Glacier hikes within the Canadian Rocky Mountains, a paella cooking class in Barcelona, ​​a museum visit in Vienna – our readers have had all varieties of adventures this yr. And they were kind enough to share their travel stories and helpful suggestions with us.

Read on for a birthday story about two longtime East Bay friends and an epic hike. For more travel inspiration for readers, visit www.mercurynews.com/tag/wish-you-were-here/.

Wish you were here

NEPAL: Friends since kindergarten, Hayward resident Miriam Schalit and El Cerrito resident Shareen Leland celebrated Shareen's “big birthday” by mountaineering in Nepal and having fun with local dishes, including a hearty lentil curry called Dal Bhat. “Since I didn’t see any other people on the trail other than the locals, the timing and weather were perfect,” says Miriam. “Dal Bhat Power, 24 hours!”

TRAVEL TIPS: “There are over 1,000 trekking companies to choose from in Kathmandu. While most hikes last longer than a week, you can work with a company to organize a hike of varying lengths. The guide said that this was an easy hike that started at an altitude of 8,000 feet above sea level and went up to an altitude of 12,000 feet. We hiked 52 miles in five days!”

Originally published: December 9, 2024 at 6:28 am PST

Prince Harry turned 40 on Sunday removed from the family from whom he’s estranged, however the royals sent him birthday wishes despite their ongoing rift.

“We wish the Duke of Sussex a happy 40th birthday today!” was posted on the royal family’s official social media accounts, complete with birthday cake emoji and a photo of a smiling Prince Harry.

It was the first public birthday message Harry received from the royal family's official account since 2021. The royal family accounts are managed by King Charles' office at Buckingham Palace.

His brother and sister-in-law, Prince William and Princess Kate Middleton, echoed the message by sharing the royal family’s post on X, saying: “We wish you all the best for your 40th birthday to the Duke of Sussex!” from the official account of the Prince and Princess of Wales.

Some observers of the royal family viewed the messages as Olive branchso People. Birthdays are often only publicly acknowledged by working royals. Harry and wife Meghan Markle resigned from his royal duties in 2020 And relocated to the USAwhere they raise their three children in California.

As People reported, Harry celebrated privately with friends and family in Montecito and plans to continue celebrating abroad with close friends.

The couple have since spoken very openly about the treatment they felt they were subjected to as senior, working royals, and expressed their concerns in a candid interview with Oprah WinfreyHarry also wrote extensively about his relationships and family in his memoirs “Spare”, reveal more internal Family business and saucy details.

Now he may be turning his attention from the past to the future.

“He is in a a form of cross“, royal watcher and writer Sally Bedell Smith told the Associated Press. “And he doesn't seem to have any idea how he wants to proceed.”

According to BBC News, he was optimistic just before his big birthday.

“No matter how old I’m, my Mission is to proceed to point out and do good on the planet,” he told BBC News.

With News Wire Services

Originally published: September 17, 2024 at 11:32 am

On September 9, 2024, The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints will host a broadcast to rejoice the “life and teachings” of Russell M. Nelsonits president and prophet. Nelson, who celebrates his a centesimal birthday today, has asked Church members to rejoice by helping someone in need.

The centenarian was a reactionary reformer: an brisk leader who lean bureaucracy and finished the church centuries-long relationship with the Boy Scoutswhile reiterating his opposition to LGBTQ+ relationships and identitiesHe steered the Church unrepentantly through the storms of public criticism, including accusations that the Church had the worth of its investmentsFor the believers, Nelson God's mouthpiece on earth.

But one in every of his initiatives had an impact that went far beyond the church. In 2018, he surprised observers by explaining his use of the word “Mormon.” a “great victory for Satan”, insisting on using the total name of the church. Individuals must be recognized in line with their institutional affiliationas “members of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.”

The church's name was given by God, and the shortening “erases everything that Jesus Christ has done for us,” Nelson argued. But adherents have long called themselves Mormons, so the renaming felt like a novelty to some members.

As a university lecturer As an instructor of courses on American religion and Mormonism, I used to be one in every of many who struggled with this modification in terminology—and saw the confusion it caused amongst my students and colleagues. For nearly two centuries, the word “Mormon” has shaped the best way Americans take into consideration and discuss the religion.

Birth of a church

The name Mormon comes from the title the Book of Mormona spiritual text unique to the religion. Founder Joseph Smith, who founded the church in 1830, believed he was commissioned by God to revive the true church of Jesus. He claimed an angel led him to find and translate ancient gold plates that detailed the religious history of an ancient civilization within the Americas founded by Israelites who had fled Jerusalem.

Early critics derisively associated the word Mormon with the movement, but Smith insisted that in the unique language of the book The word literally means “more good.'” By the time Smith was killed by a mob in Illinois in 1844, his followers had already adopted the word.

After Smith's death, Mormons split into various factions, with the biggest group traveling by foot and wagon to the far western United States. However, the group's evolving practices continued to generate controversy. Polygamy and the church's political and economic influence contributed to many years of hostility between Mormons and the remainder of the nation.

The United States began to confiscate church property and the imprisonment of polygamous leaders, which forced church president Wilford Woodruff to finish his official support of polygamy in 1890.

A brand new debut

Three years later, on the World Exhibition in Chicago, The church renamed Mormonismby which the Mormon pioneers are portrayed because the embodiment of the values ​​of the American frontier.

Woodruff, then 86 years old, spoke of himself as Utah's oldest living pioneer and of Mormons as a individuals who built the American WestThe Mormon Tabernacle Choir performed on the fair, introducing the Mormons to most people as a cultured and artistic people. The crowd chanted, “Three cheers for the Mormons!” The Chicago Herald wrote, “Mormons and Gentiles came together as friends.”

Nevertheless, many Americans still distrusted the Mormons. In 1903, high-ranking church official Reed Smoot was elected to the U.S. Senate, sparking nationwide outrage and led to hearings within the Senate that lasted until 1907. The hearings substantiated the allegations that the practice of polygamy continued, but exonerated Smoot as a person. As Smoot argued, Mormons were independent of the institutional church and subsequently trustworthy Americans. He convinced his fellow senators that as a Mormon, he would uphold the latter when the church's teachings conflicted along with his conscience or his oath of office.

The church followed Smoot’s example and adopted the characteristics of American patriotism and stepped up its efforts against polygamy. These moves brought the Latter-day Saints powerful political allies, including Theodore Roosevelt, who opposed the institutional church but viewed the Mormons themselves as deeply moral and patriotic.

“Meet the Mormons”

From Jenkins, a racing driver whose records made him a global celebrity within the Thirties, capitalized on this latest image of Mormon individuality and decency. The “Mormon Boy” attributed his success to his clean, church-approved lifestyle. On his automobile, the Mormon Meteor, Jenkins rejected advertisements for alcohol and cigarettes, as an alternative waving an indication that read “Yes, I'm a Mormon.”

For several many years, other Mormon celebrities comparable to the family band The Osmonds and golfer Johnny Miller continued to shape positive public opinion about Mormons – a high point was in 1977, when Gallup found that only 18% of Americans had an unfavorable opinion.

The Church’s efforts to influence social issues, comparable to its decades-long opposition to the equal rights amendmentfinally took its toll. By 1991, public opinion about Mormons had fallen dramaticallywith 37% of Americans having a negative attitude toward them – and officials decided that one other renaming was so as.

The previous 12 months, senior leader Gordon B. Hinckley had admonished members to make use of the word Mormon “shine with additional shine.” When he became president in 1995, Hinckley worked to vary the general public perception of Mormonism, arguing on the tv program “60 Minutes” that Mormons are “not a strange people”.”

The 2002 Salt Lake City Olympics thrust Mormonism into the national highlight, and that very same 12 months the church launched its flagship website, Mormon.org, whose articles and headlines liberally used the term “Mormon.” A media campaign followed a decade later, by which outstanding members declared, “I am Mormon.” Regular members were then encouraged to upload their very own “I am Mormon” profiles to this website and share them on their very own social media accounts.

The nomination of Mitt Romney because the Republican candidate for the 2012 presidential election and the recognition of the satirical musical “Book of Mormon” have brought Mormons back into the national highlightIn 2014, the Church produced a documentary film called “Meet the Mormons,” which was shown in theaters across the United States. Apostle Jefferey R. Holland explained that it was designed to “Show people what we really are like.”

In 2017, the “feeling thermometer” of a Pew Research Center survey found that public opinion of Mormons was at the extent of “somewhat warmer“ rating of 54, a rise of 6 points from 2014.

“More good”?

However, the Church's relationship with the word Mormon has all the time been complex. As early as 1990, Nelson warned his fellow brothers that Mormon was “no suitable alternative” for the full name of the church. During the 2002 Olympic Games, the church told the media that The nickname was acceptable for people but not on the institution itself.

Overall, nevertheless, I’d argue that the church has been using the word Mormon to influence public opinion for over a century. Part of this branding downplayed popular fears in regards to the church and its influence – and allowed outsiders to develop positive views of Mormons even in the event that they disliked the institution itself.

In March 2023 a survey by the Pew Research Institute reported a low point in public opinion of Mormons, who for the primary time fell behind all other groups measured. 1 / 4 of Americans had “unfavorable views of Mormons,” while only 15% held a “favorable” opinion.

Mormon was a very important term for appealing to people outside the religion, especially to counter negative perceptions. Nelson's legacy will subsequently have less to do with whether the term disappears from common usage and more to do with how much outsiders associate it with “greater good” – each institutionally and individually.

WASHINGTON – Ding Jiaxi knew he would spend his 57th birthday alone in a Chinese prison cell, with out a call from his family or the possibility to stretch in the daylight.

It was the fifth yr that the activist had lived in these conditions. Although his family within the US received letters assuring him that he was healthy, his wife Sophie Luo was not convinced.

“I'm really worried about his health because he has been tortured before,” Luo told the Associated Press from Washington.

Luo shared details of her husband’s plight ahead of his birthday on Saturday and make clear the hard Treatment of the country’s imprisoned political prisonerswho, based on families and human rights groups, are sometimes denied rights corresponding to outdoor exercise and speak to with their family members.

Beijing said the prisoners' rights were protected under Chinese law. The Chinese embassy in Washington didn’t immediately reply to an email in search of comment.

Ding, a key member of the now-defunct New Citizens' Movement, which sought to advertise democracy and civil society in China, was arrested in December 2019 after attending a casual meeting within the southeastern Chinese city of Xiamen to debate current affairs. In April 2023, he was sentenced to 12 years in prison for subverting state power.

Maya Wang, acting China director of the human rights organization Human Rights Watch, described the tough treatment of political prisoners in China as “commonplace.”

“Unfortunately, abuses are widespread and have become even worse under Chinese President Xi Jinping,” Wang said. Political prisoners were torturedThey don’t have any access to lawyers and “very little” contact with their families, she said, adding that the secrecy has made it easier for prisoners' abuse to proceed and their health has suffered.

Representative Adam Schiff, who sits on a bipartisan congressional human rights commission, called for Ding's release.

“Once again, he will be alone in a prison in China's Hubei province. He will be separated from his loved ones – his wife and children. He will spend another birthday in isolation – his fifth in prison,” Schiff, Democrat of California, said in an announcement released Friday.

Luo said she has not been allowed to check with her husband on the phone since he was taken away by authorities in 2019. Since then, “I haven't heard his voice,” said Luo, who moved to the U.S. with the couple's two children shortly after Ding was first arrested in 2013.

It was not until March of this yr that she received his first letter. Ding was not allowed to write down letters about his case, his treatment in prison or other topics considered sensitive by the Chinese government, Luo said.

And she lamented Ding's absence from her two daughters' lives. “He can't be with the girls when they need a father the most,” she said. “It's really a big loss.”

Originally published: August 17, 2024 at 10:39 am

The first modern barcode was scanned 50 years ago this summer – on a Pack of 10 chewing gum at a food market in Troy, Ohio.

Fifty is old for many technologies, but barcodes are still popular. More than 10 billion barcodes are scanned on daily basis all over the world. And newer forms of barcode symbols, reminiscent of QR codes, have created much more uses for the technology.

I might have been like most individuals and would never have given a second thought to the easy barcode, if my research as a media scientist at Clemson University had not taken a couple of strange turns. Instead, I spent a 12 months of my life browse the archives and old newspaper articles to learn more in regards to the origins of the barcode – and eventually wrote a book in regards to the Cultural history of the barcode.

The barcode didn’t herald the tip of times, as conspiracy theorists once fearedit ushered in a brand new era in global trade.

Barcodes were an invention of the food industry

While the world has modified lots for the reason that mid-Nineteen Seventies, the Universal Product Code (UPC) – what most individuals consider once they hear the word “barcode” – has not. First scanned on a pack of gum on June 26, 1974, the code is basically an identical to the billions of barcodes scanned in stores all over the world today.

When that first UPC code was scanned, it was the culmination of years of planning by the U.S. grocery industry. In the late Nineteen Sixties, labor costs in grocery stores were rising rapidly and inventory tracking was becoming increasingly difficult. Grocery store executives hoped the barcode could help them solve each problems, they usually were ultimately right.

In the early Nineteen Seventies, the industry formed a committee that developed the UPC data standard and chosen the IBM bar code symbol over half a dozen alternative designs. Both the info standard and the IBM bar code symbol are still in use today.

Based on meeting notes I discovered in Stony Brook University Goldberg ArchivesThe designers of the UPC system believed they were doing vital work, but they’d no idea they were creating something that will long outlive most of them.

Even essentially the most optimistic estimates from the food industry were that fewer than 10,000 businesses would ever use barcodes. For this reason, the scanning of the primary UPC barcode received little attention on the time.

Some newspapers published short articles in regards to the opening ceremony, but they weren’t headlines. Their importance was only apparent years lateras barcodes became one of the vital successful digital data infrastructures of all time.

Barcodes caused a shelf revolution

Barcodes not only modified the shopping experience on the checkout, but by making products machine-readable, in addition they enabled huge improvements in inventory tracking. This meant that items that were selling well could possibly be quickly restocked when the info indicated so, requiring less shelf space for every individual product.

Barcode expert Stephen A. Brown wroteThis reduced need for shelf space allowed for brand spanking new products to spread quickly. You can blame barcodes to your food market selling 15 varieties of barely distinguishable toothpaste.

Likewise, today's giant grocery stores and supermarkets probably couldn't exist without the huge amounts of inventory data that barcode systems produce. MIT Professor Sanjay Sharma put it this fashion: “If barcodes had not been invented, the entire layout and architecture of retail would be different.”

Other industries quickly jumped on the bandwagon

The modern barcode was invented within the grocery industry, however it didn't stay confined to food market shelves for long. In the mid-Eighties, the success of the UPC system encouraged other industries to adopt barcodes. For example, inside three years, Walmart, the Department of Defense, and the U.S. automotive industry began using barcodes to trace objects in supply chains.

Private shipping corporations also used barcodes to record identification data. FedEx and UPS even developed their very own barcode symbols.

As the Sociologist Nigel Thrift explainedBy the late Nineties, barcodes were “a crucial element in the history of the new world order,” enabling rapid globalization in ways that will be hard to assume without barcodes.

Black and white and unnoticed all over the place

As someone who was so fascinated about this story that I got a tattoo of the barcode of the International Standard Book Number of my latest book On my arm, the silent passing of the barcode's fiftieth anniversary feels almost poetic.

I grew up in a world where barcodes were all over the place. They were on every product I purchased, on the concert tickets I scanned, on the packages I received.

Like most individuals, I hadn't given them much thought despite their ubiquity – or perhaps due to it. It wasn't until I started researching my book that I spotted how a barcode on a packet of chewing gum set off a sequence of events that modified the world.

For a long time, barcodes have been a workhorse operating within the background of our lives. Modern humans scan them countless times a day, but we hardly take into consideration them because they’re inconspicuous and just work – at the least more often than not.

Even though barcodes are long old-fashioned, they remind us that these seemingly boring technologies are sometimes rather more interesting and vital than most individuals realize.

Ivanka Trump has publicly stated that she is leaving her father's polarizing MAGA politics behind to live life to the fullest – which presumably means she is going to surround herself along with her wealthy and famous latest friends Kim Kardashian and Lauren Sanchez at Kardashian's forty third birthday celebration.

But recent reports paint a unique picture of Ivanka Trump's true intentions regarding Donald Trump's efforts to return to the White House. According to a report from May by Puck, The strategically minded former First Daughter, who was described as an “accomplice” on “Saturday Night Live,” finds the thought of ​​supporting her convicted father's campaign “gratifying” and should even consider taking one other post in his administration should he defeat Joe Biden in November.

Such reports due to this fact also raise questions on the mindset of Kardashian and Sanchez, who’s engaged to the world's richest man, Jeff Bezos, and attended a state dinner with him at Joe Biden's White House.

Like Ivanka Trump, Kardashian and Sanchez are known for ambitiously curating and promoting their personal brands, so it's curious why they’d be keen to publicly exercise some type of female power bond with Ivanka Trump. as Page Six reported.

Sure, Ivanka Trump was in a position to avoid her father's criminal trial in Manhattan and didn’t jump to his aid when he was found guilty last week on 34 counts related to hush money payments to porn star Stormy Daniels. After Trump's conviction, veteran political author Jill Filipovic noted in the every day beast that Ivanka Trump showed the smallest gesture of support for her daughter – which she could probably do with impunity – by sharing the message “I love you, daddy” in an Instagram story.

However, Filipovic also wrote that Ivanka Trump “clearly seeks power and influence,” lending credence to reports in Puck that she would consider returning to politics and a task in her father's campaign if he had a probability of winning.

As Puck author Tara Palmeri reported, the previous First Daughter is reportedly “quietly questioning members of her inner circle about when it might make sense to get back on the campaign trail – and even whether she should take a job in government if Trump wins.”

Meanwhile, photos published in The Kardashians of Ivanka Trump at Kardashian's birthday celebration in October suggest that she has been welcomed into the Kardashian family's inner circle, which incorporates Sanchez.

As Page Six reported, footage from Kardashian's birthday celebration at trendy Beverly Hills eatery Funke shows how close she got to each Ivanka Trump and Lauren Sánchez. Kardashian seated Sanchez two seats away from Ivanka, while she sat in the center.

“It makes me feel so good that everyone wanted to come and celebrate and have dinner with us,” Kardashian might be heard saying as she greets the opposite guests.

“But honestly, I wouldn't be here if I didn't have my friends,” Kardashian said. “I have the best friends and they're super supportive. I think that's probably why I've never been to a therapist because I have the best friends in the world and they mean everything to me.”

Kardashian's connection to Ivanka Trump dates back a minimum of to the time when she spoke about being an aspiring lawyer and advocated for prison reform during former President Trump's administration. She used her connections to Ivanka and her husband, Jared Kushner, to successfully get Trump to commute the sentence of Alice Marie Johnson, a 63-year-old grandmother and nonviolent drug offender who was serving a life sentence. Kardashian enjoyed a gathering with Trump within the Oval Office in 2018.

Yet for a lot of, Ivanka Trump continues to be associated along with her father's controversial time within the White House. As his loyal daughter and senior adviser, the once-beloved New York socialite and fashion brand entrepreneur suffered a dramatic fall from grace. “Saturday Night Live,” in fact, staged a skit with Scarlett Johansson calling her an “accomplice,” and longtime friends shunned her. After Trump's defeat in 2020, a former friend of Ivanka and Jared told Vanity Fair that they’d likely now not be accepted into among the exclusive New York social circles they once moved in.

Because Ivanka Trump values ​​social acceptance, she realized she couldn't “be the Trumpiest Trump woman and at the same time be perceived as sophisticated and admirable,” Filipovic said, so she issued a press release in November 2022 declaring she was done with politics after her father ran for president for a 3rd time.

But in November 2022, Trump was at a political low point, Palmeri wrote. Now there are five months until the 2024 election. Trump is the Republican candidate and, despite his recent conviction, still enjoys strong support inside his party. Filopivic said: “If Trump manages to pull off a narrow victory in 2024, his eldest daughter may well sense an opportunity and offer her father much more than just a nostalgic Instagram post.”

Meanwhile, Kardashian and other members of her family have also developed a friendship with Sanchez, a former Los Angeles TV news star and helicopter pilot, Page Six reported. The Kardashians have been spotted with Sanchez and her family on several occasions, including in September when the Kardashians and Jenners attended Beyonce's concert in Los Angeles with Sanchez and Bezos.