Le Journal

With Nike and adidas snatching up most of the sports superstars to be their signature spokespeople, Reebok is taking a different route and enlisting pop stars such as Cardi B and Khalid to join their ever-growing family. The iconic brand just landed another music superstar to represent. On Wednesday (Jan. 21), Reebok announced that Colombian […]

No one truly knows how many people, whether they’re American citizens or global travelers, have met their end by jumping from San Francisco’s Golden Gate Bridge. An official count was once kept of deaths occurring at the iconic Bay Area landmark, which connects the city to the Northern California hills south of Sausalito, but that official count ended just before the 1,000th death by suicide in 1995, in recognition that the publicizing of such statistics by the media might only increase the notoriety and attractiveness of the site as a place for more suicides. The confirmed count since the bridge opened in 1937 is frequently said to be more than 2,000, though a true number will never be known: Not when it’s a certainty that many deaths over the decades have surely gone unwitnessed and unrecorded. For decades, the average yearly count sat around 33 yearly fatalities. It’s beyond notable, then, to be able to say the following: In the final seven months of 2025, there were zero known suicide deaths at Golden Gate Bridge. It’s almost certainly the longest period without a death in the structure’s 88 years in operation, and it’s the result of a concerted effort at suicide prevention that should stand out as a model for activists and governments worldwide. For as long as the bridge has stood, people had always jumped from it. It was only 10 weeks after its official opening that the first case was recorded, a 47-year-old World War I veteran named Harold Wobber who was a victim of post-traumatic stress disorder. Many more followed, and a certain mystique about the bridge as a suicide destination began to grow in a macabre corner of the public consciousness. On some level, the notoriety was earned in how deadly a jump from the bridge proved to be: At 245 feet above the Bay, a person falling has time to accelerate to about 75 mph by the time they hit the water, causing immediate death on impact in most cases, or immediate drowning. Nevertheless, some small portion of jumpers–about 2%, roughly–have survived the plunge, almost universally saying that the first thought they had after leaping from the edge was one of regret, or a desire to live. In the most well-known cases of survivors, such as Kevin Hines or Ken Baldwin, they went on to dedicate their lives to helping others struggling with depression and suicidal ideation. In 2000, Kevin Hines survived a Golden Gate Bridge jump thanks to a sea lion. He now speaks globally on suicide prevention, using his story to raise awareness about mental health. [image or embed] — Digital Brain (@yourdigitalbrain.bsky.social) Nov 30, 2025 at 9:00 AM --> For decades, however, city officials and members of the public actively resisted calls to physically alter the bridge in an effort to prevent or at least cut down on suicides, even as the national suicide rate rose. Arguments were made citing the potential damage to aesthetics of the beloved landmark, or the cost of proposed projects, or questioning the ultimate effectiveness of suicide deterrents such as nets. And while people argued and debated, the numbers of deaths only climbed. In 2014, the year that an ambitious netting project under the bridge was finally approved, 46 people died. In 2025, that total number was down to only 4, including the aforementioned zero in the final seven months. The results are conclusive, and as good as that news is, it comes with a simultaneous indictment of past inaction: This is something that could have been done much, much sooner, resulting in more lives saved. It was simply too easy to jump. With that said, it’s almost a wonder the project got completed at all, given all the legal red tape and construction delays it endured. Despite approval in 2014, construction of the netting project didn’t begin until 2018, with costs ballooning from a projected $76 million to $224 million along the way, funds that came from a variety of sources: The Metropolitan Transportation Commission, California Department of…

Fan-favorite Great British Bake Off judge Prue Leith has announced her time judging the bake offs has come to an end. “After nine series and judging more than 400 challenges, I have decided to step down as a judge on The Great British Bake Off,” Leith writes on Instagram today. “Bake Off has been a fabulous part of my life for the last nine years, I have genuinely loved it and I’m sure I’ll miss working with my fellow judge Paul, Alison and Noel and the teams at Love Productions and Channel 4. But now feels like the right time to step back (I’m 86 for goodness sake!), there’s so much I’d like to do, not least spend summers enjoying my garden. Whoever joins the team, I’m sure they’ll love it as much as I have. I feel very lucky to have been part of it.” --> Leith joined the show back in 2017 after stints on the other series The Great British Menu and My Kitchen Rules. Leith has been a chef since the 1960s, opening her own Michelin-starred restaurant in London in 1969. The chef admitted she was skeptical about joining a reality cooking show at first because “I’m not very good at watching telly,” she told Delish in 2024. “And especially hadn’t ever really watched food programs. The last thing I wanted to watch was more food because I spent all day with food.” Now, she can spend her day doing whatever she wants.

Fan-favorite Great British Bake Off judge Prue Leith has announced her time judging the bake offs has come to an end. “After nine series and judging more than 400 challenges, I have decided to step down as a judge on The Great British Bake Off,” Leith writes on Instagram today. “Bake Off has been a fabulous part of my life for the last nine years, I have genuinely loved it and I’m sure I’ll miss working with my fellow judge Paul, Alison and Noel and the teams at Love Productions and Channel 4. But now feels like the right time to step back (I’m 86 for goodness sake!), there’s so much I’d like to do, not least spend summers enjoying my garden. Whoever joins the team, I’m sure they’ll love it as much as I have. I feel very lucky to have been part of it.” --> Leith joined the show back in 2017 after stints on the other series The Great British Menu and My Kitchen Rules. Leith has been a chef since the 1960s, opening her own Michelin-starred restaurant in London in 1969. The chef admitted she was skeptical about joining a reality cooking show at first because “I’m not very good at watching telly,” she told Delish in 2024. “And especially hadn’t ever really watched food programs. The last thing I wanted to watch was more food because I spent all day with food.” Now, she can spend her day doing whatever she wants.