A planned trail centre in West Bragg Creek is receiving mixed responses from members of the public.

The proposal, put forward by the Bragg Creek Trails Association, is still in the planning phase, with the concept design including a two-storey building with room for up to 150 people. The site is estimated to cost around $3 million, which Bragg Creek Trails says would be paid for through provincial grants, donations and events.

West Bragg Creek, located southwest of Calgary, is a popular destination year-round, with more than 160 kilometres of trails in the foothills of the Rocky Mountains. According to Bragg Creek Trails, the provincial recreation area sees more than 265,000 visitors every year.

But while Bragg Creek Trails says the trail centre would provide environmental education and improve access to the area year-round with a warming centre, not everyone’s on board.

WATCH | New $3M visitor centre proposed for West Bragg Creek concerns local residents:

New $3M visitor centre proposed for West Bragg Creek concerns local residents

Trail users and local residents say they have a long list of questions about a visitor centre at West Bragg Creek Day Use Area being proposed by Bragg Creek Trails.

Karl Schulz, who says he goes on the trails at least four times a week, is not a fan of the proposal.

“It’s too big. It’s too fancy. It’s too costly,” he said. “It’s not what we need at our little small West Bragg Creek trails.”

Schulz acknowledged the current facility — a temporary warming centre — could be improved, but not to the extent that’s being proposed.

“Do we need flush toilets? Absolutely not,” he said.

Bragg Creek resident Peter Tucker says he sees many pros and cons in the proposal.

As an active volunteer in the community, he said “it would be helpful to have a decent place to meet, rather than in a cold compound somewhere.”

But he says increased visitation could impact the peace and quiet West Bragg Creek trail users enjoy.

“Even though the parking lot can be packed, you can be out there and not see barely anybody,” he said.

Another concern for Tucker is locals having to deal with increased traffic.

“Personally, I think the community and the educational benefits outweigh that slightly,” he said.

Renate van der Zande, who lives in the area, is also concerned about construction of the new facility leading to increased traffic.

She said the facility could come with economic benefits, “but more business means more traffic. That means more maintenance. So, who’s maintaining and who’s funding that?”

Bragg Creek Trails president Conrad Schiebel says the project will not go ahead until funding is secured.

“The big point to be made here is the funding for trail construction and maintenance would not be impacted by this project,” he said.

Schiebel said the provincial government identified the need for a trail centre at West Bragg Creek back in 2017, and that the current facility was always meant to be a temporary one.

Bragg Creek Trails is collecting public feedback on the proposed trail centre through an online survey until Feb. 28.

Central Alberta’s emergency rooms can be loud, busy places.

But a new model of care for victims of sexual assault is redirecting cases away from those hospitals.

Not only does that reduce the burden on those spaces — it’s helping to change lives, according to sexual assault nurse examiner Ronnie Biletsky, who has about 20 years of experience. 

“When someone … hugs you at the end of a sexual assault exam and says, ‘Thank you. I would have never had the courage to go to a hospital to tell my story. I was so scared. You made me feel safe’ … those are some things that you wouldn’t expect to hear about a sexual assault experience.”

Based out of Red Deer, the 24/7 program at the Truant Family Medical Suite sees people of all ages in central Alberta and provides forensic and medical care. It has been running for just over a year. 

Julie Hanson, a public health manager with Primary Care Alberta, said of the overall amount of people needing this care in the catchment, they were able to take on “around 37 per cent diversion out of a busy emergency department.”

How it helps

Biletsky said privacy is one of the biggest benefits in such an emotional time, utilizing a separate entrance to the area, while only one patient is seen at a time. 

“Nobody wants to come to a place where … you’re always afraid you’re gonna run into your neighbour, someone that you know,” she said. “There’s not a waiting room full of people. It’s literally one person and one nurse and an advocate.”

Hanson said another benefit to the suite was the quiet and calm environment, because “there’s busy aspects to emergency departments that sometimes can feel chaotic.”

While at the centre, patients are given an assortment of comforts, including handmade blankets they can pick out, which are then warmed. 

There are also T-shirts with positive sayings, dolls, snacks and toys to take home. Therapy dogs can be brought in as well, if available.

The centre also has one of two new specialized cameras in Alberta, for improved forensic imaging of injury sites.

The result

Patients were asked for feedback as part of discharge, and Biletsky said “we have had 100 per cent patient satisfaction.”

“That’s exactly what we were going for … for patients to feel safe.

“[It’s] the most proud I’ve ever been in … my career.”

That feedback is also being used to help improve the model of care in an emergency room too, said Hanson.

“As an example … they brought in a comfort dog into the emergency department.”

‘First of its kind’

Before a patient is admitted to the facility, they must meet certain criteria, including being in a stable condition. Otherwise their case may be seen in the emergency room instead.

The facility operates as a satellite campus. Although patients are seen by a nurse, they’re still under the care of an emergency physician at the nearby Red Deer Regional Hospital Centre. All testing and treatment can be done on site at the suite.

“It’s the first of its kind,” said Hanson. “There’s other ambulatory clinics for sexual assault, but there’s been none to our knowledge across Canada that are a virtual hospital or emergency department.”

That came with its own set of challenges in getting the idea off its feet. 

Many teams got involved, including Hanson’s. She added the program was pioneering unseen levels of collaboration across the AHS, RCMP, Primary Care, social services, the Central Alberta Child Advocacy Centre and other groups. That includes working together in regards to financing.

“We work in a really interesting hybrid model. Part of the programming piece falls under a current budget that’s out of Primary Care Alberta in public health. And then the Alberta Health Services emergency department also funds this program through staffing, so they would support the nurse time. And then we’ve also had community donation of the facility itself.” 

To Biletsky, the program was a dream come true. 

“The more people you brought in, it just started to grow because people saw the importance of it, and they realized that this could really happen,” she said.

But now that it’s been done, there are hopes to see other places adapt this model too.

“We’re just on that horizon of where we’re going to see more of this, I believe,” said Hanson.

With its links to the Bruce Trail and relatively accessible walk from parking lot to waterfall, Tiffany Falls Conservation Area is a popular spot for tourists and hikers alike. And when temperatures plunge to the double negatives, the west Hamilton spot becomes popular with a different group: ice climbers.

The Hamilton Conservation Authority permits two organizations to climb the waterfall. One of them, Muskoka Mountainworks, just started working there, taking a group climbing at Tiffany Falls for the first time on Jan. 26.

Hamilton and much of southern Ontario had just been through a snow storm and the scene was “beautiful,” instructor Jonathan Nunes told CBC Hamilton. 

“The entire area was filled with fresh powder. The ice was nice and solid,” Nunes said. And in a couple spots, “you could hear water running as you climbed.”

When you’re in the forest around the waterfall, you can hardly tell you’re in a city, he added.

WATCH | Climbers tackle a frozen waterfall:

Ice climbers scale Tiffany Falls in Hamilton

Ice climbers scale Tiffany Falls on Jan. 26. Muskoka Mountainworks is one of two organizations allowed to climb at that conservation area.

A long-awaited climb

Terry Wilson, 67, is one of the climbers who joined Nunes that day. The resident of Sarnia, Ont.’s Brights Grove area, has been climbing for about 12 years. 

Wilson told CBC Hamilton he started because he wanted an activity for his kids that wasn’t the movies. “I wanted to do adventure-y stuff.”

He “always wanted to climb Tiffany Falls,” making last week’s outing special.

Clare Wark, 30, always wanted to climb Tiffany Falls since growing up in Hamilton and visiting the conservation area. Now a resident of Collingwood, Ont., Wark said last week was finally her opportunity to do it. 

“It was really amazing,” Wark said, noting the waterfall was taller than other ice she’s climbed, making it more fun but also more challenging. 

“It’s just a really magical way to get out and enjoy nature and winter,” she said, adding she hopes to be back at Tiffany Falls next year.

Wilson said that although “the highway was a little rough getting there,” his climb was also worth the wait.

Climbing waterfalls has a “calming down effect,” Wilson said, and it’s a good workout. 

Nunes, who lives near Blue Mountain, Ont., and near Port Severn, Ont., leads climbing groups year-round across Ontario. In the winter, he switches to ice climbing from rock climbing. 

Climbers use gear including ice tools to create handholds, crampons to create footholds, reinforced climbing boots, ropes, harnesses and helmets to stay safe. 

The sport is “surging” in popularity, Nunes said, adding that Muskoka Mountainworks is raising money with an initiative called Climb Aid+ to fund trips for people who can’t afford them. 

Ice climbing requires a long period of consistently cold temperatures to ensure ice is strong enough, Nunes said, adding he understands that’s a turnoff for some. 

But when Nunes hears people complain about the season, “I feel a little bad because I want them to know that there’s a way to enjoy winter,” he said. “There are a lot of really fun, beautiful activities where they can actually enjoy the snow, enjoy the ice… It makes the winter go by really fast.”

Plus, once you start climbing you warm up quickly, the instructor said, noting an outing in temperatures near –25 C in Bancroft, Ont., had his group sweating Monday. 

Wilson, who finds summer too hot, says “winter is the best time,” and he encourages anyone who can to give ice climbing a go. “Try it. You will like it.”

One day in 2023, I was scrutinising my body in a full-length mirror.

I did this a lot, this tearful ritual of self-flagellation – but this time, I noticed something that had never been there before.

Cellulite, dappled along the backs of my thighs.

The tears started flowing, as they often did. I wasn’t crying with horror, though, but with happiness.

Two years before, I had come out as transgender. Ever since starting Hormone Replacement Therapy (HRT), I’d been experiencing a rollercoaster of emotions trying to reconcile my outer appearance with my inner sense of self – but seeing the cellulite on my thighs was a moment of sheer catharsis.

I finally felt at home in my body.

I knew all the messages sold to women and girls: that cellulite is unattractive and undesirable, that it should be eliminated. And yet, standing in front of the mirror, I didn’t feel any of the shame women are taught to feel.

Instead, I felt overjoyed and proud to be experiencing something that so many women experience.

In short, I felt gender euphoria.

But I certainly haven’t always felt this way – far from it.

My relationship with my body has always been complicated. As a child, I struggled with comfort eating and ended up overweight. Since then, I’ve dealt with persistent issues of body image.

Growing up, the mirror was my great enemy; it was the cudgel I used to punish myself for my (imagined) inadequacies.

This is an experience I share with lots of women – except that I first spent years of my life as a man.

I had always felt a sense of dissonance between how the world perceived me and how I perceived myself, and in puberty those issues only worsened. With each change I experienced – every new hair that sprouted on my body, every inch my shoulders grew – the gulf between the burgeoning woman I felt myself to be and the reality of my reflection widened.

Looking in the mirror felt like staring at a stranger.

Over the years, gender dysphoria manifested itself subtly in me, as a nebulous feeling of absence. I didn’t have any exposure to the trans experience so I didn’t have language that would help me describe that painful feeling of something missing.

But I felt disconnected from myself, and for years I couldn’t understand why.

When I interacted with the world outside my room, I struggled to understand the expectations ascribed to boys and men. When strangers called me ‘Sir’, I often asked myself who they could be talking to.

I spent years as a passive observer in my own life – and, consequently, spent decades dealing with persistent depression.

I truly felt as though nothing mattered. I had no investment in my own life.

Even when I came out as transgender in February 2021, aged 30, I remained in front of the mirror – because coming out only served to further complicate my relationship with my reflection.

I’d always been prone to negative self-comparison; but, while I was transitioning, this grew to include the impossible standards of feminine beauty levied upon women. ‘Your waist must be small, but not too small.’ ‘You must not have visible body hair.’ ‘You must sound, look, and act a certain way.’

I spent countless hours studying all the ways my body failed to meet the ideals of feminine beauty. I was ‘too fat’, ‘too broad’, ‘too masculine’.

It all left me feeling emotionally exhausted, depleted, and hopeless, and the irony – that comparing yourself unfavourably to other women is a common experience of womanhood – was lost on me.

I started HRT in June 2021 with the aim of raising my progesterone and oestrogen levels, and reducing my testosterone. Over the next few years, HRT slowly began to change my body in a myriad of ways – some expected, and others less so.

The redistribution of body fat, the softening of my features, the thickening of my hair.

These things came too slowly to notice any change from one day to the next, and I still contended with my reflection daily, continuing to find ways to compare myself negatively to others.

It was on one of these days, years into my treatment, that I first noticed the cellulite rippling down the backs of my thighs and cried.

I’d spent my life in a prison; now here I was, crying with joy over something many women have been taught to hate about themselves.

To me, the appearance of cellulite wasn’t some omen of undesirability. It was evidence that I was moving closer to a body I felt at home in.

And in that moment, I recognised the beauty in my experience as a trans person.

I may have lost the ease of navigating the world as the gender I was assigned at birth – but I had also gained so much. I’d been afforded the chance to know myself intimately, to become who I always was; and I could experience the feeling of watching my body slowly change into something that didn’t hurt so much to see.

I didn’t always know when I was suffering through gender dysphoria, but I certainly knew when I’d found relief from it. It was like I’d cast off a weight, and in place of that weight was gender euphoria. A storm of butterflies in my stomach. A smile that nearly broke my jaw.

Happiness. Bliss. Relief.

It’s been two and a half years since that day, and I cannot say my gender dysphoria is cured. If you’ve lived with body dysmorphia, you understand that your self-image can fluctuate from day to day.

I’ve heard it said by cis women over and over again – both on social media and in my day to day discussions with friends – that their trans sisters give them new perspectives on womanhood. 

That knowing and loving trans women helps them find new ways to appreciate the many joys of their gender, to divorce themselves from the insecurities packaged and sold to them as products.

And so my hope is that, in hearing my joy, in knowing my freedom, you can experience it for yourself. 

Perhaps the next time you look in the mirror and see the cellulite on your thighs, you’ll remember my story and the elation I felt; my hope is that you can learn to see it not as a burden but a bounty, and a reminder that it is a beautiful reflection of your womanhood staring unapologetically back at you.

Do you have a story you’d like to share? Get in touch by emailing jessica.aureli@metro.co.uk. 

Share your views in the comments below.

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A relatively brief, but lucrative ICE surge into West Virginia netted roughly 650 illegal immigrant arrests earlier this month — a two-week, statewide operation officials say unfolded with little disruption and now stands as a counterpoint to the turmoil surrounding similar enforcement efforts in Minnesota.

From Jan. 5 through Jan. 19, federal agents fanned out across the Mountain State — at times working with local law enforcement — targeting illegal immigrants with criminal histories or prior deportation orders, DHS officials told Fox News Digital.

Officials involved contrast the West Virginia operation with recent tensions in Minnesota, where ICE-related enforcement actions have sparked sustained protests, surveillance of federal agents and confrontations with law enforcement.

“I think the most important thing to notice here is that West Virginia and similarly situated states … have made it very, very easy for criminal illegal aliens to be picked up and processed by ICE,” West Virginia Attorney General JB McCuskey told Fox News Digital in an exclusive interview.

MANY OF AMERICA’S SAFEST CITIES ARE IN JURISDICTIONS THAT COOPERATE WITH ICE

West Virginia Attorney General JB McCuskey speaks outside the Supreme Court. (Oliver Contreras/Getty Images)

Some of the operations even reached the state’s bluer-tinged Eastern Panhandle, the fast-growing exurb of Washington, D.C., where officials say cooperation, not confrontation, defined the response.

There, Jefferson County Sheriff Thomas Hansen confirmed a two-week operation with ICE in his jurisdiction, which includes Charles Town, Harpers Ferry and Summit Point.

“The (JCSO) was impressed with the professionalism and work ethic of the agents and how well they interacted with the citizens and local law enforcement officers,” Hansen said in a statement obtained by Fox News Digital.

McCuskey said the lack of disruption in West Virginia reflected a cooperative approach that he argued prevented the kind of disorder seen elsewhere.

“When you contrast that with places like Minnesota, where you have Keith Ellison — who’s obviously embroiled in a massive fraud scandal involving Somali immigrants, et cetera, what you see is riots and violence,” he said.

McCuskey suggested the West Virginia mission shows Minnesota’s leadership can no longer blame federal law for its approach, noting that all states still operate under the same immigration statutes that have remained intact since the Obama administration.

TRUMP’S IMMIGRATION VICTORY IN A MINNESOTA COURT IS A WIN FOR ALL LAW-ABIDING CITIZENS

An ICE agent is seen standing in front of a house in a residential area.  (Victor J. Blue/Bloomberg via Getty Images)

“All God-fearing Americans believe in immigration. We believe that the promise of this country should be available to those who want to come to America the right way, follow our laws, and become great parts of this incredible quilt that is the American experience,” McCuskey said.

“And if your first act as a hopeful new American is to break our laws, that trust has been broken.”

McCuskey also accused Minnesota’s leadership of failing on parallel issues, calling Ellison “dalliant” in confronting social services fraud.

“My office [oversees] the same things,” he said, noting West Virginia also has a high proportion of residents on entitlements but lacks the level of fraud he says plagues Minnesota.

Just across the Potomac River from ICE’s Martinsburg sting, Maryland Democrats lambasted ICE’s presence in Washington County.

ICE REVEALS ‘WORST OF THE WORST’ ARRESTS IN JUST ONE DAY AFTER ROUNDING UP ‘THUGS’ CONVICTED OF VILE CRIMES

ICE officers arrested Sagar Singh, an Indian national previously ordered removed, during Operation ICE Wall after he was stopped for failing to clear a mandatory commercial vehicle brake check. (ICE)

McCuskey called that a “representation of the generalized idiocy of most of the Democrats in Congress, who have sat on their hands for the last 25 years and done nothing about the very immigration laws that they’re very angry about being enforced.”

Ellison, by contrast, showered protesters with praise at a recent public appearance, calling ICE’s operations a “federal invasion” and telling those assembled in the Twin Cities that he “wanted you to know that I was here with you, fighting with you, standing with you. Keep fighting, stand up strong, don’t back down.”

Fox News Digital reached out to Ellison and Gov. Tim Walz for comment, but neither office responded. DHS officials, however, said they expect states that cooperate with ICE to see similar success to West Virginia.

Assistant Secretary Tricia McLaughlin said “work[ing] together can make America safe again.”

DHS told Fox News Digital of similarly low-profile ICE operations in Alabama, including activity near Birmingham that netted a violent illegal immigrant accused of stabbing a federal agent, along with enforcement actions in other cities reported by local media.

Alabama Gov. Kay Ivey and Sen. Tommy Tuberville told Fox News Digital they will continue to welcome federal agents in the Yellowhammer State, with Tuberville, a candidate for governor, quipping that one mayor who has pledged to protect illegal immigrants “won’t like me very much” if he succeeds Ivey.

Those arrested in the West Virginia sweep included Mexican national Enrique Vergara — convicted of assault with a weapon — Guatemalan national Isaias Santos — convicted of several violent charges — Julian Garza, charged with auto theft; Brayan Canelis-Giron, charged with domestic violence and gun offenses; and Dennis Paz-Vallecillo, convicted of child neglect.

Not every Mountaineer leader was on board, however, as WVDP Chair Mike Pushkin — a state delegate from Kanawha County — told Fox News Digital people “have to be honest about what’s really going on here.”

FROM PROTEST TO FELONY: THE LINES MINNESOTA ANTI-ICE AGITATORS MAY BE CROSSING

Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison had previously come under fire from Republicans for his ties to climate groups before the massive welfare and social services fraud scandal rocked the state.  (Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images)

“The difference between what you’re seeing in Minnesota and what’s happening in West Virginia isn’t complicated — it’s courage,” Pushkin said, crediting Minnesota leaders with standing up to President Donald Trump “trampl[ing] due process and ignor[ing] the Constitution.”

“Republican leaders here won’t even clear their throats — and trying to compare the size and scope of the Minnesota operation to what happened here is just silly. That’s like comparing a house fire to a burnt piece of toast and pretending they’re the same emergency,” he said.

Pushkin cited a Clinton-appointed judge’s order that some of the detainees be released, including two men picked up on the West Virginia Turnpike.

“In the court’s words, there wasn’t ‘a shred of evidence to justify the government’s position’ — that should be the headline. That should alarm anyone who cares about freedom or the rule of law,” Pushkin said.

“Minnesota leaders pushed back. West Virginia’s Republican leadership just clicked their heels, saluted, and fell in line.”

HOMAN ANNOUNCES DRAWDOWN OF FEDERAL PRESENCE IN MINNESOTA, HAILS ‘UNPRECEDENTED COOPERATION’ FROM LOCAL POLICE

Fox News Digital also asked several blue-state leaders about the cooperation contrast but heard back from only one.

A spokeswoman for California Gov. Gavin Newsom said that if the feds truly cared about getting “hardened criminals off our streets, they would pick up every person released from our state prisons that have immigration detainers placed on them.”

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Diana Crofts-Pelayo said there’s only a one-in-eight rate in that regard, which she said shows the Trump administration just wants to “cause panic and fear to ultimately ensure compliance to a dangerous immigration agenda that threatens Americans’ safety, affordability and freedom.”

A California source familiar with the immigration enforcement dynamic there said that immigrants who commit crimes are subject to certain exceptions that do allow local law enforcement cooperation with ICE, particularly those charged with a violent felony.

DHS said that cooperation with federal law enforcement is the safest and most effective option for state officials.

“Sanctuary politicians who refuse to cooperate with DHS law enforcement are wasting law enforcement time, energy, and resources, while putting their own constituents in danger,” McLaughlin told Fox News Digital, crediting West Virginia officials with allowing such a quick and effective operation and expressing hope that other states would follow suit.

More than 5,000 days after construction began in Toronto, the Crosstown LRT will finally begin carrying passengers along Eglinton Avenue.

Around 7:30 a.m. Sunday, the first train will start its journey westward from Kennedy Station in Scarborough, past connections to the Yonge/University subway line, to terminate at Mount Dennis Station in the west.

The train will leave the station without pomp or ceremony as part of a phased opening to the line, Toronto’s transit agency is trying to play down as a soft launch, managing expectations for the six-year delayed project.

The Eglinton Crosstown LRT was first pitched by former mayor David Miller as part of his Transit City vision in 2007 and, after being briefly dashed by his successor, Rob Ford, began construction in November 2011.

Construction on the line was led by provincial transit agency Metrolinx in a public-private partnership with a construction consortium. The two parties presided over a myriad of delays, legal cases and cost overruns.

By 2023, Metrolinx had given up on providing the public with an opening date, promising only that the public would get three months’ notice before the line opened. Ultimately, that didn’t happen.

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Metrolinx instead announced in December 2025 that it finally believed the project was complete and accepted it from the construction consortium, handing it to the TTC, which will run its timetables and operations.

Behind the scenes, the provincial transit agency aggressively campaigned to open the Crosstown before the end of 2025, but a more restrained approach from the TTC won out.

Its CEO privately pushed to open the line on Feb. 8, during a December meeting, but publicly refused to confirm the date. CEO Mandeep Lali finally announced the same opening date at a meeting on Tuesday, after Premier Doug Ford had told reporters that was when he expected the line to open.

Until the eleventh hour, Lali would not confirm Sunday’s opening date, complaining that unexplained activations of the Eglinton Crosstown LRT’s emergency brakes left him concerned the system was not ready.

Sometime in the week leading up to the opening, he said he was given a satisfactory explanation for the emergency brake incidents, and said he was ready to open the line.

Still, the TTC is framing the opening almost as a pilot. The agency said trains will initiate and terminate service earlier than intended and travel at slower speeds during a phased opening.

The line will operate from roughly 5:30 a.m. on weekdays and 7:30 a.m. on weekends. It will close at 11 p.m. daily.

“As part of the phased opening of Line 5, the TTC is advising customers that there will be no grand opening ceremony, formal event, or commemorative merchandise on Sunday at any location,” the transit agency wrote in a statement.

Despite the low-key nature of the launch, the TTC admitted it expected crowds to ride the line all day Sunday.

Premier Ford chided journalists for being “negative” about the long-delayed Crosstown ahead of its launch on Friday and urged Torontonians to celebrate the fact it has finally opened.

“You’re beating a dead horse here; we’ve been going through this for years, the same old questions,” he said. “Let’s celebrate a new line.”

&copy 2026 Global News, a division of Corus Entertainment Inc.

Michael Rubin’s Fanatics Super Bowl Party was the place to be in San Francisco, Calif., on Saturday.

The annual bash was jam-packed with A-listers once again, making it one of the most sought-after parties to score an invite to during Big Game Weekend.

One of the earliest celebs to arrive and make his way down the red carpet at Pier 48 was NFL legend Tom Brady, followed by New England Patriots owner Robert Kraft, New York Giants star Cam Skattebo and Cincinnati Bengals quarterback Joe Burrow.

Shortly after, we spotted everyone from influencer Alix Earle — who, along with Brady, has been hopping around to all the hottest Super Bowl parties this week — to singer J Balvin, NFL star Odell Beckham Jr., retired NBA pro Dwight Howard, actor Jamie Foxx and “CBS Mornings” host Gayle King.

Of putting together such an A-list guest list this year, Fanatics CEO Rubin exclusively told Page Six that it was “really easy” thanks to the Patriots making it into the Super Bowl.

“I get one of my closest friends, Robert, [and Kraft Group president] Jonathan Kraft actually being in the game, that helps, by the way, when your friends are playing in the game,” he explained on the red carpet.

“What’s going to make it a great week is that, we’re going to have the best party ever today and then the [New England Patriots] are going to win the game tomorrow.”

Inside the star-studded bash, Page Six spotted rapper Jay-Z hanging out with friends in an exclusive, roped-off area of the venue, taking a spot right next to the stage.

Just a few feet away, “Bloody Valentine” rocker MGK was seen chatting it up with actor Kevin Costner, who became “fast friends” with the singer’s close pal, Pete Davidson, at last year’s VIP fête.

Kendall Jenner was also in attendance — after recently appearing in a Super Bowl 2026 ad for Fanatics Sportsbook — and at one point stopped to snap an unexpected pic with Kraft.

Other attendees included Zac Efron, Sofía Vergara, Jon Bon Jovi, Diplo, Kevin Hart, Meek Mill, Lil Baby, Teyana Taylor, Russell Wilson, Shaboozey, Drew Brees, 2 Chainz, French Montana, Reggie Bush, Guy Fieri, Fat Joe, Becky G, Tiffany Haddish, Keegan-Michael Key, Adam Devine, Emma Roberts, Livvy Dunne, Kevin Hart, Danny Amendola, Ja Rule, Lala Anthony, Camille Kostek, Kyle and Kristin Juszczyk and many more.

Guests at the party were entertained from beginning to end, with performances from Cardi B — who encouraged partygoers to take shots with her in celebration — along with SZA, Travis Scott, Ciara, 21 Savage, Don Toliver, Chase B and Nelly and Ashanti.

The Fanatics bash kicked off just one day before the New England Patriots face off against the Seattle Seahawks in Super Bowl LX at Levi’s Stadium in Santa Clara, Calif.

Puerto Rican rapper Bad Bunny, meanwhile, will be headlining the Apple Music Super Bowl Halftime Show, following an opening ceremony by Green Day and pre-game performances from Charlie Puth, Brandi Carlile and Coco Jones.

“I just want to have fun, it’s going to be a huge party,” the “King of Latin Trap” (real name: Benito Antonio Martínez Ocasio) teased during Apple Music’s press conference in San Francisco Thursday.

“I don’t want to give spoilers; people only need to worry about dancing. They don’t even have to learn Spanish; it’s better if they dance, but there’s no better dance [than one] that comes from the heart.”

Tune into all the Super Bowl 2026 festivities live on NBC, Peacock, Telemundo and Universo Sunday.

Newswise — UPTON, N.Y. — Just after 9 a.m. on Friday, Feb. 6, 2026, final beams of oxygen ions — oxygen atoms stripped of their electrons — circulated through the twin 2.4-mile-circumference rings of the Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider (RHIC) and crashed into one another at nearly the speed of light inside the collider’s two house-sized particle detectors, STAR and sPHENIX. RHIC, a nuclear physics research facility at the U.S. Department of Energy’s (DOE) Brookhaven National Laboratory, has been smashing atoms since the summer of 2000. The final collisions cap a quarter century of remarkable experiments using 10 different atomic species colliding over a wide range of energies in different configurations. The RHIC program has produced groundbreaking discoveries about the building blocks of matter and the nature of proton spin and technological advances in accelerators, detectors, and computing that have far surpassed scientists’ expectations when this discovery machine first turned on.

“RHIC has been one of the most successful user facilities operated by the DOE Office of Science, serving thousands of scientists from across the nation and around the globe,” said DOE Under Secretary for Science Darío Gil. “Supporting these one-of-a-kind research facilities pushes the limits of technology and expands our understanding of our world through transformational science — central pillars of DOE’s mission to ensure America’s security and prosperity.”

Gil was in the Main Control Room of Brookhaven Lab’s collider complex to officially end the 25th and final run at RHIC in advance of announcing the next major milestone in the construction of the Electron-Ion Collider (EIC), a state-of-the-art nuclear physics research facility that will be built by reusing major components of RHIC.

“It’s been an amazing run,” said Wolfram Fischer, chair of Brookhaven Lab’s Collider-Accelerator Department (C-AD), speaking of the entirety of the RHIC program. As head of C-AD, Fischer is responsible for the day-to-day, year-to-year operations of the collider and all its ancillary accelerator infrastructure. “Experiencing the challenges of first trying to get beams to circulate during commissioning in the fall of 1999, one could not have dreamed how far the performance of this machine would come,” he said. “We’ve pushed well beyond the original design in terms of the number of collisions we can produce, the energy range of those collisions, the variety of ions we’ve collided, and our ability to align the spins of protons and maintain a high degree of this alignment or polarization.”

The 25th and final run produced the largest-ever dataset from RHIC’s most energetic head-on smashups between two beams of gold ions, among the heaviest ions collided at RHIC. It also yielded a treasure trove of proton-proton collisions that will provide essential comparison data and insight into proton spin, a set of low-energy fixed target collisions to complete RHIC’s “beam energy scan,” and a final burst of oxygen-oxygen interactions. All this data will add to that collected previously by RHIC’s detectors — STAR, which has been running with many upgrades since RHIC’s beginning; PHENIX, another original RHIC detector that ceased operations in 2016; PHOBOS and BRAHMS, two smaller original detectors that ran from 2000 through 2005 and 2006, respectively; and sPHENIX, RHIC’s newest most rapid-fire collision “camera,” which came online in 2023.

This final run generated the primary data set for the new sPHENIX experiment. This year, sPHENIX accumulated more than 200 petabytes of raw data — or 200 quadrillion bytes — more than all previous RHIC raw datasets combined. This massive dataset includes 40 billion snapshots of the unique form of matter generated in gold-ion collisions.

Collectively, the RHIC measurements will fill in missing details in physicists’ understanding of how a soup of fundamental particles known as quarks and gluons — which last existed in nature some 14 billion years ago, a microsecond after the Big Bang — coalesced and converged to form the more ordinary atomic particles that make up everything visible in our world today. Recreating this primordial matter, known as a quark-gluon plasma (QGP), was the primary reason for building RHIC. RHIC’s energetic collisions of heavy ions such as gold were designed to set quarks and gluons free from “confinement” within protons and neutrons by melting the boundaries of these nuclear particles.

Thanks to considerable contributions from Japan’s RIKEN institute, RHIC was also built with unique capabilities for polarizing protons so that physicists could explore the origins of proton spin. This intrinsic quantum property, somewhat analogous to a planet spinning on its axis, has been leveraged to develop powerful technologies like nuclear magnetic resonance imaging and medical MRIs. RHIC’s polarized proton collisions have opened a new window into the mystery of how spin arises from the proton’s quarks and gluons.

PHENIX and STAR have both collected and published results from large swaths of spin-polarized collisions using selection “triggers” to decide which events to capture and study. During Run 25, sPHENIX became the world’s first detector to record a continuous streaming dataset from RHIC’s spin-polarized proton collisions — thus eliminating the need for triggers and potentially paving the way for unanticipated discoveries.

“This final RHIC run, with its impressive dataset, is a capstone that exemplifies the success of the entire RHIC program,” said John Hill, interim director of Brookhaven Lab. “The scientists, engineers, and technicians at Brookhaven deserve huge credit for their dedication and innovation throughout the operating life of RHIC — and for continually finding new ways to maximize the scientific output of this remarkable machine. We are also extremely grateful for the continued support of the U.S. Department of Energy, and for our collaborators from other DOE labs, U.S. universities, and scientific institutions around the globe. This exploration of the matter that makes up our world and of how it came to be has been, and will continue to be, a truly international endeavor.”

Captivating discoveries

In early 2001, as the earliest RHIC data came out, some scientists were convinced that they’d seen signs of the post-Big-Bang QGP. But the data also presented puzzling surprises. Instead of the predicted uniformly expanding gas of quarks and gluons, the matter created in RHIC’s collisions seemed to flow more like a liquid — and, remarkably, one with extremely low viscosity. Additional experiments and a careful multiyear analysis led the four original RHIC collaborations to conclude in 2005 that RHIC was generating a nearly “perfect” liquid. By 2010, they had sufficient evidence to declare this liquid hot enough to be the long-sought QGP.

Since then, RHIC physicists have been making precision measurements of the QGP, including its temperature at different stages, how it swirls — it’s the swirliest matter ever! — how quarks and gluons in the primordial soup transition under various conditions of temperature and pressure to the nuclear matter that makes up atoms in our world, and how collisions of even small particles can create tiny drops of the QGP. They’ve explored exotic forms of nuclear matter such as that found in neutron stars, detected traces of the heaviest exotic antimatter ever created in a laboratory, and explored how visible matter emerges from the “nothingness” of empty space. The sPHENIX experiment has only recently published its first physics results, laying the foundation for its future of scientific insights.

“RHIC transformed nuclear physics by demonstrating the remarkable consequences of ‘boiling the vacuum,’ to paraphrase renowned physicist T. D. Lee’s description of matter governed by quantum chromodynamics (QCD),” said Brookhaven Lab theorist Raju Venugopalan. “In QCD — the theory that describes quarks and gluons and their interactions — findings from RHIC propelled the rapid development of new analytical approaches and high-performance computing. The RHIC data also sparked several unanticipated connections between the behavior of the QGP fluid and strongly correlated condensed matter systems, including ultra-cold atoms, as well as links to concepts such as quantum entanglement and the formation and evaporation of black holes.”

Advances in nuclear physics theory and the enormous RHIC datasets have also pushed the evolution of supercomputers, AI methods for analyzing “big data,” and the infrastructure needed to store and share data seamlessly with RHIC collaborators around the world. In 2024, Brookhaven’s data center — which also houses data from the ATLAS experiment at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) at CERN, the European Organization for Nuclear Research, and other experiments — passed the milestone of storing 300 petabytes of data, the largest compilation of nuclear and particle physics data in the U.S. With the newest data from RHIC and ATLAS, the total now tops 610 petabytes.

In the proton spin program, RHIC’s measurements greatly improved the precision with which scientists could determine gluons’ contribution to proton spin, along with the contribution from quarks. This effort was motivated by surprising results from experiments elsewhere in the 1980s showing that quarks contribute only a fraction to this quantum property. Gluons were initially assumed to contribute the rest. RHIC’s measurements reveal that gluons contribute about as much as the quarks — not enough to fully solve the “spin puzzle.” A more recent analysis established that at least some of the gluons are spin aligned with the spin of the proton they are in. But there is still more to explore in this spin puzzle.

“Spin is one of the fundamental quantum numbers of every elementary particle in the universe except one, the Higgs,” said Elke Aschenauer, a Brookhaven Lab physicist who has played a pivotal role in RHIC’s spin physics program. “RHIC’s measurements have established the groundwork for understanding the complexity of proton spin. The future EIC will be a precision machine for studying proton spin.”

All Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider data is stored on tape at Brookhaven Lab’s data center. When physicists want access to a particular dataset — or multiple sets simultaneously — a robot grabs the appropriate tape(s) and mounts the desired data to disk within seconds. Collaborators around the world can tap into the data as if it were on their own desktop. (David Rahner/Brookhaven National Laboratory)

Continuing legacy

Even with so many impressive discoveries in the books, RHIC physicists say there will be many more to come for at least another decade.

“The science mission of RHIC will continue until we analyze all the data and publish all the papers,” said Abhay Deshpande, Brookhaven Lab’s associate laboratory director for nuclear and particle physics. He emphasized how important it will be to preserve RHIC’s data for future scientific analyses.

RHIC’s data will also continue to serve as an essential bridge between ongoing and planned experiments exploring nuclear matter at lower collision energies — for example at the Facility for Antiproton and Ion Research (FAIR) being built in Germany and the Super Proton Synchrotron at CERN — and at much higher energies at CERN’s LHC.

“Analyzing the latest RHIC data will also help train the next generation of physicists needed to run and analyze data from future experiments,” said Lijuan Ruan, a Brookhaven Lab physicist and co-spokesperson for the STAR Collaboration.    

A big part of that future will take place right here at Brookhaven National Laboratory where major components of the RHIC accelerator complex will live on in a new nuclear physics research facility, the world’s only polarized Electron-Ion Collider. Engineers and technicians will remove one of RHIC’s ion storage rings and replace it with a new ring for storing accelerated electrons inside the existing accelerator tunnel. Meanwhile, the other RHIC ring, refurbished for its new mission, will receive ions accelerated by C-AD’s existing injector complex, traveling around the tunnel in the opposite direction from the electrons. Scientists will leverage the experience gained during 25 years of RHIC operations — as well as reams of RHIC accelerator physics data — to develop and train new AI algorithms designed to optimize EIC accelerator performance.  

When electrons collide with ions where the two EIC rings cross, the action will be captured by a brand-new particle detector. Instead of recreating the early universe, these microscope-like interactions will enable precision measurements that reveal how quarks and gluons are organized and interact within matter as we know it in today’s world.

“We’ll learn how quarks and gluons generate mass, how their interactions contribute to proton spin, and much more that will revolutionize our understanding of matter — much as the science we’ve explored at RHIC has,” said Deshpande, who also serves as director of science for the EIC. “This is the future of Brookhaven Lab and nuclear physics in the U.S.”

Daniel Marx, one of the accelerator physicists working on the design of the EIC’s new electron storage ring, said, “It’s going to be very challenging, but also exciting. We’ll be doing things that have never been done before.”

Perhaps Marx was echoing the sentiments of the physicists who originally built RHIC, demonstrating another big part of RHIC’s legacy: an ongoing willingness to tackle unprecedented scientific and technological challenges.

“We are confident that we have the people who will make the EIC happen because of the expertise we have developed by building and running RHIC,” Deshpande said.

RHIC and the future EIC are funded primarily by the DOE Office of Science.

Brookhaven National Laboratory is supported by the Office of Science of the U.S. Department of Energy. The Office of Science is the single largest supporter of basic research in the physical sciences in the United States and is working to address some of the most pressing challenges of our time. For more information, visit science.energy.gov.

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