By Adam Cancryn, CNN

(CNN) — New bruising on Donald Trump’s left hand is reviving questions about his health nearly one year after he became the oldest president to take the oath of office.

Across a series of events last week, the 79-year-old Trump appeared with discoloration or light bruising on the back of his left hand, in addition to the more persistent bruise on his right hand that has been visible for months.

The new bruise appears to complicate the White House’s explanation that the right-handed Trump developed the bruising through constant handshaking along with a regular regimen of aspirin that can make such discoloration more common.

And while medical experts told CNN there is no fresh cause for concern, calling it a likely benign condition common in older people, they warned that Trump’s reluctance to be more transparent about his health only threatens to intensify the scrutiny that he’s struggled all year to escape.

“They’re just feeding the curiosity cycle,” said Dr. Jeffrey Linder, chief of general internal medicine at Northwestern University’s Feinberg School of Medicine. “He’s in the public eye, he has a certain image he wants to portray, and even these minor things detract from that image.”

The fresh bruising on Trump’s left hand represents the latest development to fuel speculation about his health since he returned to the White House — a sensitive topic for him that he’s sought to counter by boasting frequently about his vigor.

Trump won last year in part by fanning voter concerns about former President Joe Biden’s age and mental and physical fitness for office. Trump has continued to use Biden, 83, as a rhetorical foil and rejected any comparisons with the former president despite their closeness in age, often disparaging his predecessor’s frailty and punctuating his own public events by asking, “Do you think Biden could do that?”

Yet while Trump has maintained a far more active public schedule, he’s nevertheless been hounded at times by his own set of health questions. After photos over the summer showed swelling in his legs, the White House announced in July that Trump had been diagnosed with chronic venous insufficiency — a common condition frequently found in older people.

Asked this week about the bruising on Trump’s left hand, the White House declined to issue any new explanation.

“President Trump is a man of the people and he meets more Americans and shakes their hands on a daily basis than any other President in history,” press secretary Karoline Leavitt said.

Several medical experts who reviewed photos of Trump’s left hand told CNN that the discoloration wasn’t likely the result of handshaking — given Trump is right-handed — but that his age and aspirin regimen meant there could be some similar explanation.

“Bruising can be just simply a one-off thing when you have some trauma, you bump into something,” said Dr. Jonathan Reiner, a professor at George Washington University’s School of Medicine and Health Sciences, and who was a longtime cardiologist for former Vice President Dick Cheney. “Aspirin will make you more prone to bleeding.”

Reiner, who cautioned he has not personally examined Trump, added that he frequently sees similar bruising in patients who take stronger blood-thinner medications than aspirin, raising questions about whether Trump has disclosed all of the medicines he’s on.

Such medications are common and not an indication of any bigger health concern, he said, pointing to Biden’s disclosure of his use of the blood thinner Eliquis while in office.

“The question now is less medical t

CNN Travel Team

(CNN) — Whether you’re a full-time nomad or a once-a-year vacationer, every special travel memory begins with one essential question: where to?

This year, the team at CNN Travel hopes to answer not only the question of where, but also the question of why now? These destinations are special all the time, but there’s something new or significant happening in 2026 that you should know about.

The places to go in 2026 list includes a region that will experience a rare total solar eclipse, a city that has been crowned a capital of culture, a foodie haven that just scored a major global recognition, a beloved tourist island that is bouncing back from a brutal natural disaster, and more.

Adelaide, Australia

More accessible from the US than ever

“You go to move / You got to go / You go to be somebody.” Those lyrics come from a 1978 track from Cold Chisel, the Adelaide-formed band responsible for Australia’s unofficial national anthem. They act as a beacon, summoning travelers to Adelaide, the capital of South Australia, in particular.

It may not have the star wattage of Sydney or the Great Barrier Reef, but Adelaide is like a microcosm of everything that makes Australia special: beaches, vineyards, wildlife and best-in-class food and drink.

Now, Americans can get there more easily with the first-ever direct flight from the US, a United route from San Francisco. Start at Adelaide Central Market to try some of South Australia’s finest cheeses, wines and produce, then make the best of the temperate weather at the city’s botanic gardens and by going on bushwalks and star tours led by members of the Aboriginal community.

Adelaide is also the gateway to the beautiful Barossa Valley wine country and to Kangaroo Island, which is welcoming visitors again after being devastated by bushfires in 2020. — Lilit Marcus

Algeria

Rewards for intrepid travelers

Spend your next vacation strolling past the novelty vape shops of some overcrowded European capital if you must. Or you could lose yourself in the sandy infinity of the Sahara, in a country whose intense and silent natural landscapes have been unseen by tourists for decades. Isolated since the 1960s, Algeria began opening up to international visitors in 2023 with new 30-day visas. There are direct flights to capital Algiers from several major European cities, plus Montreal.

Although Algeria hopes to become a major destination, it’s early days and adventurous travelers can still experience epic scenery all to themselves. There are the high-plateau sandstone moonscapes of Tassili n’Ajjer National Park, home to a veritable Louvre of prehistoric art. It’s best explored on a weeklong hiking trip, supported by a caravan of gear-hauling donkeys.

Yes, it’s remote and overnight camp facilities are a little rough, but that cell-phone-signal-free peace is its own five-star luxury nowadays. There’s wildlife to see — desert foxes, jackals and gazelles — and ancient Roman and Ottoman cities near the coast. But the main attraction is the vast, brooding and empty expanse of the Sahara, a sea of golden sand where mountainous dunes glow before sunset, giving way to dark skies alive with stars. — Barry Neild

Arusha, Tanzania

Paying homage to a late legend

At the foot of imposing volcanic Mount Meru lies the city of Arusha, in Tanzania, in the east of Africa. Not far from the wildlife-filled Serengeti National Park and close to base camp for Mount Kilimanjaro, Arusha is often a gateway to other adventures. That’s despite there being plenty to enjoy in Arusha itself, includin

By Jack Guy and Jacqui Palumbo, CNN

(CNN) — It’s out with the old and in with the new in Times Square this year as the famous New Year’s Eve ball drop rings in 2026 with a dazzling new ball — the largest in the history of an event that started in 1907.

The Constellation Ball, as it has been named, is the ninth ball to usher in the new year at the famous Midtown Manhattan intersection. It measures 12.5 feet in diameter and weighs just over 12,000 pounds.

The ball features 5,280 circular Waterford crystals in three different sizes — 1.5-inch, 3-inch and 4-inch — as well as LED light pucks. The shape of the crystals is a departure from the triangular ones seen on previous balls since 1999.

“Each new crystal size features a unique design that celebrates the Ball’s spirit of eternal positivity,” reads a statement from the event’s organizers One Times Square.

Michael Phillips, president of Jamestown, the firm that owns and operates One Times Square, said the ball “is meant to represent interconnectedness, wholeness, and the cyclical nature of tradition, celebrating the eternal relationship between the past, present, and future.”

The ball drop is an integral part of New Year’s Eve celebrations for those who gather in Times Square, as well for people watching on television.

At 11:59 p.m. a dazzling ball glides slowly down a pole, while attendees — and millions of people tuning in from home — count down from 60. At the stroke of midnight, the crowd erupts into a cacophony of sound, often pulling their loved one in for a ceremonial kiss.

The Times Square ball first dropped in 1907, and it came into being thanks to Jacob Starr, a Ukranian immigrant and metalworker, and the former New York Times publisher, Adolph Ochs. The latter had successfully drawn crowds to the newspaper’s skyscraper home in Times Square with pyrotechnics and fireworks to celebrate the forthcoming year, but city officials banned explosives from being used after just a few years of the festivities.

So Ochs commissioned Starr, who worked for sign-making firm Strauss Signs (later known as Artkraft Strauss, a company at which Starr served as president), to create a new visual display.

Over the past century, that display, and symbol of the New Year, has evolved from an iron and wood cage adorned with light bulbs to a dazzling technicolor crystal sphere.

The concept was based on time balls, nautical devices that had gained popularity in the 19th century. As time-telling became more precise, ship navigators needed a standardized way to set their chronometers. Each day, harbors and observatories would raise and lower a metal ball at the same time to allow sailors to synchronize their instruments.

Both Ochs and the New York Times’ chief electrician, Walter Palmer, have been credited with the idea, allegedly inspired by the downtown Western Union Building, which dropped a time ball each day at noon. But Starr’s granddaughter Tama Starr, who joined Artkraft Strauss in 1982 and now owns the business, said in a phone interview that she believes it was her grandfather who came up with the concept of the ball being lowered and lit up with the new year numerals at midnight.

“The idea was to … have it illuminated with the brand-new electricity that had just come up to the neighborhood,” said Tama, who for many years served as foreperson at the Times Square ball drop. “And it was lowered by hand … starting at one minute to midnight, and that was the way it was done for many years.”

“It was an adaptation of an old, useful thing,” she added. “It was instantly popular. People just loved it.”

Though Manhattan had been partially illuminated by electricity since the early 1880s, the US National Park Service (NPS) notes

The post The Homes That Inspired Us in 2025 appeared first on The Santa Barbara Independent.

By John Towfighi, CNN

New York (CNN) — The US stock market is about to achieve something so rare that it’s only happened five times since the 1940s: three consecutive years of double-digit gains.

The S&P 500 is set to rise 17% this year, after rising 23% in 2024 and 24% in 2023. That gain comes despite concerns about tariffs, geopolitical turmoil, nerves about a bubble and the longest government shutdown in history.

A three-peat of double-digit gains is relatively rare. The index has only experienced it five times before this year, with two occurrences ending in a four-peat and one — in the 1990s — ending in a five-peat, according to Sam Stovall, chief investment strategist at CFRA Research.

Stocks were boosted in 2025 by robust corporate earnings, enthusiasm about AI and optimism about interest rate cuts from the Federal Reserve.

“Equity markets are ending the year on a high note, with the S&P 500 on track for its third consecutive year of double-digit returns, driven by AI momentum and a resilient economy that has shrugged off fiscal and political headwinds,” Craig Johnson, chief market technician at Piper Sandler, said in a note.

A year of extreme volatility

The S&P 500 entered the year on the heels of its strongest back-to-back yearly performance since the 1990s. As President Donald Trump prepared to take office, Wall Street was cautiously optimistic about the prospect of further gains.

Stocks tumbled in late January after Chinese tech upstart DeepSeek unveiled an AI chatbot that raised concerns Silicon Valley was pouring unnecessary amounts of money into AI companies. But markets reclaimed higher ground as investors doubled down on bets that US companies were poised to win a race for superior AI technology — a theme that has propelled markets higher this year despite nerves about a bubble.

Markets experienced a bout of historic volatility in the spring as Trump rolled out his so-called “Liberation Day” tariffs, levying import duties on nations across the globe and threatening to upend the global trading system.

But stocks rebounded sharply after Trump walked back his most severe tariff threats, and the S&P 500 and Nasdaq in late June hit their first record highs since February. Stocks have largely coasted higher since, buoyed by strong corporate earnings and Fed rate cuts, which can make stocks relatively more appealing than bonds and support higher stock prices.

The Dow Jones Industrial Average has gained 13.7% this year. The blue-chip index entered the year trading around 43,000 points, tumbled below 37,000 points in April, and then rebounded as Trump delayed most of his tariffs. The Dow hit a fresh record high above 45,000 in August and then surpassed 46,000, 47,000 and 48,000 points in quick succession, sometimes hitting those milestones in just a few weeks.

AI has been the story of the year and, consequently, the tech-heavy Nasdaq Composite has risen 21%, making it the best performer of the three major indexes each of the past three years. Tech and artificial intelligence stocks have powered US markets higher since October 2022, when OpenAI first debuted ChatGPT, marking