the bears would not survive here. The reason the bears do so well here and on a broader level, in northern B.C., is because we have some of the largest intact rivers here, like the Skeena and the Nass.' Newton is also an Environmental Studies and Indigenous Studies double-major at the University of Victoria. She stressed the present threat of climate change that will impact the sanctuary in the future. 'With climate change comes a lot of animals and tons of wildlife that are going to be forced from down south to up north, to a sanctuary such as this, so we might not have enough intact ecosystems to support that, as well as, connectability, so there might not be safe passages for these wildlife to come up from down south.' She also brought up how the bears are not hibernating as long as they should in the winter due to winters being warmer in recent years. 'They're generally not going to go out and kill a moose, so they're not going to have a major food source through the wintertime. They could dig for grass or roots underneath the snow, but then they'd have to waste energy going down the mountainside. So it's better for them to just go through hibernation, but they have to have enough salmon in order to do that.' Eco-tourism BC Parks, Lax Kw'alaams and Commercial Bear Viewing Guides work in collaboration to ensure the Khutzeymateen Protected Areas are managed proactively and public access be monitored conservatively to ensure the grizzly bears and their habitats are the first priority. In 1994, Captain Doug Davis founded, Prince Rupert Adventure Tours, a marine ecotourism business to showcase the amazing wildlife and scenery of the Pacific Northwest. Bear viewing guides, like Captain Davis', contribute a per person donation to the Khutzeymateen Park Enhancement Fund (KPEF), which supports shared stewardship initiatives for the area. 'Any tourism business at its core is a little bit extractive. There is always going to be some impact, whether that be from our fuel emissions or our presence itself. But, I think our impact is very minimal,' said Newton. 'It's all on a sliding scale in my brain for tourism, because if you look down south in the Victoria and Vancouver area, whale watching has been detrimental, especially to the southern resident killer whales,' she said. 'Up here, it's not exactly the same because we're the only tourist boat of this scale for hundreds of kilometres.' She added, 'The boat was custom-made to minimize sound disturbance underwater and above water for the bears, and to prioritize fuel efficiency.' The captain says bear sightings have been fairly steady throughout his 30-year career. The month of May also witnesses the mating season. The tour typically sees between five and 10 bear sightings each trip. However, every day is different with no guarantees. The tour boat observes precautions to minimally disturb the environment around it. Its primary goal was to leave the grizzly bears and the inlet in the same natural state they found it. Note: This article is co-written with Harvin Bhathal of the Terrace Standard.
Yahoo
08-04-2025
- Yahoo
Coast Guard looking for information on missing sailboat that left CT headed for North Carolina
A sailboat headed from Connecticut to North Carolina has gone missing. The overdue sailboat had three people on board when it left New Haven, according to the U.S. Coast Guard. The boat, named 'Hot Chocolate,' was believed to be operating off the continental shelf as it headed to Ocracoke, North Carolina, the Coast Guard said. Officials are looking for information on the boat after it did not arrive at its destination. Anyone with information has been asked to call the Coast Guard at 866-842-1560.
