By Christopher Lamb, CNN

(CNN) — Pope Leo XIV on Friday appointed Bishop Richard Moth, who regularly speaks out on social concerns such as prisons, as the new Archbishop of Westminster, the most senior Catholic Cleric in England and Wales.

The appointment of Bishop Moth, 67, of Arundel and Brighton in southern England, is Pope Leo’s second appointment to a senior church position this week, coming a day after his nomination of pro-migrant Bishop Ronald Hicks as Archbishop of New York.

Bishop Moth, like his counterpart in New York, is known as a figure able to mediate between different viewpoints inside the church, while showing a commitment to Catholic social teachings, in his case in the areas of prisons and mental health.

Moth is the chair of the Department for Social Justice for the Catholic Bishops’ Conference of England and Wales and regularly speaks out on social issues including the cost-of-living crisis and two-child benefit cap. He welcomed the scrapping of the cap saying that “large families are a blessing” and that it had pushed many families into poverty.

As Archbishop of Westminster, Moth will have a prominent role on the national stage in England and Wales through engaging with the UK government and playing a leading role in the bishops’ conference of England and Wales.

Moth faces a complex political situation with the rise of Nigel Farage’s Reform party, which is campaigning on an anti-migrant platform while also linking itself to Christian values and protection of “Judaeo-Christian culture.” And his appointment also comes after Tommy Robison, a far-activist, organized a Christmas carol event to “put the Christ back into Christmas.”

Pope Leo, however, recently warned against dragging the “language of faith into political battles, to bless nationalism, and to justify violence” while telling European politicians that protecting the continent’s Judeo-Christian roots “is not simply to safeguard the rights of its Christian communities” or preserving “particular social customs or traditions.”

Moth has been leader of the Diocese of Arundel and Brighton in the south of England since 2015, and before that was the bishop to the armed forces. He is a trained church lawyer, former army chaplain who enjoys horse riding and says he has a “lifelong love of Land Rovers.”

The new archbishop is an associate member [oblate] of Pluscarden Abbey, a Benedictine community in Scotland, and is known as an able administrator who took decisions to re-organize the Diocese of Arundel and Brighton.

“He combines prayerfulness with a down-to-earth practical style,” Rev. Christopher Jamison, a Benedictine Abbot who leads the English Benedictines, told CNN.

“He has shown himself ready to grasp nettles and enable priests and people to find new ways of being the church in his diocese. His changes have been welcomed because everyone knows where they stand as they look to the future.”

The new archbishop succeeds Cardinal Vincent Nichols, who last month turned 80 and is past retirement age. He has been in post since 2009 and voted in the conclave to elect Pope Leo.

During his tenure, Nichols faced criticism for his handling of clerical sexual abuse by an independent state inquiry, although he is also known for his work tackling human trafficking and supporting Catholic education. His retirement marks the end of

By Adie Vanessa Offiong, CNN

Lagos, Nigeria (CNN) — Lagos is busy at the best of times, but as the year draws to a close, the sprawling Nigerian city is transformed. The annual festivities of Detty December bring blazing lights, pounding music and a spike in prices as one of the world’s biggest parties unfolds in nightclubs, bars and streets.

But this year’s celebrations are soundtracked to a jarring backbeat as the country strains under economic pressure, insecurity and the biggest buzzkill of all — a government trying to cash in on the cool.

Detty December, which typically runs from December 6 to 31, sometimes spilling over into January, is a time of excess in Nigeria, with nonstop activities and plenty of naira, the local currency, being splashed around.

It’s a time when members of the Nigerian diaspora descend on its motherland — an influx known as the IJGBs, or the “I Just Got Backs.” They return home bringing traditional Yuletide cheer, a thirst for fun and bank accounts primed for some heavy spending. These ingredients swell Lagos into a carnival hub, its roads jammed and its nights loud with music.

Detty means “dirty,” slang for letting loose — and that’s precisely what happens. There are festivals, concerts, star-studded events, pop-up markets, beach parties and weddings all happening back to back, with each event competing to be bigger, flashier and more memorable than the last.

In 2024, the season delivered one spectacle after another. There was the Flytime Fest which featured Grammy-nominated stars Davido and Olamide. Vibes on the Beach with Wizkid offered a different scene, by the ocean. The city-wide party My Afrobeats Detty December Takeover featured 15 Afrobeat-themed parties that reached into every corner of Lagos.

The 2025 line-up is already set to compete: the Palmwine Music Festival, Peak Detty Vibes, The Bonfire Experience with Victony, Juma Jux Live in Lagos, and the Foodie in Lagos Festival.

‘A fantastic cultural reset’

For Wale Davies, who founded the Palmwine Music Festival in 2017, the rise has been dramatic but not surprising.

“Before there was the official Detty December, December has always been detty in our eyes,” he says. “It has gotten bigger with it now becoming a thing.” Attendance has surged from the early days; the last two years alone have drawn exponentially more visitors, from the diaspora and from within Nigeria.

Some Lagosians plan their entire year around it.

Entrepreneur Omotoyosi Akinkuade, 35, spent months hopping across East Asia for work, with only one break to South Africa. “It was an intense grind traversing China to source for goods,” she says. “With Detty December, I am detoxing from all that completely.”

For Akinuade, the rise of Detty December means she no longer has to organize her holiday get-togethers — now the calendar sorts itself out. “Last year, I honored a lot of wedding invitations and hung out with my friends. This year, I am looking forward to a few concerts, weddings again, and of course the Detty December Fest.”

Some returnees see the season as more than entertainment and reconnection — it’s a recalibration. Public-relations expert Mimi Egesionu, arriving from New York for the third time, calls it a “fantastic cultural reset.” She prefers the heat of Lagos to winter in New York and plans her nights around concerts and fashion shows.

“The concert scene is truly special,” she says. “It feels like seeing a different global superstar every single night. The collective energy is just unmatched anywhere in the world.”

Even buying her ticket late wasn’t a concern. “Thankfully, there are always deals floating around that time,” she says. With family here providing accommodation, she’s all set for the season.

And it’s not just Nigeria. Ghana hosts its own events for Ghanaians and visitors, incl

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Según el presidente Donald Trump, “pronto” podría producirse un ataque terrestre contra Venezuela. Desde mediados de septiembre, el mandatario ha insinuado o prometido abiertamente una acción militar estadounidense por tierra al menos 17 veces, según un análisis de CNN sobre sus declaraciones. La amenaza retórica ha sido acompañada por una gran demostración de fuerza en la región.

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By Sandra Gonzalez, CNN

(CNN) — In May 1981, a 26-year-old photographer named Michele Singer took a meeting with Jerry Bowles, then editor of a business magazine in New York.

She had worked her way up from being a photographer’s assistant — a grungy gig that involved a lot of carrying heavy equipment and running errands — and was looking for more commercial jobs. Her portfolio highlighted her talent in design and composition, and impressed him.

Having been educated at a bilingual French school on the Upper East Side, she spoke the language fluently, as well as Spanish, which she had learned on her own. Though she’d skipped college, she was well-read. And she was generous, something that came through when Michele pulled out the portfolio of another photographer during her meeting with Bowles. The person was a friend, and she wanted him to see their work, too.

Bowles had met with hundreds of photographers, and he’d never seen someone do that before.

“She was the first person to be that generous,” Bowles, now 82, told CNN.

But the thing that struck him most, he said, “was she seemed like a young person who had a great sense of who she was and what she wanted to be.”

“I knew somebody this beautiful, this smart, this clever was going to do well.”

An air of wisdom and authority beyond her years made Michele well suited to deal with photo subjects from the corporate world like real estate tycoon Samuel Jayson LeFrak and then-future president Donald Trump, whose portrait she shot for the cover of his 1987 book, The Art of the Deal.

“There was nobody I had ever worked with who did better portraits,” Bowles said, not even “guys who were giants in those days.”

Of course, Michelle Singer, later Reiner, ultimately became a giant herself — a powerful activist, a devoted mother and, with her husband Rob Reiner, part of a Hollywood couple who so much of the country is mourning after their tragic deaths last weekend.

Their son Nick has been charged with two counts of first-degree murder.

Before that tragic night, when a family was plunged into a horrifying nightmare, Michele Reiner built a life based on service, love and devotion to a better world.

Justice, for all

Michele Reiner was, in her husband’s words, “an irate citizen.”

“There’s just too much injustice in the world, and she wants to fix it all,” Rob Reiner said on Marlo Thomas and Phil Donahue’s podcast in 2022.

The Hollywood couple’s names often appeared side-by-side in press releases for their efforts in early childhood education, marriage equality, the arts and environmental conservation, to name a few. But Rob Reiner wanted everyone to know that Michele Reiner, his wife of more than three decades, was the driving force.

“She basically stands behind me and kicks me in the ass all the time — ‘Why don’t you do something? You’re a celebrity. You can talk! Get out there and do something,’” the celebrated director said, earning laughs while accepting a Lifetime Achievement award in 2011 from GLSEN, an LGBTQ nonprofit. “So, I listen to what she says.”

Michele Reiner stood next to him, smiling, until he told the crowd she was “petrified” to be on stage because “this is not what she does.” That earned him an eye roll. Hers were famous, according to Kris Perry, a former executive director of First 5, an early childhood education program made possible by the Reiners’ support of a proposition that created a cigarette tax to fund support for families with children ages 0-5.

“You could just see behind the scenes that she very much had an idea of what they should be doing and very much was encouraging him — or pushing him — to go a little further, do a little bit more,” said Perry. “And a

Por Holmes Lybrand, Evan Pérez y John Miller, CNN

Cinco días después de que comenzara una extensa búsqueda, la policía se acercó al sospechoso del tiroteo en la Universidad de Brown tras surgir aparentes vínculos entre el ataque del sábado en la escuela de Providence, Rhode Island, y la muerte dos días más tarde de un profesor del MIT en su casa de Massachusetts.

Cuando los investigadores comenzaron a indagar sobre el tiroteo del lunes en la casa del profesor, el FBI declaró inicialmente que no existía ninguna conexión conocida entre ese crimen y el incidente masivo en la institución de la Ivy League, a unos 80 kilómetros de distancia.

Sin embargo, un coche de alquiler podría haber proporcionado a los investigadores una posible conexión, un avance que condujo a un registro en un almacén de New Hampshire, donde las autoridades informaron que el jueves por la noche encontraron muerto al sospechoso.

“Esta noche, nuestros vecinos de Providence por fin pueden respirar con más tranquilidad”, declaró el alcalde Brett Smiley, en una conferencia de prensa el jueves por la noche.

Allí, las autoridades identificaron al sospechoso como Claudio Neves Valente, de 48 años, exalumno de la Universidad de Brown y ciudadano portugués sin antecedentes penales en Estados Unidos.

Los investigadores creen que actuó solo, declaró el jefe de policía de Providence, coronel Oscar L. Pérez Jr.

Nuno Loureiro, el profesor del MIT que murió a tiros en su casa en Brookline, Massachusetts, también era ciudadano portugués, y el agente especial del FBI, Ted Docks, declaró el jueves por la noche que las autoridades creen que los dos hombres asistieron a la escuela en Lisboa al mismo tiempo.

En una conferencia de prensa separada el jueves, la fiscal federal para el distrito de Massachusetts, Leah Foley, manifestó que Neves Valente y Loureiro asistieron al mismo programa académico en Portugal entre 1995 y 2000.

De hecho, los registros escolares muestran que el sospechoso asistió al Instituto Superior Técnico en Lisboa, Portugal, en la década de 1990, al mismo tiempo que Loureiro.

Los investigadores creen que el sospechoso tenía como objetivo específico a Loureiro, según declaró un agente del orden a CNN.

Sin embargo, actualmente no creen que las dos personas que murieron en el tiroteo en Brown, donde el sospechoso estudiaba a principios de la década de 2000, fueran objetivos directos.

La policía afirmó que aún trabaja para determinar el motivo del tiroteo en la universidad, que se produjo mientras los alumnos estudiaban para sus exámenes finales.

Documentos judiciales publicados el jueves revelaron avistamientos aparentemente inquietantes del sospechoso en el edificio Barus & Holley, donde ocurrió el tiroteo, en múltiples ocasiones durante las semanas previas al ataque.

Un conserje del campus notó a una persona —que llevaba una mascarilla quirúrgica y cuya vestimenta coincidía con la del individuo que aparece en el video de vigilancia publicado por la policía— al menos dos veces desde el 28 de noviembre, según la declaración jurada.

Los avistamientos ocurrieron entre las 3:00 p.m. y el atardecer, según los investigadores.

De acuerdo con otra fuente policial, los investigadores hablaron con un miembro del personal de mantenimiento de la Universidad de Brown, quien vio a una persona sospechosa dentro del edificio Barus & Holley después de horas la noche anterior al tiroteo.

El trabajador de manten