President Donald Trump filed an emergency motion in his $10 billion defamation lawsuit against the BBC to prevent the disclosure of his financial records in court — and withdrew allegations that the network had damaged his brand and businesses.

The emergency stay granted Thursday in the Southern District of Florida by US Magistrate Judge Enjoliqué Lett temporarily blocks the BBC from obtaining detailed financial information on the Donald J. Trump Revocable Trust, which is managed by the president’s son Donald Trump Jr.

“Counsel for the Plaintiff—who also represents the Trust—testified at the July 27, 2026, discovery hearing that the Plaintiff no longer intends to pursue a damages theory premised on injury to the plaintiff’s brands and businesses,” Lett wrote in her motion-granting order.

Trump sued the BBC in December over a documentary that aired on its flagship “Panorama” news program, which spliced together two different sections of a speech he gave on Jan. 6, 2021 — before rioters stormed the Capitol.

Trump argued in his lawsuit that the program caused economic damage to his businesses, but dropped that particular claim ahead of a deadline Thursday to produce financial records corroborating this — which would have included tax returns, financial statements and ownership records.

A lawyer for Trump said during the hearing last month that Trump’s attorneys “don’t want to acknowledge that the brand has or has not suffered any injury,” and are “not pursuing that as part of our damages,” concluding, “It is simply the reputational injury to the President, full stop.”

The president is still seeking $10 billion in damages from the broadcaster.

Attorneys for the BBC argued Wednesday in a memorandum opposing the motion that Trump could have focused only on his supposed reputational harm when he first filed the lawsuit, and decried that he is still seeking damages without providing any actual disclosure.

“In fact, claiming $10 billion in harm while purporting to disclaim damage to Plaintiff’s business and professional interests renders it all the more implausible that Plaintiff will ever be able to show such damages,” the attorneys wrote Wednesday in the memo.

Trump’s lawyers on Wednesday had called the BBC’s request for disclosure “shockingly broad,” arguing it would cause irrevocable harm to the trust overseeing his companies. While Trump succeeded Thursday, the emergency stay does not necessarily shield his records forever.

The court could still decide that the BBC is entitled to obtain relevant financial information. The emergency stay itself will remain in effect until Lett rules on whether or not to lift it — following updated filings from Trump and his attorneys regarding the ongoing lawsuit.

During my senior year of college, I dated a boy who was tall, dark-haired, and smoked a lot of weed. (If I’d had a checklist, those would have been the boxes on it at the time.)

We talked easily, about everything from medieval art to music, and I found his lanky limbs and soulful eyes very appealing. But despite how much we enjoyed each other’s company, both in bed and out of it, I didn’t, fundamentally, feel anything. If he’d told me he never wanted to speak to me again, I wouldn’t have cared, except that I’d have needed to get my weed from someone else.

That’s when I came up with the theory of the third thing.

The premise is that there are three things that make you fall for someone. The first is a physical connection. The second is an intellectual connection. And then there’s the third thing… whatever mysterious ingredient makes you imagine a future together. My friends and I spent hours sitting on the floor of my dorm room, listening to Matchbox 20 and drinking diet Snapple with vodka, trying to unravel what the third thing could be.

I was a good student. I was naturally shy and awkward, but I was also used to thinking things through and figuring them out. In middle school, I’d analysed my classmates’ social interactions, realising that when someone told a story about themselves, you were supposed to respond with a story on a similar topic.

In high school, I’d made a checklist of all the things I needed to do to be cool (start reading Seventeen magazine, stop walking around with a book in front of my face, keep gum in my backpack and offer it to my classmates after lunch).

In college, I’d turned my attention to boys. It was easy to kiss them on sticky bar dance floors and meet them for coffee dates at the student centre. But I wanted to fall in love, and I wasn’t sure how to do it. If I could figure out the third thing, then I’d know the formula. I’d know how to find someone who I was really excited about.

I dated regularly throughout my 20s, but nothing lasted. Then, following another breakup, I found myself spending a lot of time on the phone with my friend Dan. We’d dated briefly when we first met years before on study abroad. He was awkwardly, gawkily handsome, and was one of the smartest people I’d ever met, dropping references to Byzantine emperors into casual conversation. However, at that time, there just wasn’t that third thing.

Then, suddenly, eight years later, there was. I wasn’t sure what had changed. I still didn’t know what the third thing was, but something was different, even if I couldn’t identify it. For years we’d just been friends – albeit friends who drunkenly made out occasionally when we ended up in his car together late at night. And now we were spending all our time thinking about each other. How had this happened? And what were we going to do about it?

As it turned out, we were going to get married. Three years later, we found ourselves holding hands and saying vows in a historic library in Providence. We ate cupcakes, drank prosecco, and spent the night dancing with our friends and family among the stacks. It was the happiest day of my life; I’d found a smart, handsome man whom I loved, and who loved me. We had chemistry; we could spend hours talking, and most importantly, we had the third thing. I felt like I’d gotten exactly what I wanted.

Except that after 10 years of marriage, it wasn’t what I wanted anymore. Dan’s brooding moroseness, which I’d found appealing, had begun to seem whiny. My quest for self-improvement, which he’d found admirable, had begun to seem exhausting. It had started to drive me crazy that he sang to himself. It had started to drive him crazy that I left the cupboard doors open. These were things that we’d lived with for years. They hadn’t been a problem. And now, suddenly, they were, and I wasn’t sure why.

There were other, bigger issues. We were politically divided. We wanted to spend our time in very different ways. My marriage didn’t end just because we no longer had the third thing. But that was part of it. We were still attracted to each other. We still talked about everything as easily as we always had. But we no longer had that ineffable thing that made us feel romantic about each other.

We tried. We left our son with his grandparents over the 4th of July weekend, went to a local brewery for IPAs and pepperoni pizza, shared a joint and had sex in front of a mirror. We sat side by side, feeling miles away from each other, and watched fireworks explode into distant sparks of light. We went to two different couples’ therapists. They gave us worksheets. We did the worksheets. We still didn’t love each other anymore.

The hardest thing about the end of the marriage wasn’t the loss of the present. At the time, we were sleeping on separate floors of our old suburban house, trying not to touch when we passed each other in the stairway. But in my imagined future, we were going to be one of those elderly couples who travelled around the country in an RV, who went to see independent films and had season tickets to the local symphony. We were going to sit side by side at our son’s graduation, and when he crossed the stage, unimaginably tall but still wild-haired and bright-eyed, we were going to squeeze each other’s hands.

Instead, I was single and dating again in my 40s. From everything I knew about ageing while female, I figured that dating at that age would be some kind of barren wasteland. Instead, I discovered that the apps had come along and made it easy. I could go on a date with someone new every night if I wanted, and for a while I did. I was doing things I thought I’d never do again, like kissing strangers at the entrance to the subway. And for the first time, I was dating women, which was something I’d always wondered about. When I was younger, I’d gone from one man to another, and suddenly I wondered if maybe the reason I’d had trouble figuring out the third thing was that I didn’t want to be with a man. Maybe my newfound queerness held the answer I’d been seeking.

I started dating a beautiful woman with long blonde hair, tattoos and a sweet smile. We sent each other passages from books, we talked about theatre, we spent hours making out. Still, despite how much we enjoyed each other’s company, both in bed and out of it, there was no third thing. We were mutually unserious, and after a few months things came to an end.

I think someday I’d like to fall in love again, but I’m also terrified because I’m finally coming to understand that there isn’t a formula. I’m realising that the third thing is different at different times, or for different people. That it’s something that can appear out of nowhere… and can disappear, too. That sometimes love just goes away, and if I find it again, it might go away again, no matter how hard I try not to let that happen.

I’ve finally figured out that I might never figure it out. If the third thing comes my way again, it’s just going to be because I’m lucky. I can’t control whether I find it; I can only control whether I’m brave enough to say yes to it. I don’t know whether I will be.

For now, I write, I teach and I worry about the world, and I watch my son use Magna-Tiles to build rainbow castles reaching up towards the sky. Sometimes I swipe right on strangers, and meet them for hikes or cups of coffee. I walk my dog around the neighbourhood in the spring and watch the crabapples bursting into improbable, extravagant bloom. The flowers drift down from the trees as I walk underneath them. I reach out my hands to catch them, and I end up empty-handed, but later, when I get home, I find myself picking delicate pink petals out of my hair.

Lia Romeo is a playwright, essayist, novelist, and screenwriter. Her plays have been produced off-Broadway, as well as regionally and internationally, and her essays have appeared in the Washington Post, the New York Times, and other national publications. She is currently at work on a screenplay.

Do you have a compelling personal story you’d like to see published on HuffPost? Find out what we’re looking for here and send us a pitch at pitch@huffpost.com.

People are lonelier than ever – that’s hardly breaking news. Everyone has a theory about why. Social media usually gets the blame; streaming platforms like Netflix are often part of the conversation; and, increasingly, AI is making the list.

In 2023, the U.S. surgeon general warned that the country was facing a “loneliness epidemic.” The diagnosis was clear. But what if we’ve been looking at the problem the wrong way?

Maybe loneliness isn’t about how many friends we have. On paper, many of us have larger social circles than previous generations, whether that’s hundreds of Facebook friends or a busy group chat alongside real-life relationships. We’ve come a long way from the days of small, close-knit communities where everyone knew your business before lunch.

The real issue may not be the size of our networks but the depth of our connections.

That idea is backed by decades of research. The landmark Harvard Study of Adult Development, one of the longest-running studies ever conducted on human happiness, found that the strongest predictor of a happy, meaningful life isn’t wealth, success or even physical health. It’s the quality of our relationships.

And that’s where many of us are struggling. We’re surrounded by people, yet starved of genuine connection. We call this the “Friendship Depth Gap,” and it may be one of the biggest reasons so many of us feel lonely.

Many people have plenty of friends, active group chats and a steady stream of social interaction, yet still feel strangely disconnected, unseen or unfulfilled. A term gaining traction on social media – the “Friendship Depth Gap” – puts a name to that feeling. The idea is simple: We’re surrounded by connection, but lacking genuine emotional intimacy.

Elisabeth Crain, psychotherapist and author of The Friendship Lab, has become one of the leading voices behind the concept.

“The research shows that we aren’t actually lacking friends. In fact, we have plenty of friends,” Crain said. “The issue is the level of closeness we have with our friends … the depth, or lack thereof, in these relationships. There’s a fear of vulnerability holding people back from becoming more intimate or close with their friends.”

In other words, most of us don’t need more names in our contacts list, we need to spend more meaningful time with the people already in it.

And there we have the frustrating paradox of modern friendship. We’re more connected than ever, yet many of us don’t have someone we’d instinctively call in a crisis. Our social circles may be wide, but too often they lack the depth that turns acquaintances into lifelong pals.

“I have a big group of friends, but I feel lonely a lot of the time,” said Maya S., 26, who asked to withhold her last name for privacy to talk about her relationships. “I don’t feel like my friends really know what’s going on in my life or care enough.”

For Charlie F., 29, the issue is around the quality of hangouts: “I feel like we’ve fallen into catch-up culture. I see a friend, we talk for an hour over dinner, bringing each other up to speed, then we don’t meet up again for a month, and repeat. It doesn’t feel like we get the chance to dig deep, as we’re so busy updating on dating and job stuff.”

Crain believes the “Friendship Depth Gap” is, in some ways, an inevitable consequence of adulthood.

“I think one big factor is that the barrier to entry into friendship increases throughout our lives,” Crain said. “For example, when we’re in grade school, we are somewhat forced into friend groups or social situations. This continues into college, where we are again in a pool of people we don’t always get to choose.”

She continued, “But throughout our lives, that pool gets smaller and smaller, and we do get to choose who we surround ourselves with. However, our ability to make friends becomes harder because of factors like a busy career, family or children or proximity (e.g., people move away). The irony is that making friends is not less important later in life. In some ways, it may be even more important because so many seismic things happen, such as grief, loss, divorce, career changes and raising families, and it’s important to have real, supportive friends along for the ride.”

If friendship has always required effort, why does the gap feel bigger than ever now?

One reason may be that we’ve started optimising friendship the same way we optimise so many other parts of our lives: for convenience. We’re wearing smartwatches, listening to podcasts on double speed and rushing our friendships.

Once again, optimising is taking another good thing from us.

Even if Crain is right that the “Friendship Depth Gap” is a natural part of getting older, that doesn’t mean we’re powerless against it. Just as we can take steps to protect our physical health as we age, we can also be intentional about protecting and deepening our relationships.

Building deeper friendships doesn’t necessarily require a dramatic life overhaul. It doesn’t have to be a full-time job. It can start with small changes: replacing the surface-level catch-up with a more meaningful conversation, asking questions you wouldn’t normally ask or creating space to talk without distractions.

Activities like question-based games such as “We’re Not Really Strangers” can help break down some of the barriers that keep conversations on the surface. And while shared activities, from watching sports to taking an exercise class, can be a great starting point for connection, the moments before and after, when people are simply talking and being present, are often where intimacy grows.

Crain also emphasises that deep friendships require continuing to make new connections. Over time, some friendships naturally fade. People move away, priorities change, and the closeness that once felt effortless can become harder to maintain. New friendships will likely initially feel more superficial, but depth is something that can be built with the right foundation in place.

“One of the most important things to consider when making new friends is taking calculated risks,” Crain said. “By that I mean trying people on for size, vetting them, seeing if you get along with them, and connecting with them in the early phases of friendship. If you want to deepen the friendship, you must open up, share intimate parts of yourself and let people get to know you.”

She continued, “Ultimately, the only way to deepen friendships is by allowing ourselves to be seen and known. By allowing others to see and know us, we can also see and know them. The ability to be vulnerable, however scary or daunting it may be, helps deepen our friendships. When we share, someone else gets to share about themselves, which helps us create meaning in the relationship.”

Closing the “Friendship Depth Gap” doesn’t require more friends. It requires more honesty, staying present and the willingness to let the people already in our lives truly know us. A scary thought.

Did you know that Wi-Fi kind of means nothing?

I’d always assumed that because hi-fi stands for high fidelity, Wi-Fi was short for wireless fidelity. Nope: Phil Belanger, a founding member of the Wi-Fi Alliance who led its name selection, said that “Wi-Fi doesn’t stand for anything. It is not an acronym. There is no meaning.”

Huh. So what about USB, the connection ports used for everything from chargers to keyboards and printers?

Unlike Wi-Fi, USB is actually short for something: Universal Serial Bus. Its first known use was in 1995.

Until 1996, computers had “one or two serial ports, a parallel port, mouse and keyboard ports, and, in some cases, a joystick port,” Britannica said.

USBs solved that problem, providing a standard way to transfer information faster between devices.

But, like me, you’re wondering what buses have to do with the port, let’s break down each word:

• Universal – that means it fits a range of devices, as we just mentioned. It’s “built to a universally accepted standard,” so all USB products have to follow exact specifications, Erik Gross, co-founder of The Tech Academy, explained on YouTube.
• Bus – you’ll see why I put this before “serial” in a minute. In tech, a “bus” transmits information within a computer and/or over short distances (which allows, for example, a USB mouse to work); it’s usually a wire or collection of wires.
• Serial – During this transfer, Gross said, you can “either send the pieces data along one wire”, which happens when bits of information drip through the channel, one after the other. Or, you can spread that information across many wires, which each carry pieces of information in the order of the entire transmission, not one-by-one. A serial transfer therefore travels down one wire “one bit at a time in a sequential fashion,” reads What Every Engineer Should Know About Data Communications. The other type, with multiple wires, is called “parallel” transmission.

Therefore, a universal serial bus (USB) is a standard port that transmits information to or from your computer to or from another device, and which only requires a single wire to do so.

For something “universal”, there are a few types of physical USB connections: USB-A, USB-B, USB-C, Micro-USB, and Mini-USBs.

USB-C is the type you might use for your charger. They’ve become more popular than the larger USB-As (the rectangular computer one that only works when you put the port in the right way).

Wired suggests this is partly because they’re smaller and can be more powerful than USB-A because of how their hardware works. They also can’t be plugged in “upside down”; their design is reversible.

Still, USB-C (and all other USB types) are standardised according to their category and (of course) transfer information across a single wire. So, they qualify.

If you want to live a longer life, your diet might be more important than you realise. One study found that in the UK, we could expect to enjoy 10 years more life by eating “more whole grains, nuts and fruits and less sugar-sweetened beverages and processed meats”.

The Mediterranean diet, meanwhile, has been linked to better heart health, a longer life, and even a lower likelihood of developing type 2 diabetes.

Speaking to HuffPost UK previously, GP and ex-Embarrassing Bodies host Dr Dawn Harper said that “there is no one single silver bullet that will enhance your chances of living a long and healthy life… when I read claims that a single ‘super food’ will achieve just that, I tend to glaze over”.

She, among other experts, believes that your overall eating pattern is what matters. The odd inclusion of one food or another will neither save nor condemn your health (unless you have allergies, of course!).

With that caveat, some research has found that certain foods can encourage healthy ageing, while others could increase issues related to getting older.

Here are some to consider when thinking about your overall diet:

2013 research, which followed roughly 120,000 participants over 30 years, found that the more often people in the study ate nuts, the lower their risk of early death seemed to be.

Eating them daily was linked to a 20% lower likelihood of dying throughout the study.

Regular nut consumption has also been associated with longer telomeres (a marker of slower ageing), a lower risk of sarcopenia, or age-related muscle loss, and better cognition in older adults.

It sounds obvious, but yep, fruits and vegetables do seem to help us live longer. A 2014 meta-analysis showed that a higher consumption of fresh produce is linked to a lower risk of mortality, especially heart-disease-related deaths.

Eating vegetables could help to slow the effects of ageing thanks to bioactive compounds that help to keep your cells healthy, while older adults who eat more fruit and veg report higher levels of happiness and a greater sense of purpose.

The reason these fruits have such a rich, deep colour is because they contain lycopene, a carotene. Our levels of lycopene go down as we age, which is a shame, as researchers think not having enough of it could be linked to an increased likelihood of conditions like diabetes, stroke, and prostate cancer.

Here in the UK and in other Western countries, tomatoes account for about 80% of our lycopene consumption. BTW, tinned tomatoes have a higher lycopene content than fresh ones: tomato paste has even higher levels.

Extra-virgin olive oil has been associated with the “preservation of physical function and reduced pain perception in ageing” among physically active adults, a 2026 paper concluded.

Researchers think that might be because of its “healthy” monounsaturated fatty acids, potentially brain-boosting polyphenols, and antioxidants.

Some data suggest that eating oily fish is linked to better cognitive function in later life.

And it could help your sight, too: research shows that eating fatty fish, like mackerel, pilchards, salmon, sardines, and herring might protect against age-related macular degeneration, a progressive condition that can lead to vision loss.

The British Heart Foundation recommends eating at least one portion (140g when cooked) of oily fish a week.

It’s not great to overdo it on the sweet stuff at any age. But when we age, too much sugar appears to be linked to an increased risk of frailty – especially among older adults who get a lot of their added sugars through processed foods, a 2018 paper suggests.

Meanwhile, a 2024 study found that a vitamin-rich diet lower in sugar seemed to be associated with a lower biological age (biological age refers to a person’s cell-level wear and tear and is different from how long they’ve lived, or their chronological age).

Its co-senior author, Professor Elissa Epel, said: “We knew that high levels of added sugars are linked to worsened metabolic health and early disease, possibly more than any other dietary factor.

“Now we know that accelerated epigenetic ageing is underlying this relationship, and this is likely one of many ways that excessive sugar intake limits healthy longevity.”

A study has found that eating processed meats, like sausages, bacon, ham, salami, corned beef, and pâté, seemed to be linked to shorter telomeres.

Telomeres are structures that humans have at the ends of our chromosomes and which keep our cells working better for longer; shorter telomeres are linked to a shorter life.

And another paper said that for every extra daily serving of processed meat, participants’ cognitive ageing speed rose by 1.6 years.

The NHS said that no matter your age, “If you currently eat more than 90g (cooked weight) of red or processed meat a day, it is recommended that you cut down to 70g”.

We already know exercise is crucial for health – and can be protective against everything from heart disease and stroke, to dementia and even some types of cancer.

The NHS suggests adults should aim to do at least 150 minutes of moderate intensity activity a week (or 75 minutes of vigorous intensity activity a week). Ideally, spread over four to five days.

Two of these days should focus on strengthening activities, the health service added.

And a new study has suggested as little as four minutes of daily strengthening exercise can dramatically improve quality of life for older adults.

Routine length and pain are just some of the reasons why fewer older adults regularly exercise, the authors of the study – published in PLOS One – noted.

Co-author Smita Dandekar, associate professor of paediatrics at Penn State College of Medicine, said exercise is “complicated” as you have to decide how many repetitions, how far, how many sets, how much rest and how many times per week.

“It’s hard work, so there’s huge problems with people wanting to do exercise. If we can make it short, we’re part way there,” she said.

Previously, the team had conducted a study where 24 older adults performed 30 seconds of push-ups and squats daily, resulting in improved squat performance over six months.

For the new study, they tested the effects of a program, called FAST-2, to see if it improved mobility and physical capability in over-65s.

A total of 97 participants (average age of 74) were randomly assigned to receive either the exercise regimen treatment or no intervention.

FAST-2 involved four exercises:

Participants performed each movement for 30 seconds followed by a 30-second rest. Written explanations and modifications were provided for the exercises, such as performing pushups with hands on a countertop or wall, or chair stands with hands on the knees.

As participants improved, they were encouraged to progress to higher levels of difficulty.

Researchers assessed the participants’ ability and speed at standing up and ability to stand on one leg at the beginning, middle and end of the study.

The authors found that this exercise regimen, which included only 60 seconds of lower body resistance training, was enough to give significant improvements in functional performance over 12 weeks.

Lead author Christopher Sciamanna, professor of medicine and of public health at Penn State College of Medicine, said: “The human body is designed to improve very quickly. And just a few repetitions of an exercise performed regularly can lead to huge improvements.”