Global Pulse

分类： society

  • ‘Blood everywhere’ – Clancy’s ex-husband testifies in children murder trial

    ‘Blood everywhere’ – Clancy’s ex-husband testifies in children murder trial

    A Massachusetts murder trial that has gripped the nation has seen harrowing firsthand testimony from Patrick Clancy, the ex-husband of Lindsay Clancy, the woman accused of murdering their three young children in January 2023. Patrick Clancy recounted the chilling sequence of events on January 24 that ended in the deaths of 5-year-old Cora, 3-year-old Dawson, and 8-month-old Callan, describing a quiet and off-kilter atmosphere that immediately set off alarm bells when he returned home with takeout food.

    After checking most rooms of the Duxbury family home, including a quick pass through the basement, Clancy found the second-floor bedroom door locked. When he gained entry, the first thing he saw was blood spread across the space — a sight that confirmed his worst fears. He testified that prosecutors’ photos of the scene correctly showed no blood on the walls or bedding, a small detail that prosecution has emphasized as part of their narrative.

    Rushing from the blood-stained bedroom, Clancy ran outside to find his wife Lindsay on the grass. She had jumped from the second-story window in an apparent suicide attempt, and he found her with deep lacerations across her wrists and a red ligature mark around her neck. After calling 911 emergency services, Clancy told the court Lindsay revealed the children were being held in the basement. Sprinting to the space, he found each child, one by one, each with a fitness band wrapped around their neck, all unresponsive. Clancy described frantically switching between the three young victims, administering CPR until first responders arrived to take over.

    Lindsay Clancy, who faces three counts of first-degree murder, has pleaded not guilty to the charges. Her legal team does not dispute she killed the children, but argues she was suffering severe postpartum psychosis at the time of the killings and was not in control of her actions. Patrick Clancy told the court that roughly a week after the tragedy, Lindsay told him she had heard a male voice commanding her to harm the children, adding he had no knowledge of psychosis as a condition prior to this incident.

    Lindsay Clancy, who was left paralyzed from the fall during her suicide attempt, has attended every day of the trial from her wheelchair. She reacted visibly to her ex-husband’s testimony on Wednesday: court footage showed her squeezing her lawyer’s hand, turning her face away from the gallery to wipe away tears. When prosecution played the 911 call Patrick Clancy made the day of the killings and entered the children’s bloodied pajamas as evidence, Lindsay Clancy broke down into audible sobs, forcing the judge to call a recess.

    Prosecutors are building a case that the killings were a premeditated, calculated act, and have cross-examined Patrick Clancy extensively on small details of his account, including the severity of his ex-wife’s cuts when he found her. Clancy confirmed he told first responders he did not believe it was necessary to apply pressure to the wounds, a detail prosecutors have highlighted to support their argument.

    The trial is expected to run for several more weeks, with additional witnesses scheduled to take the stand. If convicted, Lindsay Clancy will face a mandatory sentence of life in prison without the possibility of parole.

    This story contains discussion of suicide and fatal violence that may be distressing to readers. People experiencing suicidal thoughts or emotional crisis can access support through Befrienders Worldwide at www.befrienders.org, with UK-specific resources listed at bbc.co.uk/actionline.

  • Ghana hit by nationwide blackout as power plants fail

    Ghana hit by nationwide blackout as power plants fail

    A critical system failure on Ghana’s national electricity transmission network has sparked sweeping power outages that have cut electricity access to millions of people across the country, including the capital Accra, the major commercial center Kumasi, and large swathes of northern Ghana. The state-owned power distribution operator confirmed that multiple independent power plants across the West African nation were forced into automatic shutdown in the early hours of Wednesday, after the fault first emerged.

    In an official public statement, Ghana Grid Company Limited (GRIDCo), the agency responsible for managing the country’s national power grid, noted that its engineering teams and system control specialists have been working around the clock to bring power supply back online as quickly as possible, while prioritizing public and worker safety throughout the restoration process.

    For decades, Ghana has struggled with recurring, widespread power shortages that local communities have dubbed “dumsor” — a term from the Akan language that translates directly to “on-off”, referencing the erratic, intermittent supply many households have lived with for generations. In recent years, however, these outages have become far less frequent, and government and industry officials have framed the sector as steadily improving.

    Wednesday’s mass outage has disrupted daily life across multiple regions, leaving residential properties, commercial operations and public services without power. For many daily commuters, the blackout created unexpected barriers to getting to work: with mobile phones drained of charge, many were unable to complete digital payments for public transport, or book ride-hailing services through popular apps like Uber. Small local businesses, which rarely have the backup power infrastructure that larger organizations rely on, have also been hit hard, as have everyday residents dependent on digital services for work, school and daily tasks. While most major essential facilities such as public hospitals do have backup generators to maintain critical care, smaller regional clinics have reported disruptions to services.

    GRIDCo has announced that it has launched a full technical investigation to pinpoint the root cause of the widespread failure, but the agency has so far declined to give any timeline for when full, normal power supply will be restored across the country.

    As one of the world’s top producers of both gold and cocoa, Ghana has seen steady economic and population growth in recent decades, alongside rapid urbanization that has pushed up demand for reliable electricity. To meet this growing demand, the country has expanded its energy mix in recent years, adding natural gas-fired power generation to its energy portfolio. Still, the majority of Ghana’s electricity continues to be produced by a fleet of aging hydropower plants that have suffered from decades of underinvestment and inadequate maintenance.

    While the addition of natural gas generation has reduced the frequency of widespread outages, Ghana’s power sector still remains significantly vulnerable to large-scale transmission system failures and unexpected interruptions to fuel supply, a structural weakness that Wednesday’s outage has laid bare.

  • Melbourne man loses legal fight for permanent WFH arrangement

    Melbourne man loses legal fight for permanent WFH arrangement

    A Melbourne-based dispute resolution specialist has lost his legal bid for a permanent full-time work-from-home arrangement, brought forward to accommodate ongoing care for his sick child, after Australia’s Fair Work Commission ruled his employer’s rejection was lawful.

    Jonathan Robinson serves as a dispute resolution expert at the Australian Financial Complaints Authority (AFCA), where his core responsibilities center on reviewing and settling insurance claims valued up to $15,000. In September 2024, he submitted a formal request to work remotely on a permanent basis, citing the need for consistent, flexible care arrangements to support his child’s long-term health needs.

    His request was ultimately turned down under AFCA’s official return-to-office policy, which requires all non-frontline staff to attend their physical workplace for a minimum of two days each week. In a formal email responding to Robinson’s application, AFCA management outlined that a full-time remote arrangement would hinder his ability to develop in-person professional connections, collaborate openly with colleagues, and onboard new team members effectively. The agency emphasized that in-office presence is a core requirement to foster organic knowledge sharing and maintain strong team cohesion across the organization.

    Rather than an outright denial of all flexibility, AFCA offered a compromise: a phased return to in-office work that would ramp up from one day every two weeks to three days weekly, with built-in flexibility to accommodate school drop-offs and medical appointments for Robinson’s child.

    The case landed before Fair Work Commission Deputy President Andrew Bell, who acknowledged that Robinson’s personal circumstances and motivation for the request were entirely genuine. Even so, Bell ruled that AFCA’s refusal to grant full-time remote status was rooted in reasonable business considerations. He further found that the agency’s two-day in-office mandate was neither arbitrary nor capricious in its application.

    Bell noted in his ruling that large segments of the global and national workforce—particularly those in blue-collar roles—have no access to remote work options at all, even for limited periods. “Even for other employees for whom many tasks can be performed remotely, a requirement for some in-person attendance at work has long been recognised as a legitimate business need in many (although not all) businesses,” he stated in his final decision.

    The ruling comes amid ongoing global debate post-pandemic over the balance between employer demands for in-office collaboration and employee needs for flexible work arrangements to meet caregiving responsibilities, highlighting the ongoing tensions between personal life obligations and institutional workplace policies in Australia’s modern labor market.

  • CCTV captures wild moment two children escape from Melbourne kindergarten, skip merrily down busy road in Fitzroy North

    CCTV captures wild moment two children escape from Melbourne kindergarten, skip merrily down busy road in Fitzroy North

    On a recent Monday morning just after 11 a.m., surveillance cameras captured an alarming yet unexpectedly lighthearted incident in the inner-Melbourne suburb of Fitzroy North: two young kindergarten students slipped through a gap in their facility’s perimeter fence and wandered unsupervised onto St Georges Road, a busy thoroughfare in the area.

    Passersby spotted the pair gleefully skipping along the roadside, confused by the sight of young children out alone with no caregiver in sight. Staff at the nearby Isabel Henderson Kindergarten only realized their students were missing after a member of the public contacted the facility, and quickly launched an urgent search for the two children.

    The incident ended without injury, however: one of the children’s parents alerted the kindergarten after the pair made their own way home, where they had already settled in to watch the animated film *KPop Demon Hunters*. Local law enforcement was notified shortly after the children were located, and authorities confirmed neither toddler suffered any harm during their unplanned outing.

    In the wake of the incident, two separate investigations have been launched to examine how the escape was able to occur. The Victorian Early Childhood Regulatory Authority, which oversees early childhood education and care services across the state, confirmed it has launched a formal probe into the incident. A spokesperson for the regulator emphasized that child safety is their top priority, noting that parents are entitled to expect constant, active supervision of their children while they are in care. “We won’t hesitate to take strong action to protect the safety, rights and best interests of children,” the spokesperson said, adding that no further comment would be provided while the investigation remains active.

    Kindergarten director Anna Tibb told local outlet *The Age* that the facility has also launched its own internal investigation, and is fully cooperating with regulatory authorities. She described the incident as devastating for both the children’s families and the kindergarten staff, noting that the center prioritizes transparency and takes all safety breaches extremely seriously.

  • ‘I thought I would die’: Survivors describe the shock and horror of powerful Japan earthquake

    ‘I thought I would die’: Survivors describe the shock and horror of powerful Japan earthquake

    Late on a Tuesday evening, when most local businesses in Japan’s southwestern city of Yatsushiro, Kumamoto Prefecture were preparing to close for the day, a violent 6.8-magnitude tremor tore through the region, turning ordinary routines into a terrifying fight for survival. For 75-year-old Hiroko Ogata, co-owner of the beloved local diner Sendan Shokudo, the quake struck moments after she stepped through the door. In an instant, every dish, utensil and supply stacked on kitchen shelves crashed to the floor, shattering glass and ceramic across the room. Ogata immediately dove under the nearest table for shelter, only to be thrown back and forth as the building lurched violently from side to side.

    A lifelong resident of the area, which sits atop an active tectonic fault line that has long made earthquakes a familiar risk, Ogata says this tremor was unlike anything she has ever endured. “I thought I would die,” she recalled, drawing a stark contrast to the devastating 2016 Kumamoto earthquakes that killed 277 people and injured more than 2,800. “The last quake 10 years ago was nothing like this one.”

    As of the latest updates, the disaster has claimed at least 13 lives, with three of the fatalities recorded at the Aeon shopping mall in central Kumamoto City, where dozens of people remain trapped beneath collapsed debris. Rescue teams have launched a large-scale operation to reach survivors, but Japanese Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi has warned that responders are in a critical “race against time” to pull people alive from the wreckage before conditions worsen.

    Just a few hundred meters from the damaged mall, Yui, a cake shop owner who asked to keep her surname private, was working in her back office when the quake hit. The shaking was so intense that she could not distinguish the roar of the earth from the sound of structural explosions. “All I could do was hold the chair I was sitting in as big jolts came one after another,” she said, still visibly shaken days after the event. “I didn’t know what to feel; I couldn’t even feel scared in such a situation. Even now I don’t know what to feel, and I don’t know how to explain.”

    Japanese authorities moved quickly to mobilize resources, deploying 4,600 emergency personnel to the affected region within hours of the initial tremor. Takaichi pledged that teams would work “tirelessly through the night” to map damage, locate missing people and deliver critical aid to displaced residents. Even with this rapid response, however, the scale of the destruction has overwhelmed local infrastructure: tens of thousands of households across Kumamoto City remain without power and clean running water, and at least 45 medical facilities have sustained structural damage that limits their ability to treat the injured.

    Beyond human casualties, the disaster has also damaged irreplaceable cultural heritage sites. The iconic outer stone walls of 17th-century Kumamoto Castle, located in the heart of the city, crumbled to the ground in thick clouds of dust, and the main worship hall of 19th-century Yatsushiro Shire collapsed completely.

    For locals navigating the aftermath, daily life remains fraught with uncertainty. Michal Posan, a 25-year-old resident who has lived in Kumamoto for two years, says local stores have already been stripped of essential supplies. “There is no water or food left in the stores,” she explained. Posan was at home when the quake hit, where a falling television struck her and her bathroom mirror shattered; nearby roads cracked and buckled from the force. Like many other residents, she has packed an emergency evacuation bag and remains on high alert, as constant aftershocks continue to rattle the region hours after the initial quake.

    Memories of the 2016 disaster, when a second major quake struck the region just days after the first, have left communities deeply anxious about what comes next. “People are wary of another earthquake on the way,” one local resident noted. That fear is echoed by experts: Shinji Kiyomoto of the Japanese Meteorological Agency has urged the public to “remain vigilant” for additional large tremors, citing the 2016 sequence as a dangerous precedent.

    Even as fear of another major quake lingers, local business owners have begun the slow, exhausting work of clearing debris and rebuilding their livelihoods, balancing the need to return to normalcy with the constant interruption of aftershocks. Ogata began clearing out her damaged diner the day after the quake, even as repeated tremors force her to stop and take shelter every few minutes. “The whole of my place is messy, and I don’t know where to stand – but we have to earn our living by restarting our restaurant as soon as possible, so I am cleaning the place today,” she said. “But when I try to work for a bit, an aftershock occurs and I have to stop – then I do some work and we have another aftershock… So it is going so slowly. If we keep having this many aftershocks it will be very stressful.”

    For Yui, the path forward remains unclear. Her cake shop remains closed while she assesses damage to critical equipment, including her commercial oven. “I haven’t checked whether the machines such as the oven are working,” she said. “After I check those, I will have an idea whether I can go back into business or not.” As rescue teams continue their search for trapped survivors and communities pick through the wreckage of their homes and businesses, Kumamoto is grappling with both the immediate physical devastation and the long shadow of uncertainty cast by the relentless aftershocks.

  • Austria’s 16th century bell foundry adds modern technology to keep the casting process alive

    Austria’s 16th century bell foundry adds modern technology to keep the casting process alive

    Tucked in the mountain city of Innsbruck, western Austria, one of Europe’s last remaining bell foundries hums with activity as artisans clad in heat-resistant protective gear work to pour glowing molten bronze into custom-shaped molds. For the Grassmayr Bell Foundry, a family-owned enterprise tracing its origins back to 1599, this routine of crafting massive, ton-weight bells for religious communities across the continent has persisted through centuries of upheaval — from continental wars and widespread famines to global pandemics and crippling economic downturns.

    Today, the legacy is carried forward by brothers Johannes and Peter Grassmayr, the latest generation to steward the centuries-old trade. What was once a crowded craft with hundreds of foundries operating across Europe during the late medieval Renaissance has dwindled to just a handful of active operations on the continent. For Grassmayr, the key to outlasting competitors and navigating centuries of change lies in a rare balance: unwavering dedication to time-honored craftsmanship paired with deliberate adoption of cutting-edge innovation.

    “Certain core practices have not changed in 400 years, but we have pushed for significant innovation, particularly over the past two decades, that has transformed how we work,” Johannes Grassmayr explained in an interview with the Associated Press.

    A full production cycle for a single custom bell takes three to four months from start to finish. In decades past, cleaning and polishing a newly cast bell accounted for 30% of total production labor. Today, modern digital and mechanical tools have cut that processing time to just one-tenth of the original schedule. The foundry keeps many of its most innovative proprietary processes private: this includes a specialized high-pressure sandblasting cleaning chamber, as well as custom-built software applications designed to model and predict the unique acoustic profile of each individual bell.

    Even with the advantages of modern technology, the most labor-intensive and high-stakes step of the process — designing and crafting the molds for large, multi-ton bells — still takes up to six months of careful work. As Johannes emphasizes, a bell is not simply a hunk of cast metal: it is a precision musical instrument that requires accurate calculation, careful shaping, and controlled casting to achieve the desired tone.

    The greatest risk during casting comes from the extreme pressure generated by tons of liquid bronze. For a large multi-ton bell, molten bronze can exert up to 125 metric tons of pressure against the inner walls of the mold. To prevent catastrophic collapse, the foundry sources only highest-quality clay for mold construction, then encases the clay form in reinforced steel sleeves engineered to withstand these extreme forces.

    Beyond the inherent technical challenges of bell casting, the foundry now faces mounting modern economic pressures that threaten its long-term stability. Shifting cultural trends have led to a sharp decline in new church construction across Europe, drastically reducing demand for new custom bells. Compounding this challenge are skyrocketing operational costs spurred by recent global events: energy prices have surged following the outbreak of war in Ukraine, and labor costs have jumped 30% across the industry since the 2020 COVID-19 pandemic.

    For finished bells, the single largest cost driver remains raw material prices. Premium bronze, blended to a traditional ratio of 80% copper and 20% tin to produce the best acoustic quality, has seen explosive price growth in recent years. Just a few years ago, bronze cost 8 euros (roughly $9.23) per kilogram; today, that same kilogram costs 23 euros ($26.17). This volatility makes long-term pricing impossible for the foundry.

    “That’s why I can’t even predict what a bell will cost a year from now,” Johannes said. “I just hope we see metal prices fall again in the near future.”

    To adapt to shrinking demand for new bells and offset rising costs, the Grassmayr team has increasingly expanded into a new line of work: restoring historic defective bells, leveraging modern technology to repair and refinish centuries-old pieces that remain important to communities. To date, the foundry has restored hundreds of damaged bells from 12 different European countries.

    Despite the challenges, the foundry’s work reaches across the globe: Grassmayr bells now hang in churches and public buildings in more than 100 countries, from Japan to the United States. Some of the brothers’ most iconic works include a 25-metric-ton bell cast in 2016 for Romania’s National Cathedral in Bucharest, standing 3.3 meters tall, and a 15-metric-ton bell installed in a church on Israel’s Mount Tabor.

    As he showed AP journalists a set of recently cast bells, left to cool for a full week before being removed from their clay molds, Johannes pointed to the crisp, precise negative imprint left in the clay form. One of the newly finished bells was bound for a church in Zethau, Germany. “I’m very happy with how this casting turned out,” he said. “I’m particularly glad that the innovations we’ve rolled out over the past decades have helped us make bells that are ever more beautiful and better sounding than ever before.”

  • Scented candle sold in coconut bowl recalled amid fire hazard warning

    Scented candle sold in coconut bowl recalled amid fire hazard warning

    A popular Australian home goods brand has issued a urgent recall of one of its best-selling scented candle products after regulators identified critical fire risks that violate national safety standards.

    Verve & Vibe, an Australia-based home fragrance brand, is pulling its scented candles housed in combined wooden and coconut bowl holders from the market, according to a notice from the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC). The recall covers all units sold between September 1 of last year and the projected end of sales in February 2026, with distribution across three major retail channels: the brand’s official website, eBay, and global e-commerce platform Amazon.

    The hazard stems from the product’s design: the candle is held in a container made from combustible natural materials (wood and coconut shell) and also includes decorative dried flowers placed near the wick. When the candle burns, these flammable components can easily catch fire, turning a routine home fragrance product into an immediate danger for households. This design directly violates the ACCC’s existing ban on combustible candle holders, which was put in place to prevent exactly this kind of fire risk.

    Verve & Vibe Australia has moved quickly to notify consumers and address the safety issue. The company is urging every customer who has purchased this specific candle to stop using it immediately, and to store the product in a secure location far from any potential ignition sources until it can be disposed of or returned. To compensate affected consumers, the brand is offering two no-cost resolution options: a full refund of the purchase price, or a free replacement non-hazardous candle product.

    Household product safety regulators have repeatedly highlighted the danger of untested combustible container candles in recent years, noting that undetected fires from these products can spread quickly in residential spaces while residents are sleeping or away from home. Consumers who purchased the recalled Verve & Vibe candle are encouraged to reach out to the brand’s customer service team as soon as possible to process their refund or exchange.

  • Ryan Meuleman: Man injured in crash with Dan Andrews’ car in 2013 charged over alleged carjacking

    Ryan Meuleman: Man injured in crash with Dan Andrews’ car in 2013 charged over alleged carjacking

    A high-profile legal matter involving a 28-year-old man with a long-running dispute connected to former Victorian Premier Daniel Andrews has taken a new turn, after the man was arrested on alleged carjacking charges and is now fighting for release from custody.

    Police have laid out their case against Ryan Meuleman, accusing him of attempting to steal a vehicle with a woman and her young twin children in the backseat outside a laundromat in Pakenham, a suburb of Melbourne, on the evening of May 3. According to law enforcement testimony during a Wednesday bail hearing at the Melbourne Magistrates’ Court, the childrens’ father had stepped inside the laundromat around 9:40 p.m. to collect pre-washed laundry when Meuleman allegedly climbed into the car’s front driver’s seat and shifted the vehicle into drive.

    The children’s mother, who was already seated in the car, physically struggled with Meuleman over the gearshift and screamed to alert her husband, Detective Senior Constable Sean McIntyre told the court. The father immediately rushed back to the vehicle, punched Meuleman through the open driver’s window, dragged him out of the car onto the laundromat’s front sidewalk, and held him down until officers arrived to place him under arrest, the detective added.

    McIntyre told the court Meuleman appeared heavily impaired by drugs at the time of his arrest and gave police a false name, identifying himself as “Crew Thompson.” He was deemed unfit to participate in a police interview following his arrest. The court also heard Meuleman was already free on bail at the time of the alleged carjacking, awaiting trial on separate burglary and theft charges connected to a break-in at a commercial property.

    This new arrest comes 12 years after a collision that left Meuleman seriously injured, and which has sparked years of legal conflict. In January 2013, when Meuleman was 15 years old, he was hit while cycling by a Ford Territory driven by Catherine Andrews, wife of Daniel Andrews, who was then leader of Victoria’s Labor opposition. Daniel Andrews and the couple’s three children were passengers in the vehicle at the time. A post-crash investigation by Victoria Police resulted in no charges being filed against anyone in the Andrews family.

    Meuleman spent 11 days recovering in a hospital after the collision. He has long claimed the Andrews vehicle struck him as he cycled, while the Andrews family has consistently maintained that Meuleman crashed into their stationary car.

    Meuleman’s defense attorney, Tom Smedley, referenced the 2013 collision during the bail hearing, arguing the crash left his client with long-term, unresolved trauma that has severely impacted his mental health. “Ryan identified this period as a significant turning point in his life,” Smedley told the court. “He identifies his substance use has been a longstanding coping mechanism connected to unresolved psychological distress and trauma.”

    Smedley told the court Meuleman had already spent 87 days in pre-trial custody and was requesting bail so he could enroll in a 12-week inpatient rehabilitation program based in regional Victoria. Meuleman’s father, Peter, was present in the court gallery to support his son during the hearing.

    Magistrate Phillip Goldberg adjourned the bail application to a future hearing date after raising concerns about the rehabilitation facility’s security protocols, noting the center does not offer 24-hour on-site monitoring of patients. Smedley requested additional time to arrange alternative security measures, including fitting Meuleman with an electronic monitoring ankle bracelet, to address the magistrate’s concerns. The bail application will resume on August 5.

    The alleged carjacking is separate from an ongoing defamation lawsuit Meuleman filed against Daniel and Catherine Andrews last year. The defamation case stems from a 2013 injury compensation claim Meuleman filed over the collision. Earlier this year, Meuleman settled a separate lawsuit against his former legal team, Slater and Gordon, over claims the firm failed to properly represent him during negotiations for an $80,000 settlement with Victoria’s Transport Accident Commission. That case concluded in April 2025 with a confidential, out-of-court settlement that Meuleman’s current legal team described as “too good to refuse.”

    During the public proceedings around that lawsuit, the Andrewses released a joint media statement in September 2024 that noted they were not involved in the case against Slater and Gordon and repeated their assertion they “did nothing wrong” in the 2013 collision. Meuleman claims the statement falsely implies he lied about the details of the 2013 crash to seek undeserved financial compensation. The Andrewses have denied the defamation claim and are defending the lawsuit, which is scheduled to return to court later this year.

  • ‘Don’t wait until you want revenge’ – why prenups are on the rise

    ‘Don’t wait until you want revenge’ – why prenups are on the rise

    For decades, prenuptial agreements were widely associated only with billionaires, A-list celebrities, and old-money families — seen as a legal tool for the ultra-wealthy to protect massive fortunes ahead of marriage. But that stereotype is rapidly fading, as a growing share of ordinary couples of all income levels are choosing to sign these contracts before walking down the aisle, driven by shifting cultural attitudes, greater accessibility, and pragmatic life experience.\n\nOne of the earliest examples of this modern trend is the young couple Celine Tsoi and Charles Mock, who first crossed paths two years ago in Goleta, California, when Tsoi was 23 and Mock was 27. Just eight months after their first meeting, the pair got engaged — and almost immediately, their friends began asking one question: had they planned to sign a prenup?\n\nRather than brushing the idea off as unromantic, the couple embraced it. Though their financial gaps are small — Mock, a nurse, earns a higher annual income than Tsoi, a PhD student, while Tsoi has slightly more personal savings — they saw the process as an opportunity to address potential conflict points head-on. Tsoi says she was particularly moved by Mock’s willingness to stipulate that she would keep the shared home if the couple ever split. For her, the act of negotiating the agreement revealed more about her fiancé’s character than any casual date could. “A lot of things could happen in a marriage,” she explains. “You want to discuss them when you still love each other rather than when things go bad and you want to take revenge.”\n\nHigh-profile celebrity engagements, including the 2026 wedding of Taylor Swift and Travis Kelce and 2025 nuptials of Jeff Bezos and Lauren Sanchez, have kept public attention focused on prenups in recent months, but data shows the trend extends far beyond Hollywood and Silicon Valley. While official national tracking does not exist for the U.S., where divorce courts have a long history of upholding prenuptial agreements, surveys indicate that nearly half of all married millennials and more than one in three married Gen Z adults currently have a prenup. Across all age groups, roughly one in five married American couples hold these contracts.\n\nAcross the Atlantic, the trend is also gaining traction following legal reforms that give greater recognition to prenups in England. Research shows that around one in 10 all British couples now have a prenup, with younger couples leading the charge: roughly one in three married adults under 35 in the UK have signed an agreement.\n\nLondon-based family lawyer Mark Gilmartin, of JMW Solicitors, says he has seen a sharp spike in demand for prenuptial services over the past 18 months. The old stereotype of a billionaire seeking to protect his fortune from a much younger partner has been replaced, he says, by requests from everyday professionals: startup founders, entrepreneurs, social media influencers, and working couples from all income brackets. Gilmartin explains that many modern clients are not protecting existing massive fortunes, but rather the future gains they expect to build over their careers — “the fruits of what’s going to be, rather than what is.” A large share of ordinary clients also seek prenups to ring-fence inherited wealth they expect to receive from their families.\n\nFor Becca Gibson, who is set to marry Dave Howells in West Sussex, the decision to sign a prenup grew out of personal experience and a desire for pragmatic fairness. Gibson, 33, went through a messy first divorce that ended poorly, and the couple have unequal incomes and blended families: Gibson has three children from her first marriage, while Howells has one, and Howells, who works in finance, earns more than three times Gibson’s income from her eyelash extension business. Though a court could potentially award her a larger settlement than the prenup outlines, Gibson says the agreement is a fair arrangement that protects assets both sides bring to the marriage. She expects to inherit substantial property from her parents, and the agreement stipulates that each partner will keep what they entered the relationship with if the marriage ends. “It’s nice knowing that if anything were to happen, I would just go back to how life was before,” she says.\n\nHowells, 45, acknowledges that talking about prenups feels unromantic, but says the national divorce rate makes pragmatism a necessity. “I built a home for myself. I’ve built a future for myself, including pensions,” he explains. “Park the emotional side of me loving both her and the kids… Why on earth would I have to pay something towards her life in the event of us splitting up?”\n\nLawyers point to a handful of key drivers that have pushed prenups from the fringes to the mainstream. For many couples, a primary motivation is a desire to avoid repeating the pain of past separation or the messy divorces they watched their own parents go through. Second, the rise of low-cost, semi-automated online platforms has made prenups far more accessible and affordable than the traditional route of hiring expensive family lawyers. Howells initially planned to use a local law firm, which quoted him roughly £5,000 for the service, before switching to a digital semi-automated platform called Wenup that charged a fixed fee of just £1,600.\n\nJulia Rodgers, co-founder of U.S.-based online prenup platform HelloPrenup, notes that shifting marriage timelines also play a role. Today, couples are marrying later in life, meaning most have already accumulated assets — from homes and businesses to student loan debt — by the time they walk down the aisle. “So you have a lot to protect and to lose by the age of 34,” she says. The ongoing “Great Wealth Transfer”, which is passing trillions in assets from older generations to millennials and Gen Z, has also pushed demand: many parents of engaged couples insist on prenups to protect family inheritances.\n\nRodgers adds that the reputation of prenups as an instrument that disadvantages women has also become outdated. Today’s agreements often empower women by clarifying their legal rights and financial expectations from the start of the marriage, creating space for open conversation about core topics before conflict arises. “We want to make sure we have the honest, open, transparent conversations about life goals, about finances, about roles and responsibilities in the home, so that we can have a long, happy marriage and not end up in that position that we saw our parents in,” she says.\n\nFor Tsoi, the decision to sign a prenup has already paid off, even before marriage. The online agreement cost her just a few hundred dollars, and she calls it a worthwhile investment that is far more important than the wedding itself. The hardest conversations about finances are already done, she says: “We haven’t had a single argument about finances.”

  • eBay agrees $56m settlement with bloggers over harassment case

    eBay agrees $56m settlement with bloggers over harassment case

    Five years after a brazen, coordinated campaign of retaliatory harassment against a married couple who ran an independent online publication critical of eBay’s business practices, the e-commerce giant and its former top executives have agreed to pay $56 million in civil damages to close the high-profile case.

    The victims, David and Ina Steiner, founded and operated EcommerceBytes, a website and industry newsletter that regularly published coverage scrutinizing eBay’s policies and corporate decisions. In 2019, that critical coverage drew a aggressive, unacceptable response from a cohort of then-current eBay executives, who orchestrated a months-long pattern of intimidation designed to silence the couple’s reporting.

    Court records and federal investigation documents detail a series of disturbing, threatening acts carried out against the Steiners, who reside in Massachusetts. The group sent the couple unwanted, menacing packages: a costume mask coated in pig’s blood, a funeral wreath left at their home, and a copy of a book about coping with the death of a spouse, messages clearly intended to frighten the pair by implying harm could be coming. Beyond sending disturbing parcels, executives sent repeated harassing messages to the couple via the social media platform X, then known as Twitter. In one of the most alarming breaches, multiple members of the group traveled to the Steiners’ home and attempted to place a tracking device on their personal vehicle to monitor their movements.

    Between 2022 and 2024, all seven former eBay executives implicated in the scheme pleaded guilty to federal criminal charges connected to the harassment, following an investigation by the U.S. Department of Justice and the FBI. In 2024, one lead FBI investigator on the case described the operation as an “unprecedented, relentless, and over-the-top harassment campaign,” a characterization that underscored the severity and audacity of the corporate-led intimidation. eBay itself was also criminally charged in the scheme, and reached a deferred prosecution agreement with the DOJ that required the company to pay a $3 million criminal fine.

    The newly announced $56 million civil settlement resolves the separate civil suit the Steiners brought against eBay and the involved executives. Under the terms of the agreement, the bulk of the payment comes from eBay, which has also committed $6 million of the total sum to go to various nonprofit organizations. Former eBay CEO Devin Wenig, who stepped down from the company the same year the harassment took place, will personally contribute $1 million to the settlement. Court records show that in 2019, Wenig sent a text message to the company’s top communications executive that read “Take her down,” in reference to Ina Steiner.

    A representative for Wenig clarified this week that earlier legal proceedings had established the text was meant to reference a public relations strategy to counter what the company claimed were factual errors in Ina Steiner’s reporting, not a directive for harassment. “No one should ever have been subjected to what the Steiners endured in 2019, and I’m saddened by it, especially because it occurred during my time as CEO of eBay. The harassment was deliberately done in secret,” Wenig said in a statement this week. According to the Steiners’ legal team, Wenig’s $1 million personal contribution will be donated to an unnamed nonprofit that works to protect First Amendment rights to free speech, and will be gifted in Ina Steiner’s name. The U.S. Constitution’s First Amendment, which protects free expression, is a central issue in the case, as the harassment was carried out to punish the couple for critical speech.

    Christopher Murphy, lead counsel for the Steiners at Scalli Murphy Law PC, celebrated the settlement as a landmark moment for accountability. “We believe this resolution sends a clear message that corporations and their executives cannot engage in this type of misconduct without facing significant consequences,” Murphy said in a statement Tuesday.

    eBay also issued an official acknowledgement of wrongdoing as part of the settlement announcement. “What the Steiners were subjected to by former eBay employees in 2019 was wrong, reprehensible and should never have happened,” the company said. eBay formally condemned the former employees who pleaded guilty to criminal charges that prompted the civil suit, and admitted that internal communications between Wenig and other former executives carried an “unprofessional tone.” The company added: “This agreement is consistent with our commitment to fairly compensate the Steiners and fulfills our efforts to make things right.”