Shuai Zhang and Chris Lau, CNN

Hong Kong (CNN) — Amid the constant hustle to be recognized as one of the world’s best airports, Hong Kong International has quietly opened up an expansion. It’s a small but key first step in the airport’s plan to become a bigger global aviation hub.

Hong Kong International (HKG) is currently ranked the fourth best airport in the world, but it doesn’t get the same amount of shine as its neighbor and competitor in first place, Singapore’s Changi (SIN).

HKG launched its upgraded Terminal 2 on Wednesday, gearing up for growing regional competition as officials seek to benefit from air traffic rerouted by the Iran war — but the event drew little fanfare from the public at home.

The newly renovated and expanded 3.2 million-square-foot terminal will be powered substantially by automated technology, including bag self-drop points, smart check-in kiosks and hybrid check-in counters. One airport official claimed that passengers could “complete the check-in process in 45 seconds.”

Even seasoned travelers who have been through HKG before will likely get a different experience in the new terminal. Fred Lam, the authority’s chairman, said that T2 is aimed at younger travelers. That’s likely why Filipino fried chicken chain Jollibee, a clothing store featuring local designers and an arcade full of claw machines are among the more than 20 shopping and dining options at the new departure concourse.

Bright LED screens welcome visitors to the terminal. On opening day, they were lit up with images of ocean waves and floating fish. The structure itself has a curved ceiling adorned with parallel lines.

The Hong Kong Airport Authority, which manages HKG, estimated that Terminal 2 will serve eight million travelers in the first year, with capacity growing to 30 million annually.

On top of Terminal 1’s annual capacity of 70 million, the entire airport will see 100 million travelers annually, a significant jump from 2025’s 61 million. Compare that to New York City, which saw 142.2 million people pass through its three international airports in 2025.

Despite being billed as a “milestone,” Wednesday’s launch attracted little enthusiasm, with the new concourse looking largely empty. Hometown low-cost carrier Hong Kong Airlines was the only airline operating on opening day, but now other budget airlines like AirAsia, Hainan Airlines and Malaysia’s Batik are beginning operations there as well.

The renovation, which took over five years to complete, has been costly. An earlier estimate of $1.2 billion in 2010 ultimately swelled to $1.65 billion.

Intense regional rivalry

Yet, the reopening won pledges of support from the Hong Kong government during a launch ceremony earlier this week. An official affirmed Hong Kong airport’s positioning as “an international aviation hub,” a role Beijing has also repeatedly instructed the semi-autonomous city to take on as part of its strategic national plan.

But turbulence abounds as it faces intense competition from regional rivals such as Singapore’s Changi Airport, which has long been stepping up its game. Skytrax, an international organization that annually ranks the world’s best airlines and airports, named Changi number one in 2026 and 2025. Fourth place Hong Kong, meanwhile, was recognized for having the world’s best airport bathrooms as well as the best airport security processing.

This week, social media Read more

By Fredreka Schouten, CNN

(CNN) — The coast-to-coast battle to gain an edge in November’s elections through partisan gerrymandering is racing to its conclusion – with Republicans poised to finish with as many as 10 seats ahead of Democrats through redistricting alone.

The GOP kicked off the fight last year in Texas, changing boundaries for US House districts in the hopes of improving the party’s chances of surviving a blue wave this fall, with Democrats responding in turn. The US Supreme Court’s blockbuster decision last month to gut one of the remaining pillars of the 1965 Voting Rights Act further supercharged redistricting efforts across the South, prompting several Republican-controlled states to move election dates and eliminate districts with sizable Black populations.

The moves could be a major boon in efforts to protect House Speaker Mike Johnson’s razor-thin majority ahead of the midterm elections. But regardless of the outcome in November, the mid-decade redistricting battle has likely altered American politics permanently – fueling a growing appetite to redraw lines for partisan advantage every election cycle, rather than every decade after the census, as is traditional.

“There is no normal,” said Justin Levitt, a professor at Loyola Marymount’s law school who runs the “All About Redistricting” website. He pointed to the high court’s string of election-related rulings in recent years, including a 2019 opinion declaring that federal courts could not police partisan gerrymanders, as helping pave the way for the extreme actions now taking hold.

“The Supreme Court has effectively announced that the adults have left the room,” he said. “What you see is what you get when you reward bad behavior, which is a lot more bad behavior.”

With primaries well underway around the country, both parties now have run out of battlegrounds on which to wage new redistricting fights this year. But they are gearing up for even more aggressive gerrymanders in the 2028 election cycle.

Here’s a look at where the redistricting battle stands:

Republicans gain the edge

Republicans have a slim majority in the US House, 218-212, counting newly independent California Rep. Kevin Kiley, who still caucuses with the GOP despite leaving the party amid a tough reelection race in the wake of redistricting. The party faces a difficult path in retaining its hold on the chamber after November’s elections, given that the president’s party typically loses power in the midterms.

Facing that history, Texas Republicans kicked off the mid-decade redistricting campaign last year at President Donald Trump’s behest. Roughly 10 months later, Republicans have changed boundaries in six states that target 14 Democratic-held districts.

Louisiana’s GOP-controlled legislature is still at work on a map that takes aim at a Democratic district, but it is expected to win the approval of lawmakers and its Republican Gov. Jeff Landry. Landry took the extraordinary step of postponing the state’s primary elections for the House to respond to the US Supreme Court’s ruling, which struck down the state’s congressional map.

Republican officials in Alabama also changed their election calendar, setting a new special primary election for four US House seats on August 11 in their quest to target one of two Democrats in the state’s seven-member House delegation.

(A court ruling Tuesday blocked Alabama’s new map. But state officials have filed an emergency appeal

By Marshall Cohen, Elisabeth Buchwald, CNN

(CNN) — When Andrew needed money for a flight with friends to Greece this summer, the 18-year-old high school senior turned to prediction markets.

With a $500 cash advance from his credit card company, Andrew sat in a Starbucks for more than six hours, trading on live tennis matches on Kalshi. He left with a $2,200 profit.

Andrew continued using Kalshi to supplement wages from a part-time job, funding golf with friends and dates with his girlfriend. But after a scare where he nearly lost $1,000 on an NBA game, he deleted the app and swore he’d never return.

But he later re-downloaded Kalshi, and the cycle started again. He turned a $1,300 cash advance into $3,000, according to screenshots reviewed by CNN. When he tried to withdraw his winnings at 3 a.m., he got an error message. Unable to get his funds out, he decided to keep betting. And this time, within hours, it was all gone.

“I didn’t know what to do. I started spiraling,” Andrew, who asked that he not be identified by his full name, told CNN in an interview. “In the moment, you’re just going, going, going. It’s like tunnel vision.”

An 18-year-old like Andrew could place these wagers due to a legal technicality that treats prediction markets differently than traditional sportsbooks, which are 21+ in most states. Addiction experts and state regulators say this has opened the door to an emerging public health crisis.

Under current US law, prediction sites are not considered gambling. Rather, they’re financial markets that offer “event contracts,” which makes them available to anyone over 18. They are regulated just like futures trading over the price of soybeans – but instead of focusing on commodities, users speculate on the outcomes of elections, sporting events, awards shows and more.

Despite new steps prediction markets have recently taken to prevent problematic trading, including among the 18-to-21 cohort, there are still widespread concerns from state regulators, members of Congress and addiction specialists.

“Without question, it’s a loophole,” said former New Jersey Attorney General Matt Platkin, a Democrat, who was one of the first prosecutors to take legal action against Kalshi last year. “This is why states put common-sense age restrictions on gambling, drinking and other forms of dangerous behavior.”

CNN has a partnership with Kalshi and uses its data to cover major events, but editorial employees are prohibited from using prediction markets.

In response to questions from CNN about Andrew’s experience, Kalshi spokeswoman Elisabeth Diana said Andrew saw an error message while trying to withdraw his winnings because his bank issued a fraud alert.

“Kalshi’s withdrawal system did not fail,” Diana said in a statement. “As a regulated financial exchange, we have to work with similarly regulated banks … that means that when a bank issues a fraud alert, we have to hold the transaction until we get an OK to move ahead.”

Through the course of Andrew’s up-and-down trading, Andrew’s net lifetime losses ended up around $800, which Diana said was low enough that it didn’t trigger notifications suggesting deposit limits. But she said Kalshi will “continue evaluating our approach to ensure people get the appropriate protections and support they need.”

Addiction experts alarmed

Health experts say the part of the brain responsible for impulse control isn’t fully developed until age 25, and Read more

By Ray Sanchez, CNN

(CNN) — It was not the typical morning banter at the bustling Pancake House in the mill town of Longview, Washington.

“We’ve actually just been sick to our stomach,” said Julie Oliver, 60, taking a moment from serving breakfast to speak on the phone. “We realize how many of the ones that are still missing are our customers, and very close family, and people that we’ve known for many years.”

The talk in Longview – an industrial and shipping hub along the Columbia River in southwestern Washington, roughly 50 miles north of Portland, Oregon – on Wednesday centered on the search for nine people presumed dead a day after a chemical tank rupture at a popular paper plant.

“My son works at that mill, and he got home (Tuesday) morning off of graveyard shift and was in bed by 10 after 6 and I was on my way to work at 7:15 and saw the (emergency) vehicles and I just had the selfish thing that I said, ‘I’m so thankful my son is at home.’”

Eleven people are believed to have died when a 900,000-gallon tank containing hazardous chemicals ruptured Tuesday morning at the Nippon Dynawave Packaging Co. facility in Longview. Two victims have been recovered and another eight people were injured in the blast. About 25,000 gallons of caustic material remains inside the damaged tank, officials estimated Wednesday.

“This town has a big sense of community,” said Stephen Burright, who has lived in Longview for 19 years. “There is not one person in this town that doesn’t know someone that works at the mill.”

Among those killed was Gilbert Bernal, a beloved father and grandfather, his daughter Geovana Bernal-Ferguson told CNN on Wednesday. Bernal-Ferguson’s brother and mother confirmed through photos at a hospital on Tuesday that a deceased man there was Bernal, she said. The family is still waiting for official confirmation from the coroner.

“I really can’t picture our lives without him,” Bernal-Ferguson wrote in a social media post, sharing dozens of photo memories of her father. Her favorite memories included those involving her son and Bernal’s first grandson, Jameson, she told CNN.

“My heart is shattered knowing that their time was cut short but my son will always know how incredible his grandpa was,” Bernal-Ferguson wrote in the post. “He truly was a one of a kind.”

The ruptured tank contained a mixture called white liquor, which is used in paper-making processes and can cause severe burns when it comes into contact with skin. With the blast spilling an estimated 500,000 gallons of the substance, authorities methodically continue the “extremely hazardous” recovery efforts for the nine mill employees who are presumed dead.

“We have husbands of waitresses here that work there, maybe not right where that tank is. So we’re all just really sick and very somber today,” Oliver said Wednesday.

Nippon Dynawave Packaging Co. employs about 1,000 people at its pulp-and-paper mill and packaging plant, according to Washington’s Department of Ecology. It has manufactured liquid packaging board in Longview since 1953, according to the company’s LinkedIn page. Each year, Nippon says, the site produces enough paperboard to make roughly 6 billion milk cartons.

“If you’re not in a trades family or a mill family, it can be hard to understand how devastating an industrial accident like this is for a mill town like Longview,” US Rep. Marie Gluesenkamp Perez, a Democrat, told reporters Wednesday, noting that

By Lianne Kolirin, CNN

(CNN) — A medieval manuscript featuring an early version of the tales of King Arthur and Merlin, which has been in private hands for about 700 years, is going under the hammer in a rare sale this summer.

Expected to fetch up to $2.7 million, the illuminated manuscript, which dates from the 13th or 14th century, is one of the earliest documents to narrate the legend of King Arthur and the search for the holy grail.

Written sometime between 1290 and 1310, the Clermont-Tonnerre Grail is the highlight of an upcoming Valuable Books and Manuscripts auction at Christie’s in July.

The tome contains text in Old French from a series known as the Lancelot-Grail cycle and has been valued at between £1.5 million ($2 million) and £2 million ($2.7 million).

Written on vellum and decorated with gold leaf, the manuscript features 126 “rich illustrations” of the legend that has spawned countless books, films and academic debates, according to Eugenio Donadoni, director of medieval and renaissance manuscripts at Christie’s.

Among the images are some depicting Merlin the magician shape-shifting into different forms and some of the tales of King Arthur and his knights.

It has never been publicly exhibited nor studied in any great detail, according to the auction house.

Donadoni told CNN in an email that it is a “virtually unknown” manuscript that is likely to garner much interest when it comes up for sale.

“This is a rediscovered manuscript of one the greatest of all medieval romances: the story of the Holy Grail, Merlin and the young King Arthur and the Knights of the Round Table, texts fundamental to Western culture,” he said, adding that there are only three such manuscripts in private hands and this is the earliest.

The auction house has detailed provenance for the manuscript showing a long line of previous owners, Donadoni said.

He added that previous owners included a 15th century knight, a jouster, an “obsessive medievalist” and a 20th century industrialist called Jean Lebaudy who was awarded two “croix de guerre” for his “heroic deeds in both World Wars.”

While the seller of the manuscript has not been identified, Donadoni told CNN that it comes from a “long-standing private collection.”

“There are so many appealing angles to this manuscript: historical, art-historical, textual and cultural,” he said. “There’s the Christian element – the Quest for the Holy Grail; the chivalric element: the adventures, the quests, the jousts, the battles.”

The sale is likely to attract many potential bidders, according to Donadoni.

“It should interest institutions because it’s a virtually unknown manuscript of one of the greatest medieval romances, but it could interest private buyers for the same reasons that it appealed to the long line of owners who have treasured it over the course of the past 700 years.”

He added: “It has been a privilege to have been able to work on a manuscript of this rarity and calibre: the stories are universal and it has so much still to offer in terms of research and enjoyment. As Merlin himself prophesies in the text itself: ‘And the story will forever be told and gladly heard for as long as the world lasts’.”

The sale will take place at Christie’s in London on July 8.

The-CNN-Wire
™ & © 2026 Cable News Network, Inc., a Warner Bros. Discovery Company. All rights reserved.

The post Read more