By Fiona Sinclair Scott, Leah Dolan, CNN

(CNN) — Long before words like “French Girl Chic” became algorithmically entrenched in online shopping guides and mood boards, the late French film starlet Brigitte Bardot created the blueprint for what was once a fresh and exciting style of dressing. Her tousled blonde bouffant, bikinis and capri pants signaled a more casual, laissez-faire attitude to dressing — eschewing formal, buttoned up silhouettes for an effortlessly ‘thrown together’ look that became synonymous with the swinging sixties and sexual liberation.

The fashion world soon wrapped its arms around Bardot’s style —fueled by the booming post-war movie industry, which made her a global star — and quickly turned her singular look into an oversaturated trend that we continue to see referenced and replicated many decades later.

The French Girl look has been coveted by women all over the world. Catlike eye-liner, off-the-shoulder necklines (often referred to as the “Bardot neckline”), babydoll dresses and messy beehives have been seen on the likes of Sienna Miller, Alexa Chung, Cara Delevingne and Kate Moss throughout their own successful careers.

Bardot’s overarching legacy may not be as easy to define as her personal style. While she was a celebrated cultural icon who has left an indelible mark on fashion history, she was also perhaps an early prototype for the Trump-era pin-up.

Her politics leaned heavily towards the right. In 1992, she married Bernard d’Ormale, a former advisor to Jean-Marie Le Pen — founder of France’s far-right National Front party. She was convicted five times for inciting racial hatred, oftentimes directed at the Muslim community, and was publicly dismissive of the #MeToo movement and feminism, preferring to focus her philanthropic efforts on the rights of animals over women.

Despite her conservative values, Bardot was seen as a titillating talent and was often cast in scandalous roles, such as her breakout film “And God Created Woman” (1956) where she played a sexually uninhibited teenaged orphan. Her off-screen fashion choices, too, the low-slung necklines, unkempt hair and bare legs, cemented her as France’s “sex kitten” — a term coined specifically for Bardot.

Instead of being at odds with her politics, her sensuality was seen as a break from the prudent conservative aesthetic, similar to the hyper-feminine, possibly right-wing-coded beauty ideals exemplified by celebrities such as Sydney Sweeney today.

Bardot was certainly not a trad wife — she was married four times though preferred the hedonism of Cannes to wholesome homemaking — but she might be who today’s trad wives want to emulate while on their honeymoons in Europe.

Scroll on to take a deep dive into Bardot’s enduring, covetable style.

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By Christian Edwards, CNN

London (CNN) — Prime Minister Keir Starmer is facing demands for a British-Egyptian human rights activist to be deported and his UK citizenship to be revoked after social media posts emerged in which he called for “Zionists” to be killed, prompting criticism of successive British governments that campaigned for his release from prison in Egypt.

Starmer said Friday that he was “delighted” that Alaa Abd El-Fattah, 44, had arrived in London after the Egyptian government lifted a travel ban that it had imposed on him following his September release from jail in the country, where he spent more than a decade as a political prisoner.

“I want to pay tribute to Alaa’s family, and to all those that have worked and campaigned for this moment,” Starmer said, adding that Abd El-Fattah’s case had been a “top priority” for his Labour government since it came to office in the summer of 2024.

But swiftly after Abd El-Fattah’s arrival in London, posts from around 2010 began to circulate in which he said the killing of “Zionists” is “heroic,” referred to British people as “dogs and monkeys,” called White people “a blight on the earth,” and said the police are “not human” and should be killed.

Abd El-Fattah has apologized for his “shocking and hurtful” tweets, which he said were “mostly expressions of a young man’s anger and frustrations in a time of regional crises” and sometimes part of regretful “online insult battles.” The activist said that in the real world, he had consistently fought for equality and democracy and been stripped of his freedom as a result.

“I am shaken that, just as I am being reunited with my family for the first time in 12 years, several historic tweets of mine have been republished and used to question and attack my integrity and values, escalating to calls for the revocation of my citizenship,” he said in a statement, adding that some of his posts had been “completely misunderstood, seemingly in bad faith.”

Opposition parties, the Conservatives and Reform UK, have both called on the government to revoke Abd El-Fattah’s British citizenship, which was granted to him in 2021 by the previous Conservative government.

“It should go without saying that anyone who possesses racist and anti-British views such as those of (Abd El-Fattah) should not be allowed into the UK,” Nigel Farage, the leader of right-wing Reform UK, said Sunday in a letter to Home Secretary Shabana Mahmood.

Although it is understood that Starmer was unaware of Abd El-Fattah’s messages when he championed his arrival in the UK, questions have been raised about how they could have gone unnoticed by the right-of-center Conservative government that granted him citizenship and the Labour government that pushed for his release by Egypt.

“The government has since suggested the prime minister was unaware of those comments. Unfortunately, such an admission only compounds his ineptitude,” said Farage.

Alicia Kearns, a Conservative Member of Parliament and the shadow minister for home affairs, also said she was not aware of Abd El-Fattah’s “grotesque” posts. “I trusted the process to give Alaa citizenship, and then supported the campaign for his release. I feel deeply let down, and frankly betrayed, having lent my support to his cause which I now regret,” she said.

Luke Tryl, director of More in Common, a polling firm, said that, absent a strong explanation from Labour, Abd El-Fattah’s case could become “a defining moment in public opinion,” crystallizing in the minds of some that the government lacks competence and has the wrong priorities.

Although Farage has leapt on Starmer’s perceived blunder, some have accused the Reform UK leader of hypocrisy, since he has long criticized Labour for what he has described as

Santa Ana winds crank up with peak winds are expected Monday morning through Ventura County. This offshore push is due to a high pressure system hovering around the coverage zone. A High Wind Warning and Wind Advisory have been issued for the area through 3pm in the afternoon. Santa Lucia Wind crank up in San Luis Obispo prompting a Wind Advisory there through 3pm as well. This will be a moderate Santa Ana wind event causing low humidity values but minimal fire concern. The biggest concern is for downed trees due to at risk soil. Highs rise into the 70s, clear skies prevail and it'll be a very pleasant evening for a bike ride.

More Santa Ana winds are projected Tuesday, however this is the tail end of the event and winds will be much weaker than Monday. Expect some slightly warmer and dry air. Temperatures rise into the 70s and skies stay clear. Trees are still at risk, so be aware of your surroundings. Grab your umbrellas as the next round of rain is ahead!

The next round of rain arrives Wednesday. After lunch, our rain chances skyrocket and a southerly push of moisture impacts the area. On and off showers are projected with the heaviest rain occurring New Years Day and Friday night into Saturday morning. Most data for now, shows 1-3 inches of rain for the beaches and close to 5 inches in mountains.

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By Gul Tuysuz, CNN

Istanbul, Turkey (CNN) — ISIS militants opened fire on police during an overnight raid in Turkey’s western Yalova province on Monday, killing three people and injuring eight others, according to authorities.

Turkish authorities said six ISIS members were killed and five other people were detained in the operation which lasted more than seven hours in the village of Elmalik, 62 miles (100 kilometers) from Istanbul.

The raid came as law enforcement authorities stepped up raids ahead of what they say are planned attacks against minorities during the winter holidays.

Social media videos of the operation showed a nighttime gunfight as police raided a suspected ISIS safehouse. Footage shot later showed smoke billowing from the area of the raid and fire trucks racing to the scene.

Interior Minister Ali Yerlikaya said the raid was conducted with “a great deal of care because there were women and children at the address.” The five women and six children at the address were taken to safety, he said in his televised press briefing.

Electricity and natural gas to Elmalik were cut during the raid, the Turkish state broadcaster reported. Schools in the area were canceled for the day.

Turkey routinely launches wide-ranging counterterrorism sweeps around the country against ISIS as well as other groups like the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) that it designates as terrorist organizations.

Authorities step up raids particularly around the end-of-the-year holidays since a 2017 ISIS attack on the Reina nightclub during New Year celebrations killed 39 people. The last ISIS attack in Turkey was in January 2024 when armed men attacked a church in Istanbul, killing one person.

Turkish Justice Minister Yilmaz Tunc said an investigation into the raid has been launched and five state prosecutors have been assigned to the case.

Yerlikaya said that over the past month, 138 terror suspects were detained and 97 were placed under judicial control measures.

Turkish security forces have been carrying out coordinated raids across the country over alleged plots linked to Christmas and New Year’s Eve celebrations, according to a statement by the Istanbul Prosecutor’s Office on Thursday.

“Information was found that the ISIS armed terrorist organization was planning to carry out actions targeting our country, especially non-Muslim individuals, within the scope of the upcoming Christmas and New Year events,” the statement said.

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By Ariel Edwards-Levy, CNN

(CNN) — In the year 1998, Bill Clinton was facing impeachment proceedings, “Titanic” was cleaning up at the Oscars and most households still had landline phones. Gallup and USA Today called up 1,055 Americans on those landlines and asked them for their best predictions about a year in the distant future: 2025.

Those predictions are now memorialized via polling archives maintained by the Roper Center at Cornell University. So, with the final days of 2025 now slipping into the past, here’s a look back at how some of them held up.

Some were surprisingly prescient. Most Americans predicted that, over the next 27 years, the country would have elected a Black president, gay marriages would be legal and commonplace and a “deadly new disease” would have emerged.

Most people in 1998 correctly doubted that space travel would be common for ordinary Americans or that alien life forms would have made contact.

Other predictions didn’t hold up as well. About two-thirds of Americans thought the country would have elected a female president by now. More than half expected a cure for cancer and 61% expected that “people will routinely live to be 100 years old.” (The world is not quite there yet.)

The poll also asked some less quantifiable questions about the direction the country was taking. It revealed plenty of pessimism.

While 70% thought quality of life would improve for the rich, respondents were about split on whether things would improve or worsen for the middle class, and most expected life to get worse for the poor. Nearly 8 in 10 expected Americans in the future to have less personal privacy, and 57% thought that they’d experience less personal freedom. Most also expected higher crime rates, poorer environmental quality and lower moral values. A 71% majority said it would be harder to raise children to be good people.

There were a few bright spots in Americans’ outlook: Most believed race relations would improve and that medical care would be more available, if less affordable.

Gallup is still polling, of course, albeit with less of an emphasis on landlines. So we can get a sense of how Americans’ overall outlook on the country has changed over the past 27 years. In fall 1998, about 60% of Americans said they were satisfied with the way things were going in the US.

Today, that number stands at 24%.

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