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What Happens to Your Body If You Don’t Poop Every Day
Our bodies are unique and how often we poop varies from person to person.

Symptoms such as bloating or hard stools may indicate that you are not going to the bathroom frequently enough.

Staying hydrated, exercising regularly, getting enough fiber and stressing less can help you stay regular.
When it comes to gut health, most people probably assume that pooping every day is the goal. However, experts agree that you can have a healthy gut and not poop every day. Since every body is a little different, not everyone goes No. 2 with the same frequency.

“It’s not bad if you don’t poop everyday, because we all have a different version of normal. If we think of pooping like taking out the trash, then you want to be sure that you’re doing it regularly. So while you may not poop every day, it’s important that there is regularity,” says Amanda Sauceda, M.S., RDN.

If you’ve ever been worried that you aren’t pooping every day, read on to find out why not pooping daily may not be such a bad thing and how to recognize when it may be a problem.

Is It Bad If You Don’t Poop Every Day?

No, you don’t have to poop every day and your gut can still be in tip-top shape. “Bowel habits are variable within the general population. Suppose a person has between three bowel movements per week and three per day, with soft, formed stools and minimal defecatory symptoms. In that case, this is considered within the range of normal bowel patterns,” says Sandhya Shukla, M.D. Shukla goes on to add that there are no negative physiological consequences for otherwise healthy people if you aren’t going No. 2 daily.

So why is there so much variability when it comes to “normal” bowel habits? Several factors influence how frequently a person poops, including diet, hydration, stress, certain medications and activity levels.

What Happens Inside Your Body?

The moment we take a bite of food or a sip of a beverage, our digestive system begins breaking down the food into essential nutrients. So while you may not go No. 2 every day, there is plenty happening in your gut behind the scenes. As waste is formed, it collects in the colon until your body signals that it’s time to head to the bathroom.

However, if you aren’t pooping regularly, you may start to notice some uncomfortable symptoms. First, there’s gas and bloating. Jenna Volpe, RDN, LD, CLT, shares that when stool remains in the intestines, it can ferment, leading to increased gas or bloating. Research suggests that the composition of your gut microbiome may play a role; individuals prone to constipation often have different strains of bacteria present in their gut microbiome compared to healthy individuals.

In addition to the potential for gas and bloating, you may experience dry and hard stools. “When you aren’t pooping regularly you will be more prone to dry, hard stools. This can mean that when you do poop you may notice that you’re struggling a bit, which puts more pressure on your pelvic floor and can lead to developing hemorrhoids and/or anal fissures,” says Sauceda.

So, if pooping is our body’s natural means of eliminating waste, does skipping a day or two allow it to become toxic? While this is a popular selling point for colon cleanses, there isn’t scientific evidence to back up the theory that your poop can poison your body if you aren’t pooping daily. Your microbiome, which is a key player in your immune system, is well-equipped to protect you. In fact, colon cleanses may sweep away the good gut bacteria you need to support healthy bowel habits.

When Skipping Poops Does Become a Problem

While “regular” can mean something slightly different for everyone, healthy bowel movements should meet these criteria: “A healthy, normal consistency (but not too hard), brown in color and about 6 to 12 inches long and 1 to 2 inches in diameter (resembling a sausage or a peeled banana),” says Volpe.

On the other hand, skipping a poop becomes a problem if it has been longer than three days and you are starting to feel uncomfortable. The most common symptoms indicating that you’re not pooping often enough include bloating, excess gas and stools that are hard, dry or difficult to pass. Fortunately, you can address a sluggish digestive system with a few small changes to your diet or lifestyle.

5 Tips to Get Things Moving

If you aren’t pooping regularly, here are a few tips from our experts that can help you get things moving again.
- Hydrate: “We all know to eat more fiber, but don’t discount water. While fiber is critical to get things moving, we have to help it along by staying hydrated. If you aren’t drinking enough water, then you can make constipation worse,” says Sauceda.
- Manage Your Stress: “Stress can also slow things down in the gut, so addressing the stress can help get things moving. There is a strong connection between the mind and the gut, so if your mind is stressed, that can translate to a stressed gut,” says Sauceda.
- Focus on Fiber: “Incorporating fiber-rich foods (such as fresh fruit, veggies or functional foods like chia seeds and/or ground flaxseeds) into the diet can go a long way to help get things moving in most cases,” says Volpe. She adds that you’ll want to make sure you are drinking plenty of fluids when adding more fiber to your diet.
- Move Your Body: “Movement and moderate exercise can also help to promote healthy gut motility and regular bowel movements,” says Volpe. “It doesn’t have to be anything too extreme or intense—even 20 minutes of walking each day (or most days) can make a big difference in gut motility!”
- Supplement When Needed: If you have tried increasing your fiber and fluid intake as well as being more active, and you’re still feeling backed up, supplements may help. Shukla notes that magnesium or prune juice are good options for getting things moving again.
3-Day Meal Plan to Help You Poop, Created by a Dietitian

When to See a Health Care Provider

Since everyone’s “normal” bowel habits are different, research has found it’s more important to look out for changes in your normal pooping schedule. For example, not going to the bathroom regularly for two weeks or longer is a strong indicator that you should follow up with your doctor. “The red flag symptoms or warning signs that may indicate a more serious underlying condition in a patient presenting with constipation include rectal bleeding, blood mixed in the stool, unexplained weight loss, iron-deficiency anemia, a sudden or significant change in bowel habits, a change in stool caliber and a strong family history of colorectal cancer. The presence of any of these features should prompt further evaluation, typically with colonoscopy, to exclude colorectal malignancy or other serious pathology,” says Shukla.

Our Expert Take

It’s a common misconception that you need to poop every day for optimal gut health. Everyone goes to the bathroom on a different schedule; the key is to recognize what’s normal for you and take note if you’re experiencing discomfort. Symptoms like bloating or hard stools are indicators that you aren’t going to the bathroom frequently enough, and it may be time to adjust your diet or activity to promote regular bowel movements.
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July 5, 2025
the foundation story of modern art

When banker Louis-Auguste Cézanne bought the Jas de Bouffan mansion and park outside Aix-en-Provence in 1859, he assumed his only son would follow him into the family business and enjoy the place as a county retreat. He never dreamt that within a year the grand salon would be a studio, covered with violent, clumsy, bizarre images, and in the central alcove his own impasto portrait: fierce, unyielding face in profile, engrossed in his newspaper, austerely indifferent to his son’s paintings. A decade after the patriarch’s death, Paul Cézanne still introduced guests to “le papa” glowering on that wall.

Cézanne au Jas de Bouffan at Aix’s Musée Granet is riveting and revelatory from the moment of its opening coup: reuniting a dozen murals which Cézanne in his twenties painted directly on to the salon walls. Not seen together since 1907, when they began to be removed panel by panel, sold and dispersed worldwide, they range from “Bather and Rocks”, a tough, ungainly nude holding up a boulder against a torrent, acquired by Walter Chrysler, to classical figure allegories “The Four Seasons”. They are a prism into a young mind turbulent but already forging his path: taking from tradition to make painting new.

Unfolding how he did so, the show is, of course, ravishing. Rilke wrote of landscapes “made with the blue of the air, the blue of the sea and red roofs conversing together against a green ground”; to see these paintings in Aix is to understand Cézanne’s visceral connection to reality, even as he transformed nature, places he walked, swam, climbed, into near-abstract forms: modern art’s foundational story.

Many radiant pieces demonstrate that formal process: “House at Bellevue”, a geometric arrangement of honey-hued stone walls, steps, terraces, rows of pines; massive, angular orange cliffs below a strip of purple sky and blurred treetops in “The Bibémus Quarry”; proto-cubist houses rising above the water in “The Sea at L’Estaque”, once owned by Picasso.

A room in the exhibiton ‘Cézanne au Jas de Bouffan’ at Aix’s Musée Granet

‘The Sea at L’Estaque’ (1878-79) © Musée national Picasso

A majestic, surging “Mont St Victoire”, sun sculpting the close-up mountain face into patches of light and shadow, found in Cornelius Gurlitt’s Nazi-era collection, makes its debut in a Cézanne show. Illuminating juxtapositions include paired “Grove at Jas de Bouffan” paintings, dense in 1871, luminous, freer, in 1875-76, demonstrating impressionism’s influence, and two splendid architectonic harmonies of variegated greens and ochres on an open plain: the Courtauld’s “Tall Trees at Jas de Bouffan” (1883), airy and rustling, and the Guggenheim’s “Neighbourhood of Jas de Bouffan” (1885-87) sombre, receding into emptiness, imbued with resignation.

The Granet’s argument, that just as Provence’s landscape shaped Cézanne, so the Roman city Aix and the 18th-century Jas were pivotal to his sensibility, poised between classicism and modernity, is amplified in a wider summer festival Cézanne 2025. It offers trails to the Jas, restored following a long closure, the studio Les Lauves and, for the brave, descent to the Bibémus rocks. So biography becomes immersive experience, with rewarding discoveries. In 2023, conservators at the Jas unveiled a fragmented unknown Cézanne, “Harbour Entrance” (1860), aping Claude’s port scenes. Also uncovered was a graceful plaster relief of Leda and the Swan, part of the house’s original decor; Cézanne passed it daily — inspiration, we see now, for his quirky painting of the same subject.

In his privileged salon, Cézanne both embraced and fought the Jas’s classical sumptuousness. Across the Granet’s downstairs galleries, fantasies such as “Game of Hide and Seek” (1862-64), imitating a Nicolas Lancret fête galante, alternate with rough, near-expressionist portraits in his early couillard (ballsy) manner, paint slathered on with a knife.

His schoolmate Émile Zola, poor, fatherless and physically weedy, looks particularly despondent, but all the friends — poet Antony Valabrègue, geologist Antoine-Fortune Marion — from Cézanne’s precious youthful coterie appear dark, introspective, downcast. “Paul is a horrible painter,” Valabrègue groaned. “Every time he paints one of his friends it seems as if he were avenging himself for some hidden injury”.

‘The Artist’s Father, Reading L’Evenement’ (1866) © National Gallery of Art, Washington

‘Bather and Rocks’ (c1867-69) © Chrysler Museum of Art

Looming over this evocative gathering is a second paternal portrait, fearful, affectionate: “The Artist’s Father, Reading L’Evenement” — a leftwing newspaper, employing young Zola. Louis-Auguste would not have touched it. Nor did he care for the picture depicted at his shoulder, and on display alongside: “Sugar Bowl, Pears and Blue Cup”, built from thick paint scrapings, crustily refusing convention, proclaiming independence.

Not until after his father’s death in 1886 did Cézanne dare his sole full-frontal view of the Jas. “House and Farm at Jas de Bouffan” (1885-87), from Prague, is the centrepiece of the upstairs landscape galleries, its monumental facade slightly swaying, the blue shutters echoing the clarity of the sky, offset by a brilliant red roof. Earlier depictions, as beautiful, are comparably hesitant: “The House at the Jas de Bouffan”, obscured by trees; “The Pool at Jas de Bouffan” playing with impressionist reflections on water.

From 1887, until he was forced to sell it in 1899, the Jas became Cézanne’s laboratory for three final grand series, all musing on painterly illusion: bathers, still lives, portraits of the estate’s workers.

Friezes of compressed female figures in broken outlines merge with landscape, echoing its slopes, mounds, trees, in “Bathers”: stylised imaginings of Mediterranean unity recalling Poussin, anticipating Matisse. The gauche young friends return, transmuted into awkwardly wading, undressing, reclining youths in “Bathers at Rest”.

‘Bathers’ (c1899-1904)

‘Still Life with Cherries and Peaches’ (1885-87) © Los Angeles County Museum of Art

“Still Life with Cherries and Apricots” and “Still Life with Apples and Melon”, ripe, rich, oozing, represent the French art of pleasure at its apogee, even as shifting viewpoints, tilting objects, bare areas of canvas — “Kitchen Table”, MoMA’s “Still Life with Apples” — assert painting as artifice.

Finally come “the people of Jas de Bouffan”, grave, humane, fateful. “The Card Players”’ columnar forms, emphatically separate, exist in contemplative, flickering equilibrium. Buttoned into a geometrically pleated blue dress “Woman with a Coffee Pot”, bearing work-hardened hands, is as rigid as her cafetière. Reserved in expression, lively in the restless strokes and dabs of colour, “Man with Crossed Arms” also has crossed eyes, one seen from above, one from below.

In “Peasant in a Blue Smock”, 1896-97, Cézanne at the Jas comes full circle: the worker, stoic, dignified, pensive, poses before a folding screen painted by Cézanne in 1859 with an 18th-century pastoral couple. In this painting of a painting, the peasant, weighty and substantial, is placed to obscure the screen man and imply that the sketchy screen woman, faceless, translucent, is his reverie of youth. Both express Cézanne’s hopes of art as eternal.

“Today everything is changing, but not for me,” he wrote shortly before he died. “I live in the town of my boyhood, and I rediscover the past in the faces of the people of my own age . . . who obey the rules of time”.

To October 12, museegranet-aixenprovence.fr, cezanne2025.com

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July 5, 2025
How to diversify your portfolio in an uncertain 2025

Investors wondering what to do with their pensions, investments and savings face an uncertain environment on various fronts as the unpredictability of Donald Trump, the US president, shakes up the markets.

Equities have been volatile and the dollar has had its worst start to the year since the 1970s due to uncertainty around Trump’s tariffs and geopolitical events. Fixed income is not playing its usual “stabilising” role in a portfolio to counter inflation concerns, with some wealth managers saying they no longer believe in the traditional 60-40 model of equities versus bonds.

Gold is still seen as a haven but is at a record high price. Cash doesn’t yield as much as it used to, while some investors are pondering the end of US exceptionalism that has helped drive American stocks to record highs.

This has led wealth managers to stress diversification as a way to hedge against the uncertainty and volatility gripping the markets this year.

“You have to think about going into the world more diversified. Is your portfolio really resilient to the increased risk of fat tails [extreme price movements]?” says Justin Onuekwusi, chief investment officer at St James’s Place, the wealth manager.

FT Money looks at various hot topics and speaks to chief investment officers at UK wealth managers to get their views on what investors need to consider when investing for the long term.

Foreign exchange risk

The dollar index has fallen by more than 10 per cent since January, its worst start to the year since the end of the gold-backed Bretton Woods system in 1973. It is currently at its weakest level against rival currencies in more than three years. That poses a threat to investors’ portfolios, many of which have been overweight US equities or using US Treasuries as a safe haven.

Investors have cautioned that Trump’s stop-start tariff war, the US’s huge borrowing needs and concerns about the independence of the Federal Reserve have eroded the appeal of the greenback as a haven. Some have even argued that there is a significant threat to the dollar’s status as the world’s reserve currency, with demand for other assets such as gold on the rise.

Guy Foster, chief strategist at RBC Brewin Dolphin, says that some clients are, as a result, requesting more hedging in their portfolios against currency swings.

“Some investors who find hedging more difficult may choose to be underweight US equities in case of further dollar weakness, if their reference currency is not in dollars,” adds Caroline Simmons, chief investment officer at Quilter Cheviot, pointing out that while the S&P 500 has a positive return this year in dollar terms, it is negative for sterling investors.

Onuekwusi says currency risk is often overlooked, pointing out that holding non-sterling currencies is the second-biggest driver of risk for sterling-based investors after equities in portfolios.

However, hedging has downsides as well — it is an extra cost, and also means that when currency moves are in your favour you don’t benefit from them as much.

Overall, the outlook for the dollar affects the position wealth managers take in other areas of portfolios, including US and European equities, gold and other safe havens. Onuekwusi argues that US equities are more shielded from the risk of Trumponomics than the dollar and US bonds, as companies have global earnings that aren’t necessarily dictated by US politics.

Is the US still exceptional?

US equities have been a good bet for investors, with the S&P 500 returning more than 100 per cent in the past five years — provided they managed to hold their nerve during the dips. Sharp downward swings occurred during the bear market of 2022 and a period of uncertainty over Trump’s tariffs in April, for example.

The argument for US exceptionalism in financial markets is that US stocks and the economy are more likely to outperform than others. Yet there has been an argument for some time that the US market is both too concentrated on the so-called “Magnificent Seven” tech stocks and overvalued. While wealth managers think the US market will continue to perform well, many are now underweight US equities due in part to concerns over valuation.

Edward Park, chief asset management officer at Evelyn Partners, says the US is still one of the strongest drivers of earnings growth. “I would caution any view that the US equity market dominance is over. It’s a sectoral conversation and a relative conservation and the UK and Europe were undervalued so where we are now is probably fairly priced.”

Ed Smith, co-chief investment officer of Rathbones Investment Management, says that if it were a more typical market environment it would be overweight US equities, but given uncertainty over tariffs and fiscal spending, they are slightly underweight.

Simmons at Quilter Cheviot points out that the US market is still forecast to have higher earnings growth than Europe this year. But she thinks that the extreme outperformance of the US in recent years won’t continue as European economic growth plays catch up. Uncertainties this year, including whether Trump will impose more tariffs on trading partners and his “One Big Beautiful” tax bill, that is expected to increase the deficit, mean Quilter Cheviot is slightly underweight on the US.

Foster says RBC Brewin Dolphin is also slightly underweight US equities, pointing to concerns that Trumponomics will weigh on US returns and certain stocks may be overvalued. However, he argues the bigger force is AI and that the US is the leader in that field, so strategic stock selection is called for. He thinks the companies that will benefit most will be the enablers, such as semiconductor and interconnect companies that help to build AI networks.

Does the 60-40 rule for fixed income still apply?

The role of fixed income in a portfolio is changing, say wealth managers. Traditional portfolio construction theory calls for 60 per cent equities, 40 per cent bonds, as a rough rule of thumb.

Following this theory, bonds are meant to pay a stable income — due to their yields, which move inversely to prices — and they should have a negative correlation with equities, meaning at least one part of your portfolio is doing well at any one time. However, this theory received a knock in 2022, when equity markets performed poorly and inflation also rose, meaning both asset classes suffered at the same time.

Now, managers are not convinced it is the best model for the future. “We think that the golden age of the 60-40 portfolio that lasted from the late 1990s to 2022 is over,” says Smith. With more geopolitical uncertainty ahead, Rathbones has significantly shortened the duration of bonds it buys to just 2.5 years on average. Those shorter-dated bonds, Smith says, still offer a level of negative correlation with equities, so will have a stabilising effect on the portfolio.

Kate Morrissey, head of asset allocation at Evelyn Partners, describes the new normal as more “60 per cent equities and 40 per cent non-equities, rather than fixed income”. That could include hedge funds or gold.

“We’re entering quite a complicated growth-inflation policy rate mix,” she adds. As a result, Evelyn is also limiting its exposure to shorter-dated bonds.

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Foster at RBC Brewin Dolphin describes the current environment as more of a “return to normal” after the financial crisis ushered in an unusual period where investors weren’t prioritising fighting inflation. Now, he says, “You’re less confident your bond element will perform well when equities perform badly.”

SJP’s Onuekwusi argues that bonds are attractive compared to equities on a risk-adjusted basis, but he recommends spreading rate risk across different regions, to avoid the impact of one country having a wobble.

Simmons argues that fixed income still has a “risk off” and diversification role, but since 2022 it no longer works as an inflation hedge. It’s also relatively cheap, she argues. “The valuation of fixed income is really attractive at the moment, so if the shocks don’t happen you still get a decent return, which you weren’t getting pre-2022.”

Many wealth managers say they are underweight corporate bonds, however, as they remain expensive relative to government and index-linked bonds, with the compensation for taking credit risk not as high as it should be given economic uncertainty.

Is it a good time to buy UK equities?

UK equities have not fared nearly as well as the US market since the pandemic, returning just over 40 per cent. Pension funds have been reducing their exposure to the UK, leading to efforts by the government to encourage more domestic investment. Global investors shunned UK assets after Brexit, though there is starting to be a reallocation — and wealth managers say the UK looks cheap after its unloved period.

“UK equities are really quite attractive relative to other markets,” notes Onuekwusi, pointing to political stability as one point in their favour. “It’s unlikely we’ll have five prime ministers in the next five years.”

“UK stocks look pretty good value,” agrees Foster.

While asset owners who sold UK equities after Brexit are starting to come back and investors look at where to reallocate their overweight in the US, Onuekwusi says the UK stock market is still underowned. But given that three-quarters of FTSE 100 revenue comes from overseas, he adds: “We do like UK equities, which is different from saying we like the UK economy.”

Simmons has a similar caveat: “It’s cheap for a reason, because it’s got lower growth.”

Some wealth managers caution against thinking about country specific allocations. Morrissey argues that the rotation from the US to Europe and the UK is not about the relative macro outlook for the regions, but about the composition of the markets and a move from growth to value stocks.

Yet wealth managers are divided over how much of an overweight, if any, UK investors should have in their home market.

© Jamie Portch

UK wealth managers are on average overexposed to domestic equities, holding between 20-30 per cent in UK stocks, compared to just under 4 per cent on the MSCI World.

Smith at Rathbones thinks this is about right, arguing that sterling-based clients should have about 20-25 per cent of overall equity exposure in the UK.

Others are not so sure. Evelyn Partners has been reducing its UK exposure over recent years. It now stands at about a fifth, less than its peers. But in the coming years Park says he expects they will move more towards the MSCI World weighting.

“Time has shown that a global approach is best for clients,” says Morrissey.

Is gold the best safe haven asset?

Central banks have been buying gold in record levels due to concerns over dollar strength and geopolitical instability, leading to the metal overtaking the euro as the second-largest reserve holding behind the US currency.

The theory that gold protects against inflation and outperforms when other markets are going south has helped the price hit record highs.

RBC Brewin Dolphin is positive on gold, though it has reduced its overweight this year. “Gold has been a beneficiary of de-dollarisation and other precious metals don’t offer the same dynamics,” says Foster.

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Morrissey says gold remains “an excellent diversifier” in a portfolio. The diversification in reserves away from the dollar supports the price, she argues, while it also takes tail risk away from big global market events such as wars.

Evelyn Partners is overweight gold, holding 4.5 per cent across its portfolios, compared to what it believes is 2 per cent across the wider wealth management industry.

Yet wealth managers are divided over whether the gold price is a sign of overvalue or of a structural shift in demand. Smith at Rathbones thinks increased demand from sovereign wealth funds and other institutions is likely to stay.

But Simmons at Quilter Cheviot argues that a lot of gold buyers come from the retail space, which can be “fickle”. While the precious metal feels like a safe haven to retail investors, she says, “the problem is it is very hard to forecast as it’s not adhering to normal drivers”.

Onuekwusi agrees that gold is hard to value. “It’s really hard to make a case for gold as a new investment today, given how much it’s moved and how quickly.”

What other assets might protect my portfolio?

Some wealth managers are using hedge funds as a diversifier in the face of inflation risk. Relative value or event-driven hedge funds look to benefit from corporate activity or mismatches in valuation between assets, so they can make returns even when the macro outlook worsens.

Macro or CTA hedge funds, which follow a big trend such as the dollar weakening, can generate performance even if it causes other assets to suffer. Quilter Cheviot buys both types of hedge fund for this reason.

Along with macro hedge funds, Evelyn uses gold as one of its main portfolio stabilisers in place of fixed income. Meanwhile with the dollar proving more volatile, others such as SJP are using the Japanese yen as a haven when equity markets fall.

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July 5, 2025
EU to stockpile critical minerals due to war risk

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Roula Khalaf, Editor of the FT, selects her favourite stories in this weekly newsletter.

Brussels has said it will build up emergency stockpiles of critical minerals and cable repair kits, as concerns grow over the EU’s vulnerability to attack.

“The EU faces an increasingly complex and deteriorating risk landscape marked by rising geopolitical tensions, including conflict, the mounting impacts of climate change, environmental degradation, and hybrid and cyber threats,’’ the European Commission said in a draft document setting out a stockpiling strategy, seen by the Financial Times.

Member states should co-ordinate backup supplies of food, medicines and even nuclear fuel, the EU executive said. It would also accelerate work on EU-level stockpiles of items such as cable repair modules “to ensure prompt recovery from energy or optical cable disruptions” and commodities such as rare earths and permanent magnets, which are crucial for energy and defence systems.

Several instances of potential sabotage to underwater communication cables and gas pipelines in recent years have caused concern about the vulnerability of critical infrastructure.

The strategy is part of a wider push by the EU to improve the security and resilience of the 27-country bloc. Last month, General Carsten Breuer, the German chief of defence, warned that Russia could attack an EU member state within the next four years.

The higher-risk environment was driven by ‘‘increased activity from hacktivists, cybercriminals and state-sponsored groups”, the document said.

The EU is also more susceptible than many other regions to the effects of climate change as it is warming twice as fast as the global average. Wildfires in Crete forced 5,000 people to evacuate the island this week.

In a report commissioned by the EU in October, former Finnish president Sauli Niinistö said that security should be considered a “public good” and called for a preparedness mindset.

On stockpiling, he said that Brussels should “define targets to ensure minimum levels of preparedness in different crisis scenarios, including in the event of an armed aggression or the large-scale disruption of global supply chains”.

The EU in March also advised households to stockpile essential supplies to survive at least 72 hours of crisis.

The bloc already maintains a fleet of firefighting planes and helicopters, a medical evacuation plane, and items such as field hospitals and critical medical supplies across 22 EU countries as part of its emergency response effort for natural disasters.

But the commission said it would establish a “stockpiling network” to improve co-ordination between EU countries. There was “limited common understanding of which essential goods are needed for crisis preparedness against the backdrop of a rapidly evolving risk landscape”, it said in the document.

It would also start compiling regularly updated lists of essential supplies tailored to each region and crisis type. Member states should better incentivise the private sector to help with stockpiling, such as through tax credits, it said.

The bloc should also work with allies on “shared warehousing” and co-ordinate better on managing resources and dual-use infrastructure with Nato.

The need for investment in critical stockpiling would also be considered in proposals for its new multiannual budget, which are due to be put forward later this month.

The draft document is due to be published next week and could change ahead of its presentation.

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July 5, 2025
Lalo Schifrin, composer and jazz musician, 1932-2025 – Financial Times
1. Lalo Schifrin, composer and jazz musician, 1932-2025 Financial Times
2. Lalo Schifrin, Prolific Film Composer Who Wrote ‘Mission: Impossible’ Theme, Dies at 93 Variety
3. Americas The Guardian
4. Tom Cruise devastated as ‘Mission: Impossible’ icon dies aged 93: Report Geo.tv
5. The Pretenders’ Chrissie Hynde Shares Angry Eulogy For ‘Mission: Impossible’ Composer Stereogum
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July 5, 2025
Look to local markets to value your home – Financial Times
1. Look to local markets to value your home Financial Times
2. House prices see biggest monthly fall for over two years BBC
3. UK Housing Has Seen a ‘Beautiful Deleveraging’ Bloomberg.com
4. Yorkshire outperforms national housing market in June Harrogate Advertiser
5. British house prices fall 0.8 per cent in June, defy growth forecasts Cyprus Mail
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July 5, 2025
Openness Trio album review — spiritual jazz meets electronica

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Roula Khalaf, Editor of the FT, selects her favourite stories in this weekly newsletter.

The subtle musical collages and slowly unfolding soundscapes that mark Openness Trio, the debut release from a collective comprised of Nate Mercereau, Josh Johnson and Carlos Niño, are a far cry from the urban stamp that marks Blue Note’s classic recordings. The five tracks were recorded in various locations dotted around Los Angeles, and the trio’s rhythmic palette has more in common with the minimalism of Steve Reich than the polyrhythmic bounce of modern jazz. Add in layers of electronica that bring to mind the soundscapes of noughties Nordic jazz, and this release represents something of a Blue Note outlier.

Although the trio’s musicians project a strong common bond with shared influences ranging from Robert Fripp to spiritual jazz, their musical careers have taken different paths. The underground reputation of percussionist/producer Niño rests on his long-running ambient jazz project Carlos Niño & Friends. Guitarist Mercereau, a new underground face, is currently grabbing attention for his control of advanced guitar synthesiser techniques to forge improvised sound.

In contrast, seasoned session saxophonist/producer Johnson has performed on recordings for Miley Cyrus and Harry Styles, and spent five years as soul singer Leon Bridges’ musical director. The canny arranger’s touch remains intact, but now his crisp phrasing is overshadowed by resonant ripples, seductive doodles and swaths of mournful sustains.

The set opens with the oscillating electronic pulse of “Hawk Dreams”, which was recorded outdoors in the hills of Ojai. As the piece develops, stirring melodies from doctored sax and guitar synthesiser assemble, merge and float away over a bed of textured sound. “ . . . Anything is Possible” comes next, with acoustic sax ruminating over rhythmically fractured support, and then the churchlike moods of “Openness”, which was recorded in an oak tree cathedral growing in a hillside orchard.

The final two constructions continue to immerse the listener in ambient rhythms, kaleidoscopic textures and flutters of tenor sax. The gentle warmth of “Chimes in the Garden” is contemplative, but the sway of “Elsewhere”, recorded under a pepper tree in Topanga Canyon, pushes dynamics to the extreme.

★★★★☆

‘Openness Trio’ is released by Blue Note

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July 5, 2025
Air India Express skipped critical engine fix, falsified records: Report – Firstpost

DGCA warned parent company Air India for operating three Airbus planes with overdue escape slide checks and, in June, slammed the airline for serious pilot duty hour violations

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India’s aviation watchdog, the Directorate General of Civil Aviation (DGCA), in March had called out Air India Express for failing to replace engine parts on an Airbus A320, as mandated by the European Union Aviation Safety Agency (EASA).

This revelation comes amid increased scrutiny in the country’s aviation sector following the deadly
Air India plane crash in Ahmedabad.

According to a Reuters report citing official records, the airline also submitted falsified documents to fake compliance.

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Air India Express is a low-cost arm of Air India under the Tata Group and runs a fleet of over 115 planes, flying to more than 50 destinations with about 500 daily flights.

What issues were flagged by DGCA?

On March 18, the DGCA flagged issues with one of its Airbus planes, specifically aircraft VT-ATD, which flies domestic routes and international ones like Dubai and Muscat, per AirNav Radar.

The regulator warned parent company Air India for operating three Airbus planes with overdue escape slide checks and, in June, slammed the airline for serious pilot duty hour violations.

The DGCA in its notice said: “This condition, if not corrected, could lead to failure of affected parts, possibly resulting in high energy debris release, with consequent damage to, and reduced control of, the aeroplane.”

Back in 2023, EASA raised alarms about manufacturing flaws in CFM International’s LEAP-1A engines, ordering airlines to replace certain parts like seals and rotating components.

CFM International is the joint venture between GE Aerospace (formerly GE Aviation) and Safran Aircraft Engines, specialising in the design, manufacture, and support of commercial aircraft engines

A confidential March government memo, reviewed by Reuters, showed Air India Express didn’t make the required engine fixes on time for the A320.

Worse, it allegedly tampered with AMOS—the software airlines use to track maintenance—to falsely show the work was done.

Air India Express admitted the slip-up and said it’s put corrective measures in place, according to Reuters.

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July 5, 2025
Anna Weyant’s secret? Knowing when to kill her paintings

Anna Weyant shares her home with a ghost. Not the metaphorical kind; not the ghost of painters before her, nor the ghost of her early, soaring success. Just the standard issue, after-life sort of ghost.

“When I first moved in, I just felt this presence of a spirit and started researching the building — more and more things were happening and I thought: somebody’s here. There were certain areas that I didn’t want to go into. I ended up finding out that somebody had passed away in my bedroom. And so I actually found out where his widow lived,” she tells me as we enter the studio space of her apartment.

To be in touch with her, I ask?

“No, I read him the address one night to see if he might want to go there, because it’s just down the street.”

Anna Weyant’s ‘Slumber’ (2020) © Anna Weyant

Weyant, aged just 30, is one of the most successful and spoken about young painters in the world. She lives with her elderly King Charles spaniel, Sprout, in a sedate, beautiful space uptown, which strikes me as I enter it as notably old New York, dark wood and low lighting, not fussy or self-consciously sophisticated, but definitively adult. Everything uptown feels a little more permanent, the residents older, more fixed, less subject to the temporal shifts of the city, and it makes sense to me as we speak that she has chosen to exist here rather than in a trendier neighbourhood or apartment. Despite some caustic dismissals about the nature of her career, Weyant is in it for the long haul.

We are meeting in advance of her first major museum show, which opens at the Thyssen-Bornemisza National Museum in Madrid this month. This will be the first exhibition to draw from her entire output, through 26 paintings, predating her first New York solo show in 2019, Welcome to the Dollhouse, and past her most recent in London, Who’s Afraid of the Big Bad Wolves? in 2024. Particularly appealing about the exhibition, according to Weyant, was the opportunity to select works from the Thyssen’s collection to be presented alongside her own, including a Magritte, a Balthus and a beguiling portrait by the German painter Christian Schad. One senses that the opportunity not only to show the growth of her own work, but also to declare some influences not typically ascribed to Weyant, is important to her.

“There’s only one work that I really was insistent on having, this big painting called ‘Feted’ [2020] that I’ve never shown before which was in a private collection in New York, and we had to talk somewhere into loaning it, and they did,” she says. “And then my most recent painting. Actually, no — it doesn’t have my most recent painting. It was going to have my most recent painting, but last night I killed it.”

‘Feted’ (2020) © Anna Weyant

Killed it for this show, I ask, or will you never return to it?

“I’ll cut it up,” she says easily. “I’ve killed the last three.”

Weyant is aware that she could easily sell this and more or less anything else she might choose — “I’m sure I could just send it out and it would be fine, but at this point, if it’s not exciting, it’s not worth it for me to let it out into the world” — but her market value has become something of an albatross around the neck of her career, as has much of the lore surrounding her beginnings.

Weyant’s origins are so well established that her publicist is able to succinctly list them in one brief parenthesis as items to avoid focusing on: high auction prices, Instagram, comparisons to Botticelli, selling paintings on beach towels in the Hamptons. It’s unusual for an artist to have such widely known bullet points, the kind your average person would ordinarily be able to cite about a Real Housewife or pop star, but Weyant has the unusual confluence of undeniable generational gifts as a painter and the sort of personal star power and beauty that is bait to tabloids (the Daily Mail comes in for particular outrage when we discuss her relationship to her media coverage — they published photographs of the interior of her old apartment).

Weyant and her King Charles spaniel Sprout photographed at home for the FT by Kana Motojima

Although the attention was partly to do with the spurious claim that her meteoric success began with “being discovered on Instagram”, it rocketed after Weyant began dating Larry Gagosian, the immensely successful gallerist who now represents her. The relationship has since ended, and Weyant is now with the musician Jason Isbell; she and I debrief for a bit about dating men who have children.

Before meeting Weyant I had worried that I did not have the sufficient ruthlessness to bring up the relationship with Gagosian, what I assumed would be a source of tiresome displeasure for her. Luckily she does it for me, with the same gentle openness she communicates with all afternoon. I asked about how her work has formally developed in recent years.

“In the past few years, as I started to have more market attention and wider attention, that’s when I decided I needed to step it up again. I also had entered into a relationship with my art dealer at the time. There was a lot of talk that maybe the success had come from that, and I’m not denying that at all, but I felt like if that was going to be the narrative, then I was just gonna have to go full speed ahead and make the best fucking work I could.”

‘She Drives Me Crazy’ (2022) © Anna Weyant

It’s easy to see why the shorthand (if somewhat lazy) narrative of Weyant as a “millennial Botticelli” worked. Her early paintings do often have a jarring wit and juxtaposition that could be read as frivolous — she paints many pretty women, many of them her friends and muses, in a style often likened to the Dutch or Renaissance masters, but with knowing contemporary details (I love 2018’s “Sip n’ Paint”, a woman painting a gaudy Paris skyline with a glass of wine). But her work has always been more destabilising and surreal than caricature, her pony-ponytail meeting in 2019’s “My Pony” bringing inexorably to mind the sumptuous mercurial womanhood of Twin Peaks.

When I ask about the initial development of what would become her style, Weyant refers to a year she spent studying in China after graduating from the Rhode Island School of Design. “I had nothing to lose and kind of nothing to gain. It was a really weird, dark, lonely time, but also so beautiful and poetic. I was alone a lot, I didn’t speak the language. I didn’t know how to get around. I was just sort of jogging and painting, and so lonely and so homesick. Which was so good for me, and shaped my practice.”

Her more recent work has, as often as the gorgeous soft wide-faced women, the kind of euphoric unsettling discord that makes the Magritte selection in her Thyssen show so relevant. And further, as I spent time with her monograph, I found that who I was thinking of most often was not any Dutch master but Philip Guston. The work of hers I love the most (and what I would be acquiring if I found myself with a few million to spare) is the disturbing cartoon mask-like figure of “A Disaster, Such A Catastrophe” (2022).

‘A Disaster, Such a Catastrophe’ (2022) © Rob McKeever; Gagosian; © Anna Weyant

The novelist Emma Cline, a friend and subject of Weyant’s, told me: “She’s a true artist — her involvement with her work is total. It’s like life comes second to her art practice. She’d rather be painting than doing anything else.”

As we conclude, Weyant is eager to show me the painting she will soon destroy, in that studio space that looks more like the room for a character in Succession to swill brown liquor and brood. She unveils it, a portrait of her friend Ariana, a painter in LA, obscured by a window frame.

“I just wasn’t vibing with it, I wasn’t getting the face, so I thought, I’m going to cover it up with the window and then it looked shittier and so I’m throwing [in] the towel.”

How does that feel? She shrugs.

“Today I’ll move on.”

July 15-October 12, museothyssen.org

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July 5, 2025
Dinosaurs didn’t roar like in ‘Jurassic World’: Some could sing like birds | Science

The soundtrack of the Age of Dinosaurs remains a mystery. The T-rex’s roars and the screams of velociraptors we see in the movies — such as the fourth installment of Jurassic World, which opened last week — are purely the invention of sound engineers seeking to shock viewers. These supposed dinosaur sounds have permeated the popular imagination, while for years scientists could do little more than speculate. Since the vocal apparatus of animals is composed of soft parts that almost never fossilize, until very recently, the sounds of dinosaurs could only be imagined based on the canals these animals had for perceiving sounds and on certain crests and ornaments on their skulls that could serve as sound chambers. But all that is changing.

The 70 million-year-old Parasaurolophus tubicen might have sounded like a ship’s horn or an Australian didgeridoo thanks to its distinctive cranial ornamentation, as shown in a scientific recreation at the New Mexico Museum of Natural History and Science. In 1995, paleontologists at the museum recovered a fossil of the hadrosaur with a massive crest nearly a meter long protruding from the back of its head.

Like a prehistoric wind instrument, inside this unique structure there were three pairs of hollow tubes running from the nose to the top of the crest, which researchers scanned in minute detail using a CT scan. After two years of work, the result was computer simulations of how the organ would resonate if air were blown through it, digitally reconstructed with the help of computer scientists. “I would describe the sound as otherworldly. It sent chills through my spine,” Tom Williamson, one of those paleontologists, recently told the BBC.

No one knows for sure what the enormous diversity of dinosaurs that existed throughout the Mesozoic sounded like. The soundscape would have been different at each of the three stages of the more than 180 million years that spanned it, but science has made some attempts. Based on the shape of the inner ears and other cranial cavities, scientists have developed theories about what this group of extinct reptiles might have sounded like.

If the purpose was to communicate and warn of danger, the dinosaurs’ hearing would have had to be subordinate to that function; their small auditory structures would have perceived low frequencies, just as modern crocodiles do. Animals are supposed to perceive the types of sounds they themselves can produce. No screams or roars. It’s more likely that most large dinosaurs emitted long-wavelength, low sounds capable of traveling long distances and shaking the earth. A low, amplified hiss, something like a beastly ancestor of the Italian opera singer Cesare Siepi, considered one of the best lyric basses of the 20th century.

However, the imagination must stretch in another direction, one that lessens the terror of the sounds of some of these prehistoric beasts. Until recently, it was believed that high-pitched calls and high shortwave frequencies were reserved for birds, but in 2023, a discovery emerged from the sands of the Gobi Desert (Mongolia) that changed everything.

It was a fossilized larynx of the ankylosaur Pinacosaurus grangeri — a three-ton, quadrupedal, herbivorous armored vehicle almost two meters in height and about five meters in length — which suggested that birdsong could have also come from wingless animals. “This is the first discovery of a vocal organ from non-avian dinosaurs in the long history of research on them. Interestingly, the larynx of Pinacosaurus is similar to that of modern birds, so it probably used it to modify the sound like birds, rather than the vocalization typical of reptiles. Therefore, we can say that Pinacosaurus basically sounded similar to birds,” says in an email the Japanese paleontologist Junki Yoshida, first author of the discovery, which was published in the journal Nature.

The larynx is made of cartilage, a type of soft tissue that is easily disintegrated by microorganisms and environmental erosion, so its natural preservation over millions of years is exceptional. Therefore, paleontology has turned to other resources to try to reconstruct something as intangible as sound. “Dinosaur sound communication had been studied only through the inner ear of the fossil skull, but not through the vocal organ itself,” explains Yoshida, openly proud of his work. “Therefore, my discovery of the larynx represents a completely new and more direct approach to studying dinosaur sound communication.”

Dawn with the song of a dinosaur

On the other side of sound — and the world — the Argentine paleontologist Ariana Paulina Carabajal, an expert in sensory biology at the National Scientific and Technical Research Council (CONICET), is working on cranial structures to elucidate how these extinct animals saw, heard, and moved to do what all living beings do: survive each day. “What do animals use sound for? Basically, to communicate with each other and to warn of danger, but very little is known about the emission side.”

The conclusions derived from the larynx of Pinacosaurus coincide with those drawn by Paulina Carabajal in Canada, Mongolia and Turkey, when studying a part of the inner ear of dinosaurs from the same family. “I studied one of the two ankylosaurs in which the lagena — a fundamental structure for hearing — was preserved, and when I reconstructed them, they were among the largest I’d found so far. Very long, much longer than in other dinosaurs.”

She continues: “In general, their lagenas are the same size as those of a modern crocodile; they don’t change much, but ankylosaurs have wider lagenas. So, we think they would have slightly increased their range of sound perception. Always at low frequencies because all dinosaurs tended to hear low frequencies. Now, in conjunction with the Gobi discovery, it makes sense. We understand that for some reason they heard a little differently than other dinosaurs. They had some specialization for vocalization. It’s interesting because it changes the interpretation of the entire group of ankylosaurs and opens the possibility of asking: what other dinosaurs could have had a similar development?”

It’s tempting to get excited about the implications of the discovery. Taking a bit of a risk, the scientist believes that, since they were desirable prey for large carnivores, it’s not unreasonable to think that these animals were capable of producing high-pitched sounds imperceptible to their predators. But she acknowledges that reality isn’t always as linear as that reasoning, and therefore, there are other aspects to consider.

Paleontologist Fedrico Agnolín, a researcher at CONICET and the Azara Foundation, worked 10 years ago on another discovery linked to prehistoric sound: an exceptionally preserved syrinx from a species of duck extinct 70 million years ago was the first direct evidence of the typical vocal apparatus of birds that coexisted with the last dinosaurs. In light of Yoshida’s discovery, he proposes a bold reconstruction. “That dinosaur’s vocal repertoire is somewhere between that of songbirds and parrots. It’s not that we’re thinking it sounded like an eagle, no. Maybe it was like a thrush that got up in the morning and started singing.”

For him, we must give free rein to our imagination. “The problem is that we have a whole wealth of previous research that we can’t get out of our heads. So, we keep imagining a Tyrannosaurus rex as a gigantic reptile, even though its relatives, whose fossils have preserved their skin, show that they were covered in protofeathers, something similar to hair. The whole body is covered in hair, let’s suppose, but we’re still unable to imagine a T. rex like that.”

More cautiously, Paulina Carabajal sets limits on creativity. “What shouldn’t be interpreted directly from Yoshida’s work is that when he emitted sounds like a bird, he had a song. It wouldn’t be like the beautiful songs birds make, but rather a rattling sound related to the way air passed through the larynx.”

This is a different instrument from that of birds, which, on the other hand, have a syrinx, a unique organ that allows them to produce those songs so appreciated by humans. “Reptiles have folds of tissue that protrude — move — into the space where the air comes out, and when they move, they generate sounds, hisses, but most reptiles don’t vocalize. Making a sound is one thing, and vocalization itself is another.” That’s why the case of the Pinacosaurus from the Gobi Desert is so surprising. Its discoverers emphasize that it and its mates could have vocalized.

The larynx of this ankylosaur is composed of two parts like that of any reptile, but with the peculiarity that between these two pieces there was mobility, which would have allowed it to control the air that entered and exited, producing sounds similar to those of some birds.

Re-evaluating many fossils

The tongue of reptiles is not mobile like that of mammals. Since it is attached to the lower part of the jaw, its movement is very limited, and only the tip remains free, preventing it from manipulating food. What is interesting about Pinacosaurus, according to Paulina Carabajal, is that “very large hyoid cartilages that support the tongue — essential for swallowing, breathing, and producing sounds — were also found. Therefore, the authors propose that this tongue was much more mobile than in other dinosaurs, perhaps allowing it to manipulate food a little when grabbing it.”

For Agnolín, surprises could emerge in specific cases. “We have to reevaluate many remains. Dinosaurs are found with some neck pieces whose exact nature is unknown. We have to see if they are syrinxes or similar structures.” Erosive factors, above all, limit certainties. “The syrinx is composed of several ossified cartilages that wrap around each other and form a kind of small drum. When the animal dies, this falls off, falls apart, and rots. So, if you find a small piece of a syrinx drum, which must be 2 millimeters in size, you wouldn’t recognize it,” the Argentine scientist laments.

Studies like his own and that of Pinacosaurus, however, encourage us to review the deposits in search of those fragments that were not identified at the time to assess the possibility that they might be sound tracks. This is something he has already done, and he regrets not having found any matches. Agnolin suspects that in many cases, human bias will also have to be overcome. “Perhaps there are some researchers who deny that this is a syrinx and will talk about other structures. All of this takes time and is part of the scientific debate, which is eternal.”

The consensus among paleontologists is that, with these insights and ongoing technological advances, solving the mystery of the dinosaurs’ sounds is closer than ever. Reconstructing the soundtrack of the Mesozoic is only a matter of time.

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July 5, 2025