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By David Mack, CNN

(CNN) — It takes less than 10 minutes of watching the new “Heartstopper Forever” movie on Netflix to realize this is not the same tenderhearted romance to which audiences were first introduced.

When the British series debuted in 2022, Nick (Kit Connor) and Charlie (Joe Locke) were teenage boys of 16 and 14, respectively, navigating confusing feelings for one another in a show that was unabashedly sentimental and eschewed any references to anything even remotely sexual, cocooning the characters in flutters of animated love hearts. But the boys, like the actors who play them, have since done some growing up.

Their yearslong romance entered a new stage at the end of the third season, when they lost their virginity to each other. Now, having driven to a remote seaside pier at sunset, they race each other to the end and begin to passionately make out, before Charlize unzips Nick’s pants, sticks his hand down and goes to town. “I’m thinking about you,” the singer Baby Queen croons in the song that overlays the scene and title sequence, “and you’re thinking about sex.”

“We have this moment of just pure teenage abandon, teenage recklessness, which I think feels so real to teenagers,” said Alice Oseman, the writer of both “Heartstopper Forever” and the original webcomic-turned-graphic novel on which the series is based. “We have always tried to age up ‘Heartstopper’ a little bit every single time we come back to it.”

On the one hand, the adult evolution of “Heartstopper” isn’t surprising. Its characters—and its intended target audience—are older now, full of promise, insecurities and hormones. They get drunk. They smoke. They sneak into nightclubs. They have sex. But it’s still admittedly a little jarring to watch two boys we first met in a sweet-to-the-point-of-saccharine series act outthe intricacies of penetrative lovemaking. Sex scenes exist in Oseman’s original comic, but feel decidedly more real when shown on screen than on the page. “It’s a line that you have towalk: ‘How far are we going to take this?’” Connor told the Guardian of the show’s new steamy scenes. “But at the end of the day, it did feel like these two guys are really attracted to each other at the age where they probably would have been doing it.”

“It would be weird if we hadn’t shown it,” Locke told the newspaper. “Just because our show is a more earnest version of a queer representation doesn’t mean that sex (shouldn’t be shown).”

It’s impossible to watch this new movie without acknowledging that its streaming release on Friday comes in the aftermath of the cultural phenomenon that was “Heated Rivalry.” Many of the young, original fans of “Heartstopper” are now old enough to go to some of the “Heated Rivalr

By Chris Isidore, CNN

(CNN) — Overseas stocks and US stock futures fell sharply Friday after technological advances announced by a Chinese artificial intelligence company intensified concerns that the AI spending spree driving this year’s market rally could be at risk.

The announcement came from Chinese company Moonshot, which unveiled Kimi K3, its most capable AI model, and one it said closed much of the gap with models such as OpenAI’s ChatGPT and Anthropic’s Claude.

Market indexes in South Korea and Taiwan closed down more than 6%, while markets in Japan closed down 4% on the news. Nasdaq futures were down 1.6% early Friday, with futures tied to the Dow and S&P 500 also lower.

Breakthroughs by Chinese AI companies have rattled US markets in the past, such as in January 2025, when Chinese artificial intelligence company DeepSeek unveiled a model that challenged assumptions about US dominance in the technology sector.

Investments in AI and tech stocks have driven much of the market rally this year. AI chipmaker Nvidia has become the world’s most valuable company in recent years, but Nvidia shares (NVDA) were down more than 2% in premarket trading Friday. Shares of Google parent Alphabet (GOOG), which tumbled 4% Thursday slipped another 1% in premarket trading early Friday.

Chipmakers also tumbled, continuing a recent bout of volatility after soaring in recent months. Micron (MU), which fell more than 5.5% Thursday, dropped another 2% in premarket trading. Micron is down 30% since hitting a record high in late June but is still up almost 200% this year.

Kimi K3 is the world’s largest open-source model, according to Moonshot. Open-source models can pose problems for US AI companies that are trying to charge subscriptions to access their closed-source models.

Another headwind for stocks was a continued rise in oil futures on US attacks overnight in Iran raising fears about the flow of oil from the Persian Gulf again being cut off. Rising oil prices could drive new inflation concerns which had abated as oil fell since early June on hopes of the war there being over.

Annual inflation measured 3.5% in June, compared to 4.2% in May, according to Consumer Price Index data released Tuesday by the Bureau of Labor Statistics. That came after a steep decline in gas prices as tensions eased in the Middle East.

But oil futures moved back above $85 a barrel in Friday trading, and the US average price of a gallon of regular gas is approaching $4 for the first time in a month, hitting $3.98 in the latest reading from AAA.

“That combination of concerns around tech and inflation has really put a dent in the more buoyant narrative after the soft US CPI report earlier this week,” said Deutsche Bank Research in a note to investors Friday.

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CNN’s Anna Cooban contributed to this report.

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By Kara Fox, CNN

(CNN) — Ireland has approved landmark legislation to create the country’s first public register of domestic violence offenders, in a move campaigners say will empower people to check whether a potential partner has a history of violence.

Known as Jennie’s Law, the Domestic Violence (Judgements) Register Bill passed Wednesday in the Dáil, or Irish parliament, following years of campaigning by the family of Jennifer Poole, a 24-year-old mother-of-two who was murdered by her former partner in April 2021.

Poole did not know he had a history of abusive behavior, including a conviction for assaulting a former partner.

The online register will publish the names of those convicted of serious domestic abuse offenses, including rape, sexual assault, non-fatal strangulation, harassment, coercive control and non-consensual sharing of intimate images.

While public, there will be limits to the online register. The trial judge has the discretion to determine if publication is warranted based on the specifics of the case, and the perpetrator’s name will only be published if the victim gives consent.

The published names will contain details of the conviction and sentence and will be hosted on the Irish Courts Service website. Offenders will be able to apply for removal no earlier than three years after conviction, according to the legislation.

Poole’s brother Jason described the register as a “massive way forward” to changing the culture around domestic violence, telling Irish broadcaster RTÉ last year that it would mean potential victims “know who they’re living with,” unlike his sister, who didn’t know her partner had a previous conviction and had served prison time.

Lawmakers gave a standing ovation to the Poole family, who were present as the legislation passed, local media reported.

The new Irish register appears to make the country an outlier across Europe.

In the United Kingdom, Clare’s Law allows people to ask the police about a person’s history of abuse or violence, but not everyone is entitled to receive the information.

Critics of the UK system argue that it is plagued by long backlogs and highly inconsistent approval rates across different police forces.

Ireland’s legislation comes at a time of heightened urgency around the issue of femicide.

Last week, Women’s Aid Ireland reported that eight women have died violently so far this year, already overtaking the whole of 2025.

One in three women in Ireland have been subjected to domestic abuse, according to the charity, mirroring the global average, with the most significant threat of gender-based violence coming from within a woman’s immediate personal life, rather than from strangers.

Globally, 83,000 women and girls were intentionally killed in 2024, the latest year for which data is available, according to UN Women. Of these homicides, 60% (nearly 50,000) were committed by an intimate partner or family member, it said.

This equates to 137 women and girls losing their lives every day, or one every 10 minutes, it said.

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