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On Instagram feeds that are often teeming with curated, contrived content, a recent post from Monette Wagner stood out for her disarming openness. Looking into the camera, Wagner, a 36-year-old mother of three, said in the video: “Divorce can feel like a death.” In what resembles a digital journal, Wagner has posted videos in real time about the emotions and life changes that have come with her recent divorce. Developing financial independence, getting used to co-parenting, and moving on from heartbreak are frequent themes of her Instagram posts. A growing number of people, the majority of them women, are sharing unvarnished divorce stories, both offering and seeking advice on social media. Moving beyond a stigma around discussing marital breakdowns, the content provides a space for the creators to heal, and for their followers to relate and reflect on their own experiences and emotions. A professional photographer in Indianapolis, Wagner already had a platform on Instagram to share and promote her work. But she recently took the page in this more vulnerable direction. Alongside posts about the heavier moments, she also shares lessons learned and more optimistic musings. She has posted about wanting to reconnect with the confident, curious person she was more than a decade ago — before she met her now-former husband. She’s revisiting passions she had as a teen, including skateboarding and learning to DJ. “I wanted to show my kids that you can still be strong even through these hard days. I wanted to show them how strong hope is,” she said. “I feel more confident. I feel resilient. I feel like I faced my fears of showing up scared, of putting myself out there as my authentic self.” On TikTok, where niche categories of content sometimes earn a nickname, content that delves into marital woes has been dubbed “divorce-tok.” The level of detail creators choose to divulge about their divorce and marriage varies widely. Some, like Wagner, do not post about their ex-partners. Others provide detailed accounts of issues in their marriage and the sometimes messy and lengthy process of finalizing their divorce. The voyeuristic world of social media tends to love story-time-style videos where creators talk as if they’re chatting on the phone with a friend, sparing no details. Some creators post one-off videos, while others make it the focus on their platforms. Trends related to divorce also periodically pop up online, like this season’s “hot divorcée summer” videos and clips showing people’s post-divorce “glow-ups,” or physical, and in many cases, emotional, transformations. The #divorce hashtag has millions of posts on both TikTok and Instagram. Jen Hamilton, a labor and delivery nurse with more than 5 million TikTok followers, recently has been sharing the “nitty-gritty” details behind her divorce, as she said in one video. Hamilton has explained how her husband led what she called a “double life” with another partner, and has shared videos of herself crying, cracking jokes and generally processing the news while maintaining her signature optimism. In a more celebratory post, Hamilton shared photos and videos from what would have been her 14th wedding anniversary, recognizing the occasion with what she called a “Jendependence Day” party. More than a dozen friends and co-workers joined her at her North Carolina home as she burned her bedsheets and toasted to her future beyond her marriage. “I feel like if I share my pain with you, I don’t feel so alone, because there’s so many other people going through the exact same thing,” she said in a video in July. She added that her followers then, in turn, feel less alone too. Some men have posted content along these lines, but women make up the vast majority of creators posting about divorce. Many of these creators say they’re not sharing their stories in hopes of gaining pity or sympathy, but rather are hoping to develop a sense of community online with people who have gone through similar experiences. Alex Daly, a 41-year-old creator in Philadelphia, started posting about her divorce around three years after she went through it. Once she found that she had processed her emotions around the divorce, she was eager to talk about it. She aims to reach people who are “still in the thick of it, because it’s a really hard place to be,” she said. “It can feel very lonely and isolating. It can feel like you’re the only person going through it,” Daly said. Followers have thanked her and told her she’s saying what they’ve been thinking and feeling. “You’re making me feel normal,” she said some people message her. It seems paradoxical that a topic that can be difficult or awkward to discuss with family and friends is also one some feel comfortable sharing with potentially millions of strangers online. But it can be much easier to forge digital connections than in-person ones, according to Tasha R. Dunn, an associate professor at the University of Toledo. Dunn researches the relationship between lived experiences and media, including how we present our lives on social media. “There are few divorce support groups in a given community, but you have something at the tip of your fingers on your phone or computer where you can find people who’ve literally shared your same experience,” Dunn said. “People maybe feel a little bit safer to put that content out there rather than to have a physical town hall and say, ’Everybody come, I’m going to share my experience.’” The candor that makes divorce-related content so popular could also be detrimental for those posting if they’re in the midst of legal proceedings. Jackie Combs, a matrimonial and family law attorney in Los Angeles, said she does not recommend that people share anything related to their divorce, especially personal grievances or intimate details, publicly online. “Every single reel that you put out there, every piece of content that’s related to it, you have to presume that somebody is watching and is going to use it as evidence, if needed,” she said. On social media, Combs herself often shares content about divorce, speaking about the importance of financial independence and prenuptial agreements. She said she sees social media as a key part of the “destigmatization” of divorce to show people it’s “not the end, it’s just a pivot.” Creators like Wagner and Daly also can be the subject of intense trolling and negativity. Daly said she’s received comments and messages from people saying she’s “ruining people’s lives” or that she doesn’t have morals. She said she tries not to let those comments or interactions get to her because those people don’t know what happened in the privacy of her marriage or who she truly is. The negativity is “just proving that there is still a stigma and a taboo around divorce,” Daly said. So it keeps her motivated to “share about how divorce just doesn’t have to be the end of your life and how it can actually be an amazing beginning.” Brought to you by www.srnnews.com

BANGKOK (AP) — China’s exports accelerated in August, jumping 25% from a year earlier on strong demand for autos and high-tech goods, its customs agency said Tuesday. The data came ahead of U.S. President Donald Trump’s planned meeting with Chinese leader Xi Jinping, set for late September, though Beijing has not yet confirmed the exact date for the visit. Exports grew 23.9% year-on-year in July. Imports climbed 28.2% in August from a year earlier, up from July’s 27.5% rise. That led to a $119.1 billion trade surplus for China, widening from $112.5 billion in July. “China is very competitive in its tech goods exports,” said Chi Lo, a senior market strategist for Asia Pacific at BNP Paribas Asset Management. In recent years, rising exports of electric vehicles, industrial machinery and semiconductors have helped fuel China’s robust shipments globally. “China has moved aggressively up the value chain and has become a major player in AI infrastructure and industrial automation,” he said. China has also largely been weathering disruptions from the Iran war better than many countries, while it has also been exporting more to Southeast Asia, Latin America and Africa, shielding it from impacts on its overall exports following elevated U.S. tariffs. Policymakers in the U.S. and in Europe have raised concerns over China’s ballooning trade surplus, which surged to a record $1.2 trillion for the whole of last year. Trade is expected to be among the key topics of discussion between Trump and Xi when the two leaders meet. The strategic stalemate between China and the U.S. will however likely remain, said Lo. “Both sides hold each other hostage in some strategic products, with the U.S. withholding high-end tech goods from being sold to China and China withholding rare-earth exports to the U.S.,” he said. China and the EU are also set to meet for ministerial level trade talks in the fall, as the EU grapples to reduce its around 1 billion euros a day of trade deficit with China. The EU has already implemented measures in July to protect its steel industry and has limited tax-exempt imports of Chinese e-commerce small parcels. At home, China is still struggling to boost its economy as consumption and investment remained sluggish following a yearslong real estate sector downturn. On Sunday, China said it was injecting around $54 billion into state banks and insurers to help lift its economy. Brought to you by www.srnnews.com

BANDAR ABBAS, Iran (AP) — In the Iranian port city of Bandar Abbas on the Strait of Hormuz, a waterfront once busy with boats, trucks and workers has fallen quiet. It’s a front line of the economic pain that the United States now hopes to intensify after six months of war. The Associated Press visited the city shaken by new U.S. airstrikes targeting coastal areas in the past week, and found anger along with growing anxiety about simply getting by as a U.S. blockade of Iranian ports continues. A taxi driver, Hamid Hajizadeh, said he does not understand Americans. “They are heroes in movies, but here they killed people in schools, wedding ceremonies and other places. They bombed roads and bridges,” he said. In this city of over 700,000 people, residents have a closer view than almost anyone of events on the strait that have seized global attention. They say their location has brought little but danger and discomfort over the past half year. Mohammad Torabian works at the dock providing services to passengers. Before the war, he said, as many as 50 trucks carrying food and meat would unload there every day. Now, with the U.S. blockade that’s aimed at keeping Iran from exporting its oil, much of the dock is empty. “The business right now is terrible,” Torabian said. He estimated that about 500 people had been earning a living around the dock but “there is no job here.” The fortunes of Bandar Abbas have long been tied to the sea and nearby Shahid Rajaee, one of Iran’s largest commercial ports. Shahid Rajaee has the capacity to handle 100 million metric tons of cargo a year, according to a report in July by Iran’s state-run IRNA news agency. Iranian officials have sharply criticized the blockade, which the U.S. imposed in April and then imposed again after negotiations with Tehran on a path to end the war fell apart. Washington has since vowed more economic pressure over the strait, which is crucial to global shipping of oil, natural gas and related products. Parliament Speaker Mohammad Bagher Qalibaf, the lead negotiator in talks with the U.S. that collapsed, warned earlier this month that an escalation of the blockade would be met with a military response. In Bandar Abbas, the effects are spreading through nearly every layer of the economy, from ships and dock workers to customs-clearing companies and shopkeepers. Mahsa Shojaei, an accountant with a customs-clearing company, said much of its business before the war involved importing rice, tea and coffee from India and Pakistan. Now, Shojaei estimated that 80% to 90% of her company’s workload has disappeared. A business that might have handled around 100 customs-clearance files during a certain period now processes only about 10, she said. At the same time, the cost of bringing cargo through customs has risen. The economic damage has spread beyond the waterfront, especially as Iran’s currency reaches record lows. In the retail markets, merchants said customers are disappearing as purchasing power deteriorates. Mehrdad Jahangiri sells children’s clothing at a shop that supports both his household and his father’s. He said sales have fallen by about half compared to the same period last year. “There are simply no customers,” Jahangiri said. “The market has become very quiet.” The timing of the war was especially damaging for merchants. It began just before the Iranian New Year, Nowruz, traditionally one of the busiest shopping periods. Merchants rely on families to spend more than during ordinary months. The war wiped out much of that expected business. Now another crucial shopping period is slipping away. In the weeks before schools reopen later in September, families traditionally buy new clothes for their children. This year, Jahangiri said, the usual crowds have barely materialized. The downturn has become severe enough that the shop sometimes falls behind on rent and accumulates debts in the market, something he said had not happened before. “People’s pockets are empty and incomes have fallen,” he said. Asked whether his family had been forced to cut back on everyday expenses, Jahangiri’s answer was immediate. “Absolutely,” he said. “It has changed a lot.” Other merchants have tried to adapt by offering discounts or allowing regular customers they trust to pay for goods in installments. For people earning their living directly from the sea, the problem goes beyond the disappearance of business. They also must consider how far they dare to venture offshore. Abbas Golzanaei, a motorboat driver who transports passengers to ships and other nearby ports, said that before the war he traveled as far as 30 miles (48 kilometers) for work. “Before the war, business was good,” Golzanaei said. “Now I can’t go beyond seven or eight miles. The sea is not safe.” That has left him with fewer passengers and less money. And “things are hard to find,” he said. “We have difficulty getting gasoline.” Farther offshore, cargo vessels were silhouetted against the setting sun, suspended in uncertainty like Bandar Abbas itself, waiting to know when they can move again. Brought to you by www.srnnews.com

NEW DELHI (AP) — The flash floods two weeks ago swallowed settlements and swept away roads and bridges in Nepal’s mountains and river valleys. Roughly 7,500 homes were destroyed, another 20,000 need rebuilding and at least 12 hydropower projects were damaged. The damage estimate so far of $2.56 billion is a staggering bill for a country with a total budget of $14 billion for the current fiscal year. The losses come at a challenging time for the Himalayan nation, which is emerging from a year of political upheaval after an uprising toppled the previous government. The new administration must now repair damaged infrastructure and restore political stability. At the same time, it faces a bigger challenge in developing a more resilient country as climate change increases Nepal’s exposure to extreme weather events. “It is a wasteland out there. The rebuilding is not going to be easy,” said Sumnima Udas, a member of Parliament and chairperson of a committee on international relations and tourism. The disaster is an early test for 36-year-old Prime Minister Balen Shah, who took office in March after months of political turmoil. The upheaval began last September, when youth-led protests over corruption and a social media ban spiraled into violence. Security forces opened fire on demonstrators, killing dozens, while government buildings and politicians’ homes were set ablaze. Prime Minister K.P. Sharma Oli resigned, and the country entered a period of uncertainty under a caretaker government. Shah, a former mayor of Kathmandu and political outsider, emerged from the unrest as the face of a new generation. His party won a sweeping victory in March, giving him a mandate to overhaul a political system widely blamed for failing to deliver. Now his government faces a different kind of crisis. It must show that it can deliver competent government while taking on the enormous task of rebuilding after the floods. So far, it has mobilized the army, police, helicopters and medical teams and coordinated with local authorities on evacuations and relief. Thousands have been rescued, but blocked roads, debris-filled hydropower tunnels and shortages of specialized equipment and trained personnel have hampered efforts to reach remote sites, exposing the limits of Nepal’s emergency response capacity. Those challenges have been compounded by an administration with little experience managing a crisis of this scale, with many of its leaders new to national government. Guna Raj Luitel, editor of Kathmandu-based The Diplomat Nepal magazine, said the government’s lack of experience had left it ill-equipped to respond to a catastrophe of this magnitude. “Nepal is a disaster-prone country, but we have failed to learn from the past,” he said. By Tuesday, more than 1,300 people had been reported dead in Nepal and Tibet, with about 5,000 still missing. While search and rescue operations continue, Nepal will need more than emergency help. Udas, the lawmaker, said Nepal requires stronger disaster warning systems and infrastructure built for increasingly volatile conditions. It may also have to reconsider where roads, settlements and hydropower projects are built to reduce the risk of repeating the same losses, she said. Disaster authorities’ preliminary damage estimate of $2.56 billion is nearly a fifth of Nepal’s annual government budget of about $14 billion. The full cost of rebuilding has yet to be calculated, though some estimates put it at $4 billion to $5 billion. The disruption is likely to weigh on tourism, one of Nepal’s economic lifelines, with consequences that could extend well beyond the immediate crisis for communities that depend on the tourism season for much of their income. The floods also hit a key hydropower corridor that accounts for about 10% of Nepal’s electricity generation, said Uttam Bhlon, vice president of Nepal’s Independent Power Producers’ Association. Including projects under construction, the corridor represents about 20% of the country’s generation capacity, he said. The reconstruction bill will add to the demands on a new government already under pressure to fund schools, hospitals, jobs and new investment. Nepal has sought international assistance, including from the United Nations, while countries and aid groups have provided emergency supplies, rescue expertise and other support. But the government says it will need much more international backing for the larger task of rebuilding. Luitel, the magazine editor, said developed countries should do more to support Nepal, arguing that it cannot shoulder the cost of the disaster alone. He said wealthier nations have a responsibility to help vulnerable countries cope with increasingly severe disasters linked to climate change. “Nepal can’t bear the cost alone,” he said. The science behind the disaster is still unclear. Researchers believe a high-altitude slope collapse involving rock and glacial ice sent an enormous volume of debris downstream, but they have cautioned against drawing a direct line to climate change. The changing landscape is harder to ignore. The Himalayas are warming rapidly, glaciers are retreating and rainfall and snowfall patterns are shifting. Nepal is especially vulnerable because much of its population and infrastructure sits in steep valleys below unstable mountain slopes. Yet Nepal has done little to drive the warming behind those changes. The World Bank estimates that the country produces about 0.1% of global greenhouse-gas emissions, even as it remains highly exposed to climate-related hazards. Udas said that imbalance has become one of Nepal’s central challenges. She said the country has taken steps to reduce its environmental footprint, including nearly doubling its forest cover over the past three decades, generating most of its electricity from clean sources and doing well in electric-vehicle adoption. But those efforts cannot shield the country from changes unfolding across the Himalayas, she said. That is why, Udas said, industrialized countries should take greater responsibility for helping Nepal prepare for and recover from climate-related disasters. “This is not them versus us,” she said. “This is about humanity and the planet.” —— Associated Press journalists Binaj Gurubacharya and Shristi Kafle in Kathmandu, Nepal, contributed to this report. Brought to you by www.srnnews.com

COLORADO SPRINGS, Colo. (AP) — Patrick Sullivan was sure it was a “crazy neighbor” honking a car horn nonstop while Sullivan was up feeding his infant son at 3 a.m. one night this summer. It was a neighbor all right, but not a human one. A black bear had opened the door of a Toyota SUV and gotten trapped inside the vehicle in Gold Hill, Colorado, northwest of Denver. In one of hundreds of examples of bears getting into more trouble than usual in the parched Rocky Mountains this summer, the animal kept bumping the horn as it ripped apart the Toyota’s interior, desperately trying to escape. “It’s totaled. It’s unfit to drive,” Sullivan said of the car. Millions of people live in or near bear habitat across the Rockies, where widespread drought has reduced supplies of nuts, berries and plants that bears eat. That’s prompting the animals to roam far and wide for food. Sullivan’s brother-in-law eventually freed the bear trapped in the Toyota. But such encounters can be deadly for bears. One recently stuck in a car in Colorado Springs died from the heat, and wildlife officials have killed dozens of others that could endanger people. Colorado officials report twice as many bear sightings and conflicts with humans this year compared with the average, including bears roaming where they aren’t normally found. Wildlife managers in New Mexico and Utah report record numbers of hungry bears have lost their natural hesitancy to raid homes, cars and campgrounds. A black bear up a tree in central Denver recently was tranquilized and relocated. At Colorado State University in Fort Collins, a bear during the fall semester move-in had to be caught and released elsewhere. In Utah, authorities moved four bears from the town of Moab where they’d been feasting in orchards. “Bears aren’t necessarily behaving any differently but they are definitely increasing their activity in the places that they’re looking for food,” said Travis Sauder, a state wildlife officer in southeastern Colorado. Black bears usually stick to Colorado’s mountains and foothills. This year they’ve been spotted on the plains more than an hour’s drive east of Colorado Springs. “When they get that far east, there’s just zero natural food sources that they would be looking for, like oaks or chokecherries,” Sauder said. There are plenty of temptations for hungry bears around homes: pet food in open garages, bird feeders and grease traps under barbecue grills. And then there’s trash in unsecured bins, by far the biggest attractant behind this year’s surge in bear activity, according to Colorado Parks and Wildlife data. Many bears that visit populated areas are tranquilized and moved out of town. If they start associating food with people, however, they can be euthanized. “A fed bear is a dead bear,” is the mantra of wildlife officials. They urge people to stash away anything a bear might even think of eating. Black bears typically avoid people and are less dangerous than the larger grizzly bears of the Northern Rockies. But black bears can be aggressive toward humans: In June, a black bear followed and then attacked and scratched a hiker in Golden, Colorado. Colorado has had at least four more attacks, including a bear outside an apartment building near Vail that scratched a man on Aug. 17 as he left a laundry room. Five days later, a bear tackled and bit a fisherman in the mountains southwest of Denver. The young bear was tracked down and killed. In Utah, over three dozen bears have been killed this year. That’s more than the past three years combined, according to the Utah Division of Wildlife Resources. The number killed by wildlife officials and authorized property owners in New Mexico is already up to 187, the most since 2011. Across the Upper Colorado River Basin spanning Wyoming, Colorado, Utah and New Mexico, this year’s snowpack was the worst on record. Scientists say human-caused global warming made that far more likely. “Human-animal conflicts in the context of climate change haven’t really been fully researched yet. And we’re still starting to kind of tease out what this means for us and what this means for all the species that we share the ecosystem with,” said Samantha Miller, senior carnivore campaigner at the Center for Biological Diversity. Add in vast areas of bear habitat scorched by record wildfires and it’s a recipe for problems. A few bear-trouble stories are heartwarming, like orphaned cubs successfully released into the wild after time in a rescue facility, where they learned to live on their own without raiding. “We’ve got to rescue a lot of bear cubs out of trees, including standing on some pretty shaky ladders to pull a bear cub that’s sleeping in a tree,” said Sauder. Andy Kerrigan, while working on a deck in Steamboat Springs, Colorado, this summer, found a cub that got into his truck through a window. He banged on the truck to scare it off. “But it had found my lunch in the seat. And it was like, ‘I’m not going anywhere,’” said Kerrigan, who eventually chased it away with a piece of wood trim. In Gold Hill, Sullivan’s brother-in-law solved the bear-in-Toyota problem by tugging a rope tied to a door handle. The bear bolted for the woods through the open door. “It was just sitting there waiting for someone to help him, basically,” Sullivan said. “So I’m glad we could have done that for him.” Brought to you by www.srnnews.com