By Leigh Waldman, Joel Williams, CNN

(CNN) — For over a century, Broadway has been at the heart of New York City culture, with glittering marquees welcoming millions of tourists and locals every year.

But Broadway musicals are now struggling to make a profit, as affordability concerns impact all aspects of American life. Musical producers can place the blame on rising costs from theater rent, fees, labor and even lumber, which has roughly doubled in price since December 2016. Meanwhile, ticket prices haven’t risen quickly enough to offset these costs.

It’s a blow to New York City, where Broadway’s health is vital to its economy.

“As New York City goes, so goes Broadway in many respects and vice versa,” Jason Laks, president of the Broadway League, the trade association for the theater industry, told CNN.

“We employ 100,000 people per year, and we contribute $15 billion to the New York City economy alone each year,” he added.

Laks said the rising cost of musical productions is leaving the Great White Way in the red. He added that it’s only gotten harder since the pandemic, when Broadway went dark for over a year due to Covid-19 restrictions.

High production costs, flat ticket prices

Data from the Broadway League show the industry had its highest-grossing season in a decade this year, with over 14 million people attending shows.

However, none of the 18 musicals that opened last season, made a profit as of late September, according to the New York Times. Laks said the prevailing wisdom for the industry is that only one in 10 shows will make their money back.

For example, producing “Boop” — the colorful show centered around Betty Boop in modern New York City — cost around $26 million. The musical ran for about four months this year and, according to the Times, failed to recoup its investment.

“It’s just so difficult for (producers) to get their money back. These shows are now upwards of $25 million. Ten years ago, you could have a musical on Broadway that was probably in the $13 million range,” said Jim Kierstead, a Broadway producer whose over two dozen credits include “Kinky Boots” and “Waitress.”

While producers have seen their budgets grow, ticket prices haven’t kept pace, according to Laks. The average ticket price is currently $126, while the average ticket price for the 2015-2016 Broadway season was about $103, or about $140, when adjusted for inflation.

But the solution isn’t as simple as raising ticket prices.

“There’s only so high you can raise them because you’re really pricing people out of the market,” said Kierstead. “It’s just a bad conundrum across the board.”

One investor takes issue with Broadway’s financial woes

James L. Walker Jr. invested $50,000 in the recent revival of “Cabaret at the Kit Kat Club” on Broadway. The star-studded performance closed early in what producers called a financial loss after being open for about 14 months and 592 regular performances.

“When you look at a play that’s grossing an upwards of nearly $100 million, it’s hard to explain how we didn’t make our money back,” Walker said.

In August, the Atlanta-based investor Read more

By Emma Tucker, CNN

(CNN) — Police lights flashed for hours as law enforcement officers surrounded a storage facility in Salem, New Hampshire, Thursday night, finally closing in on a suspect who unleashed deadly attacks on two communities and had managed to evade them for six days.

Outside was an abandoned car linked to both the Brown University mass shooting on Saturday and the killing of an MIT professor at his home on Monday.

Inside a rented storage unit, the 48-year-old suspect, Claudio Neves Valente, was dead, leaving behind a satchel, two 9 mm firearms and high-capacity magazines matching ballistics at both crime scenes, along with even more questions about a motive as investigators begin peeling back the layers of his life to fill the gaps in his known past.

Here are the major questions remaining about the cases:

What motivated 2 separate attacks?

Authorities have said the suspect’s intent was to cause harm in targeting the Ivy League university and esteemed MIT professor Nuno Loureiro.

It became clear because his actions showed signs of premeditation, for example, obtaining access to firearms and a bulletproof vest, said CNN law enforcement analyst and former Secret Service agent Jonathan Wackrow.

He also took strategic steps to avoid detection like swapping the license plates on a rental car linked to both shootings, concealing his identity and avoiding Brown University’s expansive network of 1,200 security cameras by opening fire in a building equipped with only two exterior cameras, and with multiple exits and entrances.

Without the ability to interview or prosecute the suspect, the motive remains the hardest question, Wackrow said, and there’s a chance investigators will not find the answers even after doing exhaustive searches of digital history and physical evidence.

Investigators have mapped some of the suspect’s movements in the years before his attacks, but much of his past remains a mystery.

The Portuguese national attended the same academic program as Loureiro in Portugal from 1995 to 2000, after which he studied at Brown University on an F1 visa, a nonimmigrant visa for international students to study full-time.

He then took a leave of absence and formally withdrew from the university effective July 31, 2003. There has been no formal explanation from the university on the basis for the leave, but according to CNN’s chief law enforcement and intelligence analyst John Miller, it could also point to a potential motive.

Miller says investigators will likely ask questions like: Did he blame a life event for derailing his success as a former student who was described by his then-classmates as “brilliant” but also exceptionally difficult? What issue caused him not to return?

Details on the suspect’s whereabouts between 2001 and 2017, however, have proved elusive at this stage.

But the suspect’s strategies do suggest he may have been planning for an encounter with police or an escape, Wackrow said.

And it begs the question, according to Miller: What happened to make the suspect change course and decide to take his own life? One scenario, he says, could be the suspect was alerted authorities were on his trail.

What were his movements after the shootings?

The suspect’s last known address was in Miami this year, and he rented a storage unit in Salem starting from an unspecified date in November.

He rented a hotel room in Boston from November 26 to 30 before renting a gray Nissan Sentra with Florida

Por Lisa Respers France, CNN

Travis Kelce podría querer agregar un momento de baile especial con su futura suegra en la recepción de su boda con Taylor Swift.

Gracias al lanzamiento de los nuevos episodios de la docuserie “El fin de una era” en Disney+, ahora sabemos que la madre de la megaestrella, Andrea Swift, fue la MVP cuando la cantante conoció, salió y finalmente se comprometió con Kelce.

Al comienzo del cuarto episodio, Swift está relajada con su gente en un camerino tan grande que su madre comenta sobre su tamaño.

Taylor Swift responde haciendo una comparación con los vestuarios de los jugadores de fútbol y el público se entera de que antes de que la pareja se conociera, los primos de Swift se tomaron una foto frente al casillero de Kelce con los Kansas City Chiefs, donde su número es el 87.

Swift es famosa por su pasión por la numerología, así que, aclaración: dos más 87 es igual a 89 y ella nació el 13 de diciembre de 1989, por lo que realmente deberíamos haber previsto este compromiso.

En cualquier caso, en la serie, nos enteramos de que Swift no tenía ni idea de quién era Kelce.

Su madre entonces cuenta lo que considera una “historia genial”. Después de que Kelce acudiera al podcast “New Heights”, que presenta junto a su hermano Jason Kelce, en julio de 2023, para compartir que había intentado regalarle a Taylor Swift una pulsera de la amistad con su número de teléfono, su madre se enteró.

“Así que, por supuesto, llamé a mi experta residente en los Kansas City Chiefs, mi prima Robin, y le dije: ‘Cuéntame sobre este tipo llamado Travis Kelce’”, recuerda Andrea Swift en la serie. “Y ella dijo: ‘¡Dios mío! Es un tipo estupendo y, ¿sabes qué? ¡Quiere mucho a su madre!’. Dije: ‘ding, ding, ding, ding’”.

Según la matriarca de la familia Swift, el desafío entonces fue cómo lograr que su famosa hija conociera al ala cerrada.

“Siempre he sido muy poco atlética”, explica Taylor Swift. “Porque no lo soy y siempre he pensado: ¿de qué hablaríamos?”.

Pero mamá Swift tomó la iniciativa, llamando a su hija para hacerle saber “hey, hay un chico” y que Kelce era bastante lindo.

“Dijiste algo como ‘Tienes que empezar a hacer algo diferente’”, compartió la joven Swift, riéndose en silencio ante la idea.

“Escucha, fue muy sincero”, explica su madre. “Pensé que era lo más dulce del mundo que viniera a tu espectáculo. Te trajo algo de tu mundo. Para mí, eso realmente dijo mucho”.

Taylor Swift dice que en su primera cita Kelce le explicó el fútbol americano “como si fuera ajedrez violento”.

A partir de ahí, dice la estrella del pop, se “obsesionó” con Kelce y, en consecuencia, se obsesionó con aprender sobre el deporte que practica, lo que dice es “la mayor sorpresa de mi vida”.

Ahora, incluso registra quién está en la lista de reserva de lesionados de los diferentes equipos, afirma.

“Me pregunto, ¿qué significa? ¿Cuál es la gravedad de la lesión?”, dice Swift. “¿Se trata de una lesión del tendón de Aquiles o del tendón de la corva?”

Una forma de ganar puntos en el amor y el conocimiento deportivo, Tay.

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By Steve Contorno, Jeff Simon, CNN

Phoenix (CNN) — At 23, Caleb Gasca has checked off several traditional markers of adulthood. He graduated college, found a job in a construction office and got married.

But living with his wife’s parents in San Bernardino County, California, he still feels as though his life has yet to fully begin.

“It’s really irritating that in the area I grew up in, that my family lives, that I can’t afford to live there,” he said in between speakers at AmericaFest, Turning Point USA’s annual gathering of young conservatives.

As a candidate, President Donald Trump harnessed the angst of millions of young Americans like Gasca to win a surprising share of Millennial and Gen Z voters. Their role in his victory was celebrated last December at AmericaFest after Turning Point USA proved instrumental in Trump’s courtship of young people

“The golden age of America is upon us,” Trump declared from the stage.

But this year, the mood inside AmericaFest is far more unsettled. The loss of Charlie Kirk, the charismatic activist who founded Turning Point USA and was killed in September by a gunman, has cast a grim pall over the event and left an unmistakable void in the movement. Meanwhile, many of the promises Trump made to the group last year — including “lower prices,” an end to foreign wars and “generational change” — have yet to materialize. Prices remain high, foreign entanglements are expanding and young people are deeply pessimistic about their future.

In a dozen conversations with CNN, AmericaFest attendees expressed mixed views of Trump’s return to Washington and the world they are just entering. Some remain optimistic that Trump will find a way to improve their lives — that his immigration crackdown will create jobs and lower housing costs, his energy policies will lower gas prices and electric bills and his dismantling of the Department of Education will end the cycle of college debt.

“We’re only one year into this administration,” said Chloe Szot, a 27-year-old California teacher.

Others are less willing to wait.

Gasca told CNN, “Unless something changes, I plan not to vote, at least for president, in 2028.”

A tougher road to adulthood

For many of AmericaFest’s young attendees, the new realities of American life are settling in.

While Szot believes homeownership remains within reach for her generation, it’s with a caveat that previous middle-class generations didn’t always have to consider.

“I think 100% I will be able to buy a house, but it also depends on where you live,” she said.

Luke Phelps is starting a family soon in the Phoenix area, and the 25-year-old said he and his wife expect to continue working. It’s a reality that couples are increasingly confronting — both spouses now work in about half of households in a country where two-thirds of $100,000 earners told The Harris Poll they’re just getting by.

“Nothing’s going to be the same as it always has,” Phelps said. “One income was great. Now you need two, right? Obviously you count it as sad, but every generation deals with something.”

The road to adulthood once followed a familiar path: move out of the parental home, find a spouse, get a job and have kids. Today, fewer than a quarter of Americans had reached all four milestones by age 34, according to the US Census Bureau. Homeownership remains elusive as well. Earlier this year, the National Association of Realtors reported that the median age of a first-time homebuyer had reached 40, the highest on record.

The generation entering adulthood also faces new pressures their parents did not. More teenagers acknowledge they spend too much time on social

By Sophie Tanno, and Kosta Gak, CNN

(CNN) — A Russian attack on Odesa region on Friday night has killed eight people and injured 27 more, according to Ukrainian authorities, as Moscow continues to target the Black Sea port city.

According to Ukraine’s State Emergency Service, the fatalities occurred as a result of a Russian missile strike on a port infrastructure facility in the town of Pivdenne.

Some of the victims were in on bus that was caught up in the shelling, it said.

Russia has targeted Odesa with continuous attacks over the past nine days, resulting in a week-long power outage in the city and surrounding areas, as well as damage to port infrastructure and civilian vessels.

Russia has focused on crippling Ukraine’s energy infrastructure as winter sets in and has been able to strike more targets in recent months by firing a mix of several hundred drones and missiles simultaneously.

In addition, two key bridges connecting the northern and southern part of Odesa region have also been hit, with work ongoing to repair the damage, according to Oleh Kiper, head of Odesa regional military administration.

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