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By Amanda Musa, CNN

(CNN) — Surrounded by vast desert, the long and windy road that leads to Nancy Guthrie’s home in the Catalina Foothills is dotted with prickly cacti and attractive houses.

Come nightfall, the unincorporated community north of Tucson, Arizona, is plunged into secluded darkness. That stillness is what drew Nancy and her family to the area decades ago.

“The quality of life is laid back and gentle,” the mother of “Today” anchor, Savannah Guthrie, said of her community in November.

Three months later, authorities say Nancy Guthrie was taken from her home in the serene neighborhood where she lives alone and was last seen Saturday night.

Nancy’s disappearance became national news, bringing renewed sorrow to the quiet community that brought healing to Savannah’s family after her father died.

“When I go back I’m so — it’s like my whole soul is home, my spirit is home, I feel my father in the wind,” Savannah said in November. “The desert, the cactus, the animals: It’s such a unique place, it’s a beautiful place to visit.”

‘Daughter of the desert’

Nancy and her husband, Charles Guthrie, lived in Australia, where Charles worked as a mining engineer, when Savannah was born in 1971. The family relocated to Arizona when Savannah was young and remained settled there.

The family was left shattered when Charles, who was adored by many, died of a heart attack in 1988. Savannah was 16 years old at the time, according to a Father’s Day essay she wrote for Today in 2014.

“My father was a seemingly unlikely mix of qualities: always strong, sometimes terrifying, loyal to the end, and disarmingly gentle and tender when it counted,” Savannah wrote.

Tall, affectionate and funny, Charles moved through life demanding moral clarity, which could be intimidating, Savannah said. But he was also known for turning “a mundane trip to the post office into a rip-roaring tale,” she said.

Savannah, the youngest of three siblings, stayed in Arizona for college, attending the University of Arizona. Her sister, Annie Guthrie, didn’t wander far either.

“We had a spoken or unspoken pact that on the weekends, even though we were college girls, one of us would always stay home on one of the weekend nights so that my mom wouldn’t be alone,” Savannah said in 2017. “That was just something we did together as sisters.”

In a “Today” show segment about her Tucson roots last fall,

By Ben Church, CNN

(CNN) — When he squeezes into his bright red ski suit and puts on his Darth Vader-esque helmet, speed skier Simon Billy hears nothing and sees very little.

Despite almost losing two of his senses, the Frenchman has one goal on his mind – to simply go as fast as he can on two skis down a breathtakingly steep hill.

Speed skiers regularly go at speeds over 120 mph in competition and Billy is currently the best to ever do it; in fact, no one in the world has ever traveled faster on land without mechanical assistance.

For perspective, the World Air Sports Federation states that the terminal speed of the human body freefalling in a stable, head down position is between 240 and 290 km/h (149.13 and 180.2 mph) – speed skiers, then, are effectively plummeting through the sky.

“The feeling is just crazy. It’s about freedom, just pushing the limits. For sure, every speed skier wants to be, one day, the world record holder. It was my dream,” he tells CNN Sports.

That dream came true in 2023, when Billy recorded a speed of 255.500 km/h (158.760 mph), on the slopes in Vars, France. His new standard also eclipsed one of the previous records of 243.902 km/h that was set by his father, Philippe, in 1997.

But this adrenaline-fueled winter sport, which demands both physicality and a rock-solid mindset, will not feature at next month’s Winter Olympics in Italy.

In fact, it’s only ever been a showcase event at the Winter Olympics once before, debuting at the Games in 1992 and proving a hit at the time.

With the Games heading to France in 2030, there is work underway to include this astonishing sport into the schedule, but Billy says the speed skiing community is also content with its current position.

“It would be a bonus for us to be at the Olympics because as an athlete, for sure, I want to be at the Olympics one day. It’s like a dream for us,” he says.

“But if we are not, it’s okay because we still have this adventure to be the fastest skier in the world. The most important thing in this sport is the world record. I’d prefer to have a world record than a gold medal at the Olympics.”

Lifetime ambition

How exactly Billy earned a world record is a culmination of a lifetime of hard work and a family effort which taps into decades of experience.

Being raised in the French Alps meant Billy was brought up in the outdoors. Skiing became second nature as he spent his childhood watching his own father push his limits as a world-class speed skier.

Over the years of being surrounded by this niche community, Billy developed his own ambition in the sport – he wanted to become the world record holder.

That, though, takes time. First, you have to be physically ready to deal with the extreme pressure on your body when you’re going so fast. That requires plenty of strength training in the gym, with the aim of getting strong and heavy, but not too big as to limit your own aerodynamics.

Second, and perhaps more importantly, it takes a while to train your mind. That, it seems, is more innate.

Watch a video of Billy speed skiing and you’ll understand why the sport is as much a feat of combatting fear as anything else.

During his world record run, Billy sounded like a train hurtling down a track. Blink and you’ll miss him. It’s so astonishing that Billy never watches speed skiing live, worried it might scare him off from pushing his own limits.

But while the energies at play lo

By Lisa Respers France, CNN

(CNN) — As someone who came to fame as a member of the legendary Wu-Tang Clan rap group, it might seem jarring to see Clifford “Method Man” Smith singing in the new romantic comedy “Relationship Goals.”

What’s more, he is seen and heard crooning more than his costar in the film Kelly Rowland, who was one third of the legendary girl group Destiny’s Child, and has had a successful solo career since.

Did Smith ever imagine serenading Rowland in a movie scene instead of the other way around?

“Short answer? Absolutely,” he recently told CNN.

His response caused Rowland to giggle.

In “Relationship Goals,” the pair play exes and TV news producers who end up competing for the same job.

The movie hits on much more than romance. It covers themes of friendship, faith and the need for balance between a person’s work life and love life, something they both know something about as married parents in real life.

Rowland shares two sons with her husband Tim Weatherspoon, while Smith has three children with his wife Tamika Smith.

“I think that between being a mom, a wife, a friend, time for myself, career, like all of those, it depends on what day it is that something takes precedent over the other,” Rowland said. “I think that it takes a heck of a person to try to figure all that out, which we’re all trying to do.”

Smith – who over the years has transitioned from his rap career to acting in various film and TV projects including “Power Book II: Ghost” and “Poker Face” – was pragmatic in his view.

“Home is home, business is business and each one needs each other,” he said. “You can’t pay your bills without doing your business. And if you don’t have any place to sleep, you won’t be ready for work in the morning.”

Their new movie is based on the book “Relationship Goals: How to Win at Dating, Marriage, and Sex” by Pastor Michael Todd. Smith’s character in the movie reads Todd’s book and tries to convince Rowland’s character that it has caused him to become a different man from the one who cheated on her when they previously dated.

Todd told CNN he hopes that his book’s transition from page to screen helps it reach more people.

“So many people are hurting and so many people are going through really bad times, relationally, and it makes them feel isolated. And I don’t think that that’s how God intended for us to be.”

Author and motivational speaker DeVon Franklin, one of the producers of the film, sees it as invaluable at this time.

“We gotta bring hope into the world. Entertainment can do a lot of good,” he said. “It’s one of the most inspirational and important mediums in the world. And so to take a movie like this and put it in the world right now is to bring the world hope.”

Romantic comedy as a genre can of course be especially feel-good, and both Rowland and Smith are fans. She pointed to Eddie Murphy’s 1992 hit film “Boomerang” as one of her favorites, while Smith went further old school with “Claudine,” the 1974 rom-com starring James Earl Jones and Diahann Carroll as one he loves.

The stars as well as Franklin would like to see more rom-coms starring people of color.

“At times in Hollywood it’s almost like as Black filmmakers telling Black stories we have to always kind of remind the powers that be that we’re here, that we have stories, that there’s a major audience that wants our stories,” Franklin said. “And so my hope is that a movie like ‘Relationship Goals’ and its success can usher in more.”

“Can I piggyback off of that and say that we also have to see each other’s stories, whether we are Black and Brown or White or any other race,” Rowland added.

By Kyle Feldscher, CNN

San Jose, California (CNN) — A year ago, Cooper Kupp could barely hide his heartbreak: The Los Angeles Rams, the only NFL team he’d ever played for, made it clear they were done with him.

A February 3, 2025, post on X by the wide receiver revealed the Rams were trying to trade him. Kupp was the MVP of Super Bowl LVI who hauled in the winning touchdown to deliver a championship to the Rams on their home field. He was Rams quarterback Matthew Stafford’s go-to option for years. He was the cornerstone of their franchise, still producing despite injuries that limited the years after the Super Bowl win.

And, as of that first week of February 2025, he was done in LA. The Rams eventually released him, simply cutting him loose – a franchise icon cast out into the cold.

Kupp is back in California this week, about 300-some-odd miles away from his old stomping grounds, preparing to play in Super Bowl LX for the Seattle Seahawks – another NFC West team that had been game-planning against him for eight years.

The team Seattle beat to get to the game’s biggest stage? Well, the football gods have a sense of humor.

“It was a tough ending in LA, and so to be able to get here to have the opportunity to play in the Super Bowl – and I mean, just for the scriptwriters to put the Rams in the NFC Championship against the Seahawks, that was a pretty dastardly thing by them,” Kupp said on Monday with a laugh.

Kupp’s no longer the top option for his team, but the role he’s played in getting the Seahawks all the way to Santa Clara for Sunday’s Super Bowl can’t be understated.

His mantra of “process over results” resonates with his younger teammates, particularly star wide receiver Jaxon Smith-Njigba who has taken on the starring role Kupp once held in LA. Since the win that catapulted Seattle into Super Bowl LX, Kupp has been sharing his experience of going to two different Super Bowls with the Rams with players who are playing in February for the first time.

“What Coop has brought to this team, in his words, is ‘process over results.’ And you know, it’s not about, the game is the game and we’re going to be ready for it, and I’m going to give it my all each and every single game,” Smith-Njigba said Tuesday.

“For us, it’s about process, making sure we’re ready, making sure we know exactly where we need to be in the run game and pass game. And, you know, I think he’s brought that to me and the team, and it’s excelled (for) us.”

Only in sports can a 32-year-old be considered an elder statesman, but that’s what Kupp has become for this Seahawks team, which has one of the youngest rosters in the NFL. It’s a role that he can’t help but embrace.

“They’re such good football players in their own right. I came alongside them to be an open book, like if there’s something they want to, you know, an idea they had, or something they wanted to ask me, like, I want to be right there alongside of them,” he told reporters of his role on the team.

“But I mean, more than anything else, I want to be a good teammate. I want to be a good teammate to those guys.”

Seizing an opportunity

One team’s cut is another team’s star.

It happens so often in sports, where a player is unceremoniously dumped by his employer and is left questioning what just happened. The self-

By Justin Calderon, CNN

Anuradhapura, Sri Lanka (CNN) — Visit the ancient city of Anuradhapura on a full moon day and the past feels anything but distant.

Buddhist pilgrims dressed in white walk barefoot along dusty paths. Saffron-robed monks chant at dawn. Foreign visitors — from Taiwan to Canada — join local worshipers in rituals that have been performed here, largely uninterrupted, for more than 2,000 years.

Set on Sri Lanka’s north-central plains, Anuradhapura was the island’s first great capital. Today, it remains one of the most sacred cities in the Buddhist world, known as the first place to adopt Buddhism outside of India. Scattered across its vast archaeological park are monasteries, reservoirs and stupas that rank among the most ambitious religious monuments ever built.

Towering above them is the immense, bubble-shaped dome of Jetavanaramaya — a structure so large that when it was completed in the early fourth century CE, it ranked as the third-largest man‑made building on Earth, surpassed only by the Great Pyramids of Giza.

Completed around 301 CE using an estimated 93.3 million baked mud bricks, the stupa originally rose to around 122 meters (400 feet), making it one of the tallest structures of the ancient world.

Today, after centuries of collapse, abandonment and restoration, Jetavanaramaya stands at roughly 71 meters (233 feet) — still monumental, but little more than half its original height. Even so, it remains the largest brick structure by volume ever constructed.

So vast is its mass that archaeologists estimate its bricks could build a three-foot-high wall stretching from London to Edinburgh — or from New York City to Pittsburgh.

Yet outside Sri Lanka, Jetavanaramaya is little known. Unlike the pyramids, it was not continuously visible to history. Jungle growth, shifting religious priorities and selective preservation gradually buried both the monument and much of its story, leaving one of the ancient world’s greatest engineering achievements largely forgotten.

Lost — and rediscovered

Jetavanaramaya refers not only to the stupa itself, but to the heart of a vast monastic complex known as Jetavana Vihara, designed to house hundreds of monks. Every structure in the complex was oriented toward the stupa, ensuring that monks stepping outside their residences would face it first — a daily reminder of devotion and cosmological order.

“About 200 monks lived here,” explains Godamune Pannaseeha, a bespectacled monk and senior archaeology officer in Anuradhapura, and one of the foremost contemporary experts on Jetavanaramaya.

“People came to offer robes, books, food — everything — to gain merit,” he says, pointing to the lower terraces of the stupa where offerings were once made, while walking a slow, clockwise circuit around its base. “This was a living religious city.”

From the outset, however, Jetavanaramaya was controversial. It was built on land traditionally associated with the Maha Vihara, the orthodox Theravada Buddhist establishment, reportedly without the consent of its monks. The complex later became associated with the Sagalika sect, which followed Mahayana‑leaning doctrines.

No Mahayana chronicles from ancient Sri Lanka have survived. Today, Sri Lanka remains a predominantly Theravada Buddhist nation. As a result, much of Jetavanaramaya’s history — including the political and doctrinal tensions surrounding its creation — must be reconstructed indirectly, leaving historians with incomplete and sometimes contested versions.

Ancient engineering at an immense scale

The technical challenges involved in building Jetavanaramaya were immense. Unlike Egypt’s stone pyramids, this colossal structure was built almost entirely from mud bricks — a material far more vulnerable to erosion and collapse.

“To replace one stone block, yo