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Why clink a champagne flute to get a room’s attention when you can bang a cowbell? As a crowd gathered to toast Kendall Jenner and Gigi Hadid’s American West–inspired October cover, Baz Luhrmann had the right idea.
Despite Luhrmann’s East Village haunt, Monsieur, being more medieval-themed than horsegirl appropriate, it proved the perfect backdrop for an intimate, candlelit evening celebrating the supermodels and longtime friends—even without the temporary hay bales that were momentarily contemplated for the occasion.
Guests on Sunday—including many fresh off the day’s runways and designers who had presented mere hours before—paused for caviar-topped potato croquettes, mini sausage rolls, and “Easy Does It” cocktails while trying on Vogue × Jackson Hole’s Diamond Cross Ranch merch for size.
“Sometimes we have to talk our cover subjects into a concept for a shoot—but not this time,” Anna Wintour said. “In fact, it was Kendall, a little over a year ago, who came to us describing a dream shoot involving horses, the mountains of Wyoming, a ranch, and maybe a few cowboys. Honestly, she had us at horses.”
“Like proud parents, let us say how unbelievably special they are. Yes, these two look stunning in clothes. But it’s their personality, warmth, ambition, creativity, humor, and individuality that make them who they are,” Wintour added.
Jenner, who had swapped her riding clothes for The Row, echoed that the Lachlan Bailey–lensed shoot had lived on her vision board since childhood. “This really was a dream of mine,” she remarked. “I grew up going to Wyoming, specifically Jackson Hole, running through fields on horses. Then, adding Gigi to the mix made [the shoot] even more special. It was such a beautiful couple of days that we didn’t even feel like we were at work.”
Beside her, an embellished Miu Miu–clad Hadid was beaming too, as her partner Bradley Cooper cheered proudly from the crowd. “Thank you for all the memories—not just this trip, but being able to work with Vogue for the last ten-plus years is the greatest honor,” she said.
Leave it to Luhrmann, the ultimate showman, to add some theatricality to the bash. The auteur handpicked an up-and-coming country singer named Sacha—whom he’d met at the Toronto International Film Festival while premiering his new EPiC: Elvis Presley in Concert project—to fly to New York City for a surprise performance.
“I moved heaven and earth to get here and sing for you,” the Ontario native said as a cowboy guided her to perch on the bar. She wasn’t kidding—having performed at the Canadian Country Music Association Awards in British Columbia the night before, she hadn’t slept a wink. Dressed in a teal leather western set with turquoise rings on every finger, the one to watch commanded the room with her emotive hit “Hey Mom I Made It,” plus a countrified medley of Chappell Roan, Billie Eilish, and Sabrina Carpenter tunes.
Forget the hay bales: it was the perfect fashion-infused yee-haw moment to end the night.
The American Heart Association’s IMPLEMENT-EF program aims to reduce gaps in patient care, establish best practices for treating heart failure with preserved or mildly reduced ejection fraction
DALLAS, September 15, 2025 — The American Heart Association, a relentless force changing the future of health for everyone everywhere, is launching a new initiative to improve in-hospital care for people with heart failure with preserved ejection fraction (HFpEF) and heart failure with mildly reduced ejection fraction (HFmrEF). HFpEF and HFmrEF collectively account for up to 75% of all heart failure cases, yet clinical research and treatment evidence in HFpEF and HFmrEF is substantially limited compared with other types of heart failure.[1],[2]
The IMPLEMENT-EF quality improvement initiative will aim to address those challenges by mapping gaps in the patient journey to identify unmet needs and define ideal care models.
The percentage of blood that leaves the left ventricle with each heartbeat is measured by ejection fraction (EF). A normal EF is between 55% and 70%. HFpEF means an individual has heart failure but EF remains 50% or higher — the heart muscle contracts, but the left ventricle does not relax as it should during ventricular filling. HFmrEF means EF is reduced to 41%-49%.
Treatment for HFpEF and HFmrEF requires earlier recognition and prompt initiation of scientific evidence-based therapies to improve health outcomes.
This new three-year initiative, supported by Bayer, will engage a network of multidisciplinary care teams — including pharmacists — to ensure people are receiving and taking the appropriate medications, raise provider awareness of best care practices and improve adherence to scientific evidence-based therapies using insights from Get With The Guidelines® – Heart Failure data. Findings will inform the American Heart Association’s broader approach to patient care and help scale effective, replicable models nationwide.
To enhance clinical understanding and encourage best practices, the initiative will include a variety of professional educational offerings, such as a podcast series, eLearning module and live presentations. The Association will convene a Science Advisory Panel to guide development of these educational materials.
“Improving care for people experiencing heart failure with preserved or mildly reduced ejection fraction requires more than just clinical knowledge. It demands a coordinated, team-based approach,” said Mariell Jessup, M.D., FAHA, chief science and medical officer of the American Heart Association. “By bringing together diverse care teams and leveraging real-world data, this initiative will help elevate the standard of care and ultimately improve outcomes for millions of people living with heart failure.”
The Association has recruited 40 hospitals to take part in the inaugural program. Teams in these facilities will have the opportunity to collaborate with other hospitals and with nationally recognized experts, access exclusive educational resources and share successful quality improvement models.
“We are committed to advancing science that transforms patient care, especially in areas like HFpEF and HFmrEF, where gaps in evidence and treatment persist,” said Robert Perkins, M.D., M.P.H., FACP, vice president of U.S. medical affairs cardiovascular and renal at Bayer. “We’re proud to support this American Heart Association initiative to help identify and scale effective care models that can improve outcomes for the millions of people living with these forms of heart failure.”
Visit heart.org/IMPLEMENTEF to stay informed about insights from the initiative and more.
Additional Resources:
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About the American Heart Association
The American Heart Association is a relentless force for a world of longer, healthier lives. Dedicated to ensuring equitable health in all communities, the organization has been a leading source of health information for more than one hundred years. Supported by more than 35 million volunteers globally, we fund groundbreaking research, advocate for the public’s health, and provide critical resources to save and improve lives affected by cardiovascular disease and stroke. By driving breakthroughs and implementing proven solutions in science, policy, and care, we work tirelessly to advance health and transform lives every day. Connect with us on heart.org, Facebook, X or by calling 1-800-AHA-USA1.
For Media Inquiries: 214-706-1173
Michelle Rosenfeld: michelle.rosenfeld@heart.org
For Public Inquiries: 1-800-AHA-USA1 (242-8721)
heart.org and stroke.org
[1] Savarese G, Stolfo D, Sinagra G, Lund L. Heart failure with mid-range or mildly reduced ejection fraction. Nat Rev Cardiol 19, 100–116 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41569-021-00605-5; Shah S, Kitzman D, et al. Phenotype-Specific Treatment of Heart Failure With Preserved Ejection Fraction: A Multiorgan Roadmap. Circulation. 2016. 134(1). https://doi.org/10.1161/CIRCULATIONAHA.116.02188; Shah, K, Xu, H, Matsouaka, R. et al. Heart Failure With Preserved, Borderline, and Reduced Ejection Fraction: 5-Year Outcomes. JACC. 2017 Nov, 70 (20) 2476–2486. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jacc.2017.08.074.
[2] Savarese G, Stolfo D, Sinagra G, Lund L. Heart failure with mid-range or mildly reduced ejection fraction. Nat Rev Cardiol 19, 100–116 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41569-021-00605-5; Chris J Kapelios, Bahira Shahim, Lars H Lund, Gianluigi Savarese, Epidemiology, Clinical Characteristics and Cause-specific Outcomes in Heart Failure with Preserved Ejection Fraction. Cardiac Failure Review. 2023;9:e14. https://doi.org/10.15420/cfr.2023.03.
When it comes to mainstream gaming appeal, it’s hard to beat Mario Kart. Break out some controllers at a party and you’ll likely get a grid full of eager racers. The game’s seamless way of balancing disparate levels of skill and aggression creates an addictive experience for just about everyone.
Real-world karting, on the other hand, remains more of a niche affair. Sure, plenty of people race karts at theme parks and putt-putt parking lots, but this style of racing isn’t on the radar for your average group of friends looking for a Friday diversion.
What if you could do Mario Kart IRL without risking life and limb at some questionably safe theme park in China? That’s basically the question that RPM Raceway is answering with the launch of Kart Klash. Debuting today at three of RPM Raceway’s tracks in the northeast (Stamford, CT, and Long Island, NY), RPM has developed a way to bring a taste of Nintendo into reality. It’s only a taste, and it has room for improvement, but after getting an early go behind the wheel, I’m itching for more.
Kart Klash is a new experience at RPM’s existing indoor tracks running electric Sodikart RSX2 karts. These machines offer variable levels of performance but can hit a maximum speed of 45 mph, which I can assure you feels pretty quick when your posterior is two inches from the floor.
They’re light-years more advanced than the smoky, lawnmower-engined rigs that you’ve probably experienced at some roadside tourist trap.
As someone who’s raced two-stroke performance karts in the past, I’m always skeptical at venues like this, but RPM’s karts did not disappoint. While not as fast as my old racer, in full-power mode, the Sodikart is plenty quick enough to make the tight, twisting, two-level track at RPM a real challenge in a straight race.
But things got way more fun when adding in rockets, land mines, and EMP bursts. After two races to learn the track, it was time to enable Kart Klash. While the team at RPM loaded up the prerelease software and rebooted the course, I was given a run-through of how to play.
While a typical race is based on lap time — which is to say that you can finish last on the track but still win with the quickest lap — in Kart Klash, whoever crosses the finish line first after eight laps wins.
Racers grid up for a standing start, but starting up front isn’t necessarily an advantage. As in Mario Kart, the farther from the lead you are, the better the power-ups you receive. What kinds of power-ups? Well, they might sound a little… familiar.
Is the arsenal in Kart Klash fresh and original? Absolutely not. It’s basically a one-to-one copy of the weapons you can find in Mario Kart, suitably changed to (hopefully) avoid any copyright concerns. But, if it ain’t broke, why fix it?
To collect these power-ups, you drive over a spot beamed onto the race track by an overhead laser projector. The result is little more than a spinning icon on the track, far from the dramatic floating 3D object shown in RPM’s promo videos. Still, you do at least get a notice on the LCD display on your kart’s steering wheel telling you which power-up you received, and then you can mash the right button on the steering wheel to fire.
When you’re hit with a weapon, your kart slows down dramatically for a few seconds, just long enough to be intensely frustrating. You also get a little notice on the LCD display, telling you not only what weapon hit you, but who shot it.
That makes your eventual revenge all the sweeter.
Image: RPM Raceway
What’s missing is visual cues for the weapons. You won’t actually see rockets firing ahead of you or TNT dropping behind, but the track uses a system of positional speakers sprinkled around, so you will hear the rocket roaring its way to the next target. Meanwhile, those watching the action trackside have an animated view that overlays the weapons on the track.
So the mechanics are all very familiar, but what I quickly learned after getting behind the wheel is that the video game experience doesn’t really translate to the real world. That’s primarily because this track isn’t anything like those in Mario Kart. RPM’s circuit may be twisty and lit with technicolor LEDs, but it’s no Rainbow Road.
For one thing, a single lap takes around 30 seconds, which is far shorter than your average Mario Kart track. It’s also significantly narrower, which dramatically changes the equation of most of the power-ups.
For example, if you get hit with a shell in Mario Kart, it’s very difficult to maintain your position. In Kart Klash, blocking is all too easy. If you get hit, you can just move to the middle of the track. You really need to time your shots perfectly to make a clean pass.
The other big change from Mario Kart is just how manic Kart Klash is. You can collect three or four power-ups per lap, which means one every 10 seconds or so. And, since your next power-up overrides your last one, you’re heavily incentivized to just mash that fire button.
Those who save the most desirable power-ups in Mario Kart for the perfect moment, then, will be a little disappointed with the spray-and-pray nature of Kart Klash.
Despite those significant changes, Kart Klash still captures the core fun of the Mario Kart experience. It’s nowhere near as finely honed or perfectly balanced as Nintendo’s iconic race, but Andrew Farage, CEO of RPM Raceway, told me that his team will be eagerly listening to player feedback and adjusting details like weapon spawn rates and power-up positioning.
To provide that feedback, though, you’ll need to go out and try it for yourself. I went in as a skeptic, thinking there was no way the joyous, accessible fun of Mario Kart could possibly be replicated in real life. And to some degree that’s true. At its best, Kart Klash doesn’t quite achieve the same humorous heights as the game, if only because you can’t look your opponent in the face when your perfectly timed shell strikes true, but the added thrill of driving for real makes this far more exciting.
And it had better be, as it’s a lot more expensive. The game launches today at $30 per race for RPM members and $40 for nonmembers. That’s about $10 more than a regular kart race, a premium well worth spending with the right crowd.
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There must be something in the water at Spotify HQ. Less than a week after delivering long-promised lossless audio, the company has another treat. Free listeners can finally listen to any track they want. After enhancing Premium, perhaps Spotify figured it could add a free perk without shedding subscribers.
Spotify accounts on the free plan can now choose any track and immediately listen to it. Previously, that was paywalled for Premium subscribers. Non-paying ones had to shuffle through an album or playlist until the song they wanted to hear came up. And the free tier’s limited skips meant you might have to wait a while to get to it.
Now you can choose any track you want by searching, selecting it in an album or playlist or tapping a shared one. The feature rolls out globally beginning today. However, the free plan’s other limits haven’t changed, so you’ll need to listen to ads and choose your limited skips wisely.
Pre-existing features of Spotify’s free tier include personalized recommendations, AI playlist covers and “daylists.” If you can live without hi-fi audio, offline playback or ad-free listening, the view from the cheap seats is better than ever.
Following its long-awaited launch of lossless streaming for paid subscribers, Spotify is upgrading its service for free users, too. On Monday, the company announced that free users globally will now be able to search and play any song they want or play a song shared by a friend or an artist they follow on social media.
The company calls the new features “Pick & Play,” “Search & Play,” and “Share & Play,” respectively. With the former, free users can hit play in the Spotify app to pick and play any song they want, or can even search for a particular song and play it.
The latter, “Share & Play,” could encourage free users to open Spotify when they come across music on social media. For instance, Instagram lets users share a Spotify track to Stories with sound and allows users to share music on Instagram Notes.
Previously, free users could shuffle songs with limited skips on mobile devices.
Spotify says the new features will roll out globally to free users, but there will still be some restrictions that Premium users won’t face.
In recent months, Spotify’s ad business has been struggling, with CEO Daniel Ek telling investors the company has been “moving too slowly” on this front. The streamer wants ad revenue to make up 20% of its overall revenue, but has grown it only to 11% as of June. By adding new free features, Spotify could boost engagement among its free user base, who would then be exposed to more ads.
Spotify says that other features, like its support for lossless, AI Playlists, and Mix, will remain Premium-only offerings, while others like the newly launched Messages and personalized playlist daylist, available to global users, will span both the free and paid experiences, as they had before.
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The company’s free users today make up the bulk of its user base. Out of Spotify’s 696 million monthly active users in the most recent quarter, 433 million were free, ad-supported customers. In addition, there were 276 million Premium (paying) subscribers in the quarter.
Snap is upgrading the software that powers its augmented reality glasses as it gets ready for the first of its “Specs” next year. The latest update to Snap OS includes an improved web browser, as well as the ability to browse Spotlight videos in AR.
The company has long said that one of for AR glasses is to enable people to spend less time staring at their phones. Snap hasn’t quite accomplished that yet, but Snap OS is starting to get more features that could help the company get there.
The company has redesigned the browser in Snap OS to make it easier to switch between sites and resize windows to different aspect ratios. It’s also faster and more power efficient, with the ability to watch around 40 minutes of continuous video playback. (The current version of Spectacles tops out at around 45 minutes of battery life.) Speaking of video, Spectacles is also getting a dedicated lens for browsing Spotlight, Snapchat’s short-form video platform. There’s also a new gallery lens that allows you to preview photos you’ve snapped with the glasses’ onboard camera and quickly scroll through them with hand gestures.
The update arrives one year after the company first showed off its somewhat goofy-looking AR glasses. Since then, hundreds of developers have been experimenting with the device and creating their own AR lenses for the platform. But those experiences have so far had a very limited reach as the company has only made its AR Spectacles available to developers willing t. That’s set to change sometime in 2026, though, when Snap says it will start selling a smaller, lighter and more capable pair of glasses.
The company has yet to divulge details about the redesigned form factor or what powers “Specs” will have. But the new version of Snap OS shows the company is trying to make its AR platform more useful.
Jim Lanzone, the CEO of Engadget’s parent company Yahoo, joined the board of directors at Snap on September 12, 2024. No one outside of Engadget’s editorial team has any say in our coverage of the company.
Snap Inc. is rolling out an updated version of its operating system for augmented-reality glasses, a move that signals it’s getting closer to launching its first consumer smart glasses next year.
The social media company on Monday launched Snap OS 2.0, claiming the new features bring a more robust software experience to its current Spectacles glasses. Right now, only developers have access to the device, which became available last year. A consumer version that’s coming in 2026, called Specs, is smaller and lighter and runs on the same operating system, Snap has said.
EXCLUSIVE: Ann M. Martin’s bestselling book series The Baby-sitters Club is being developed into a stage musical with a book by Kate Wetherhead (The Devil Wears Prada), music and lyrics by Mark Sonnenblick (Kpop Demon Hunters), and direction and choreography by Annie Tippe (Octet).
Theatrical rights to the book series have been optioned by TWTheatricals, a division of TheaterWorksUSA dedicated to creating fully produced, full-length works for multigenerational audiences. An exclusive industry presentation is scheduled for November 13 in New York City, with plans for a theatrical premiere in Spring 2027.
The Baby-sitters Club creator Martin said, “I love musicals and am excited to see the adventures of Kristy, Claudia, Mary Anne, and Stacey come to life on stage. I’m humbled by the ongoing popularity of the series, and couldn’t be more thrilled by this news.”
Published by Scholastic between 1986 and 2000, the book series has nearly 200 million copies in print to date and has been published in 23 languages. After launching, the series popularity skyrocketed and expanded to more than 250 titles, four spin-off book series, bestselling graphic novel adaptations, a TV series on HBO, a feature film from Sony Pictures, and an acclaimed original Netflix series.
The musical picks up twelve years after the disbanding of The Baby-sitters Club when the founding members – Kristy, Mary Anne, Claudia and Stacey – return to Stoneybrook, CT to honor the pact their 13-year-old selves made to reunite. Now twenty-five, the young women realize over the course of the show that the reunion not only presents an opportunity to revisit defining moments of their past, but to answer critical questions that have surfaced in their present-day lives: questions of identity, career, relationships and fulfillment.
“We look forward to bringing the BSC’s themes of friendship, growing pains, independence and self-discovery to a live audience,” said Wetherhead, “so that both young people and adults can see for themselves (or their former selves) that they are not alone in the grand adventure of ‘growing up.’”
“Though their triumphs and struggles and crushes are evergreen, these are girls of the ’80s and ’90s,” said Sonnenblick. “So the score’s inspired by some of our favorites – Sheryl Crow, Indigo Girls, Shania Twain. We’re just very excited for everyone to hang out with the club in Stoneybrook, whether it’s your first time or your five hundredth.”
Barbara Pasternack, Producing Artistic Director at TWTheatricals, said, “The Baby-sitters Club series introduced the original girl bosses, shaping and inspiring the lives of millions of young women and girls then – and still today. For adults who loved the books, it taps into a shared sense of nostalgia, inviting each of us to revisit the memories that shaped us while reflecting on how far we’ve come. For audiences of any age, it’s an inspiring story of friendship, empowerment, and finding your own voice, and a reminder that our stories are always evolving. And the score is amazing.”
At a double observatory atop Mount Teide on the Spanish island of Tenerife, a powerful laser is being deployed to track fragments of space debris in orbit and warn when these fragments threaten satellites. Soon, it could even be used to push space debris away from a collision course with a satellite.
The Izaña-1 and Izaña-2 laser-ranging stations are operated by the European Space Agency (ESA) and were constructed by the German company DiGOS, which specializes in laser ranging. Izaña-1 has been active since 2021 and has already been employed in satellite laser-ranging, but with Izaña-2 now complete, the pair of telescopes have a much more ambitious task as part of ESA’s Space Safety Program.
The two telescopes operate synchronously: Izaña-2 fires laser pulses at a piece of space debris high overhead, and Izaña-1 detects the reflected light. In doing so, the system is able to track the path of the debris, charting its orbit and determining whether it could potentially collide with a satellite.
“We had to scale up the power of the laser on Izaña-2 because the plan is to illuminate non-comparative targets; therefore, the amount of photons transmitted back towards the station is limited and we compensate with more energetic pulses,” said Andrea Di Mira, an ESA optical system engineer, in a promotional video on the ESA website.
An orbital collision could range from bad to potentially very bad. An individual satellite may be severely damaged, which could result in a financial loss, or the loss of research data if the satellite is a scientific one. In the worst-case scenario, a collision could smash a satellite into many more pieces of space debris, which each then go on to collide with more satellites, which produces more chunks of space junk, and so on and so forth. This could result in a runaway and very dangerous cascade called the Kessler Syndrome, after the NASA scientist Donald Kessler, who first described it. In such a scenario, large sections of low Earth orbit could become unusable because the density of space debris becomes too great.
It is therefore vital that space junk is tracked, so that satellites can maneuver to get out of the way before they are hit.
The Izaña system currently runs semi-automatically, and can even be used in the daytime. While everything is automated, a team of humans remotely supervise Izaña-1 and Izaña-2, but the aim is for it to one day be completely autonomous.
“As part of the development roadmap, we’re planning to go to [full] automation. This has the great advantage [of] increasing data productivity,” said Di Mira.
The ambition doesn’t stop there. Presently, if the Izaña system detects a fragment of space debris hurtling towards a satellite, the satellite then has to take evasive action, firing thrusters to push it out of the way.
There may, however, be another way, called “laser momentum transfer.”
“One possibility is laser momentum transfer to gently push the space debris on its orbit a little bit away so it doesn’t collide with orbiting satellites,” said André Kloth, Managing Director at DiGOS, in the video.
The laser on Izaña-2 could push space junk out of the way, in the same way that a laser can push a solar sail through the momentum of photons impacting on it. With the laser coming to the rescue, a satellite doesn’t have to move out of the way, so it can conserve its fuel, helping to prolong the mission for as long as possible.
With Izaña-1 tracking space debris and satellites and Izaña-2 pushing the debris away, ESA potentially has an all-in-one space debris avoidance scheme on its hands that feeds into another of the agency’s projects called OMLET, or Orbital Maintenance via Laser momEntum Transfer. OMLET would supply satellite operators with an on-demand system of knowing exactly where their satellites are in relation to space debris, and then the capability to push that debris out of the way. In a sense, OMLET would be like a space-traffic cop, marshaling the orbits of satellites and debris.
There’s even the potential that the laser on Izaña-2 could pull double duty as a testbed for laser communication, firing lasers encoded with data up to satellites that can then relay those laser messages to their destinations. Besides there being less interference than at radio waves, optical and infrared lasers also support quantum encryption — what’s known as QKD, or quantum key distribution, in which the key to encrypting the data is encoded into the quantum superposition of the photons.
Even on a cloudy day, today’s lasers can still push through and reach their target. Indeed, orbiting Earth-observation satellites routinely use lasers for light-detection and ranging (lidar) on the planet’s surface, despite the clouds and smog, while Chinese scientists have recently conducted the first ever daytime laser-ranging experiment from Earth to the moon.
Sixty-five years after their invention, it seems that lasers are still lighting the way to a better future in space.