• Mexico carried out a raid on Sunday that killed the leader of the Jalisco New Generation Cartel.
• His killing sparked retaliatory violence across Mexico, sending cities spiraling into chaos.
• Satellite images show fires, roadblocks, and cars burning in the resort town of Puerto Vallarta.

Newly captured satellite imagery shows widespread fires, roadblocks, and cars burning in a Costco parking lot after cartel violence rocked the Mexican resort town of Puerto Vallarta, the company that took the photos said.

The imagery, captured Sunday by US spatial intelligence firm Vantor and analyzed by Business Insider, underscores the scale of the chaos gripping Puerto Vallarta, nestled along the Pacific Ocean in Mexico’s Jalisco state, and its hundreds of thousands of residents.

Fires and smoke can be seen across the city, including along a coastal road, in a Costco parking lot, at a shopping mall, and at an Autozone. Roadblocks are also visible in the imagery. Puerto Vallarta is a major tourist destination, especially in the winter.

Mexican forces carried out an operation Sunday that killed Nemesio “El Mencho” Oseguera Cervantes, the notorious leader of the Jalisco New Generation Cartel who had a $15 million US bounty on his head.

President Donald Trump designated the cartel as a foreign terrorist organization just last year. Karoline Leavitt, a White House spokesperson, said the US provided intelligence support to Mexico to assist with the operation, although she did not specify how.

The Trump administration has made it a priority to combat Latin American cartels, encouraging heads of state to have a tougher stance against them and even using military force against alleged drug boats in the eastern Pacific and Caribbean Sea.

Three additional cartel members were killed, three were wounded, and two more were arrested in the operation, which took place in Talpalpa, a town in the Jalisco state, Leavitt said. Mexico said three soldiers were hurt in the raid.

Retaliatory violence erupted in cities across Mexico following the raid, with organized criminal groups and suspected cartel members clashing with security forces and setting fire to cars and buildings.

The US State Department urged American citizens in some locations to shelter in place and said most domestic and international flights were canceled in Guadalajara and Puerto Vallarta, where scenes of the violence were shared widely on social media.

Dozens of suspected cartel members and security personnel have been killed in the violence, with Mexican authorities scrambling to regain control of the chaos.

• The 2026 Met Gala will take place on May 4, 2026.
• The event’s theme is “Costume Art,” and the dress code is “Fashion Is Art.”
• Beyoncé, Nicole Kidman, and Venus Williams will co-chair the gala with Anna Wintour.

The 2026 Met Gala will be here before you know it.

Fondly known as fashion’s biggest night, the Met Gala is an annual fundraiser that supports the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s Costume Institute and is hosted by the museum, Anna Wintour, and Vogue.

It’s always held on the first Monday in May, which will be May 4, 2026. Celebrities descend on New York City in droves for the event, showcasing their most high-fashion looks of the year on the iconic steps of the Met.

The 2026 event will support the museum’s “Costume Art” exhibition, and a slew of A-list stars will serve as co-chairs for the gala, which has a “Fashion Is Art” dress code.

Here’s everything we know about the 2026 Met Gala so far.

Celebrating ‘Costume Art’

The Met Gala has a different theme each year, centered on the exhibition the Costume Institute displays in conjunction with the gala.

For 2026, the museum will host the “Costume Art” exhibition, curated by Andrew Bolton, as announced in November 2025.

“Celebrate fashion as an art form this spring at The Met,” an Instagram post about the exhibit from the museum read. “Focusing primarily on Western art from prehistory to the present, the show will explore artistic representations of the dressed body, pairing fashions and artworks from the Museum’s vast collection to highlight the inherent relationship between clothing and the body.”

In a press release shared on December 10, 2025, Bolton said of the exhibit, “I wanted to focus on the centrality of the dressed body within the museum, connecting artistic representations of the body with fashion as an embodied art form.”

The exhibition will also be the first to be held in the museum’s new, almost 12,000-square-foot Condé M. Nast Galleries.

The 2026 Met Gala dress code is ‘Fashion Is Art’

The Met Gala’s theme is separate from its dress code, though they are typically related. In past years, for example, attendees have worn costume-like pieces for the “Camp: Notes on Fashion” event, Chanel designs for the gala that honored designer Karl Lagerfeld, and pieces with religious nods for “Heavenly Bodies: Fashion and the Catholic Imagination.”

And on Monday, Vogue announced the dress code for the 2026 gala is “Fashion Is Art.” In its announcement, Vogue said “the dress code encourages attendees to consider the many ways that designers use the body as their blank canvas.”

That dress code is fairly open for interpretation compared to those in the past. For instance, the 2022 Met Gala had a “gilded glamour, white tie” dress code, so attendees had a relatively narrow range of what they could wear. “Fashion Is Art” is more open to interpretation, as each designer expresses their art differently in fashion and naturally lends itself to greater variety on the red carpet.

Vogue also shared over 50 runway looks it said would suit the dress code, focusing on outfits that embraced specific artistic styles, like Baroque, Surrealism, and Impressionism. The list included dozens of designer artists, from Vivienne Westwood to Saint Laurent. It also spotlighted interactive art garments, such as the spray-painted gown Bella Hadid wore in a Coperni fashion show in 2022.

It’s clear there is no one way to rock the “Fashion Is Art” dress code, so fans of the event can look forward to seeing all kinds of artistic looks on the Met Gala red carpet in 2026.

Beyoncé makes her return to the Met Gala

The exhibit and its adjacent gala have been funded this year by Saint Laurent, Condé Nast, and Jeff Bezos and Lauren Sánchez Bezos.

The couple made their first appearance together at the 2024 event, during which Sánchez Bezos walked the carpet solo in an Oscar de la Renta gown and later met up with the Amazon founder inside.

They’re not the only stars who will be influential to the 2026 gala, though.

Each year, a different set of co-chairs partners with Wintour on the event, and in 2026, she turned to some of the most famous women on the planet to bring it to life.

Venus Williams, Nicole Kidman, and Beyoncé — who last attended the Met Gala in 2016 — will serve as co-chairs for 2026. Kidman and Williams have been frequent attendees of the event in recent years.

In addition, Zoë Kravitz and Anthony Vaccarello, the creative director of YSL, are heading up the Host Committee, where they will work with a slew of stars.

They include musicians such as Doja Cat, Sabrina Carpenter, Sam Smith, Teyana Taylor, and Lisa, as well as actors like Gwendoline Christie, Lena Dunham, Chase Sui Wonders, Angela Bassett, Rebecca Hall, and Elizabeth Debicki.

Models Alex Consani, Paloma Elsesser, Lauren Wasser, Yseult, and Adut Akech are also included, as are athletes Misty Copeland, A’ja Wilson, and Aimee Mullins.

Chloe Malle, the new top editor of Vogue, writer and activist Sinéad Burke, and artists Anna Weyant, Amy Sherald, and Tschabalala Self will also join the committee.

Vogue has never shared many details regarding the group’s duties, but they’re confirmed to attend a special dinner before the gala.

• The US Navy fired the USS Truxtun commander after a ship collision during resupply.
• Collision highlights risks of at-sea logistics amid US naval operations.
• Truxtun, part of the US campaign in the Caribbean, is now in port for evaluation.

The US Navy abruptly fired the commander of guided-missile destroyer USS Truxtun after his ship collided with a logistics vessel during a resupply operation at sea earlier this month.

Rear Adm. Carlos Sardiello, who leads US Naval Forces Southern Command and 4th Fleet, relieved Cmdr. James Koffi on Sunday.

The ship collision that resulted in a “loss of confidence” and cost Koffi his command occurred during a replenishment-at-sea operation involving USNS Supply, a fast combat support ship, the Navy said in a statement on the relief.

The cause of the ship collision remains under investigation but highlights the risks of at-sea logistics and the challenges of keeping naval forces on the move.

Replenishments-at-sea are resupplies in which one ship sails closely alongside another to transfer supplies such as fuel or ammunition. These missions are routine operations that support global naval activity by allowing vessels to remain at sea, rather than forcing them to return to port.

At-sea replenishments carry risks, though, that can be exacerbated by a range of factors beyond proximity, such as sea state, crew fatigue, communication breakdowns, and equipment failures.

Two personnel sustained minor injuries during the February 11 collision between the Truxton and Supply.

Koffi, who took over the Truxtun just over a year ago, has been reassigned to Commander, Naval Surface Group Middle Atlantic. The Truxton, which had been deployed for under a month when the ship collision happened, is in port in Ponce, Puerto Rico. The Navy said the ship is undergoing repairs.

Cmdr. Taylor Auclair, who most recently served at US Fleet Forces Command, has been assigned to command the Truxtun.

“The Navy maintains the highest standards for leaders and holds them accountable when those standards are not met,” the Navy said in a press release.

A near-miss during a resupply in 2024 resulted in the relief of the commander of USS John S. McCain, another destroyer. And last year, the Navy relieved the captain of an aircraft carrier after it collided with a civilian merchant vessel during a deployment that experienced a string of major accidents, including the loss of three fighter jets, including one to a friendly-fire incident.

The Truxton deployed to Caribbean waters as part of President Donald Trump’s pressure campaign against Venezuela and narcotics trafficking. The administration sent nearly a dozen warships, among other combat assets, to the region late last year. The military launched strikes on suspected drug-smuggling boats, seized oil tankers, and carried out a January raid inside Venezuela that resulted in the capture of its former president, Nicolás Maduro.

More recently, roughly a dozen Navy warships have been directed to the Middle East as the administration has shifted focus to a ballooning buildup in the region. As of last week, the Truxton is now one of just five ships remaining in the Caribbean

• More than 9,000 flights have been canceled since Sunday amid winter storm Hernando.
• Roughly 1 in 5 flights have been canceled on Monday.
• Travelers shouldn’t expect compensation for the “force majeure” chaos.

Even if you could make it to the airport as winter storm Hernando blankets runways and aircraft, your flight probably wasn’t going anywhere.

A “misery map” from the aviation-tracking website Flightaware shows where disruptions are piling up fastest. So far, more than 9,000 flights have been canceled across the US since Sunday. More disruptions are expected on Tuesday.

Cirium data shows that of the about 25,000 scheduled US flights on Monday, roughly 20% aren’t taking off, compared with 1% on a typical day. It was about the same on Sunday.

The Northeast is bearing the brunt of the storm, with nearly every flight from Philadelphia to Boston canceled. More than half of the roughly 750 daily departures from Washington, DC-area airports have also been scrapped, mostly from Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport, the closest to the city.

The misery map doesn’t currently show some smaller airports like Providence, Rhode Island, and Hartford, Connecticut, that have been similarly slammed by snow.

The disruptions — especially at busy hub airports — have caused a ripple effect across the national network, stranding travelers booked on subsequently canceled inbound planes far from home. This includes thousands of people on about 550 flights from abroad.

With only a handful of international flights per day, airlines may deploy additional planes to shuttle passengers back once the storm passes. Airlines made a similar call in January when people got stranded in the Caribbean amid a US raid on Venezuela.

Even after the snow lets up, it could take airlines days to get back on schedule.

Airport staff — many of whom may be stuck at home — may struggle to get to work quickly. Snow on the tarmacs, taxiways, and runways must be removed and full inspections completed before planes can safely land or take off. And aircraft must be de-iced and cleared of snow before each departure — processes that can take hours in heavy storms.

Travelers shouldn’t expect compensation for the chaos.

Airlines classify the snowstorm as a “force majeure” event — situations outside their control that force flight delays, cancellations, or diversions. Travelers may receive a voucher for meals or hotel accommodations as a gesture of goodwill, but it’s not required by federal law. Still, it doesn’t hurt to ask.

If you booked your flight with a travel credit card, such as the Chase Sapphire Reserve or the American Express Platinum, you may be able to recoup expenses through their dedicated reimbursement programs.

Travelers can get refunds for canceled flights (so long as they choose not to fly), and airlines are waiving change fees and fare differences as they suspend operations in certain airports. The changed flight must typically fall within a specific time window and be to and from the itinerary’s original airports.

It has been a hectic 24 hours for air travel.

About 40 Mexico‑bound flights were canceled or diverted on Sunday as carriers suspended operations to resort destinations amid cartel‑related unrest — adding to the logistical chaos already caused by the snowstorm.

A confusing TSA PreCheck policy — which ended in the lanes remaining open, even after Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem announced they’d close amid the partial government shutdown — didn’t help.

• My son was overwhelmed by college pressure during junior year.
• I pulled him out of school for a three-week trip to Antarctica.
• The experience gave him perspective and brought us closer.

My high school son, Jack, was overwhelmed with college anxiety — SAT prep, AP classes, acceptance rates, and all the pressure that comes with being a New York student.

It was hard to quiet the noise, so I decided to make a radical — and unconventional decision: I pulled him out of school and took him to Antarctica for three weeks over winter break.

Everyone told me it was a terrible idea, but I thought it was exactly what he needed.

We’ve been traveling since he was a baby

Jack and I have been traveling together since he was 3 months old. I’m a huge traveler, and when I had my first son, I decided to take him along for the ride.

In elementary school, I didn’t think twice about pulling him out in order to explore the world (Costa Rica, Mexico, Nevis, Finland). Against the judgment of some parents (and some school officials), I thought it was important to expose him to travel — different cultures, different ways of doing things, different ways of thinking. He quickly became my favorite travel companion, and I often thought travel Jack was the best version of himself.

It became more difficult to pull him out in middle school (but I still did — he missed eighth-grade graduation — to go on a trip to Sri Lanka). Once he entered high school (where, according to him, grades matter), it became really difficult to make up the work if I pulled him out.

Then came junior year and all the stress that comes with college prep settled upon us. Not only was he balancing a bunch of AP classes, but he was also studying for the SAT and doing all the college prep work. Basically, he (and therefore I) became slightly unhinged.

I booked a 3-week cruise to Antarctica

So when I floated the idea of going on a trip — just the two of us — Jack was instantly in, but I got tons of pushback from everyone else. Junior year is the most important year for college prep; he’s in AP classes, and it’s super hard to make up the work. Did I have my priorities straight? Now is the time to lock in, not travel.

But I ignored the noise and booked us on a three-week cruise to Antarctica — he had two weeks off for the holiday break and would miss one week of school. I had him talk to all his teachers about missed work and make-up, and, surprisingly, while a lot of parents thought I was nuts, the teachers were supportive of this once-in-a-lifetime trip.

And off we went on a three-week trip to Antarctica, South Georgia, and the Falkland Islands. I purposefully chose this cruise itinerary because it included South Georgia, which everyone says is a must if going to the white continent. It definitely made the trip long (by a week), but it turned out South Georgia was both Jack and my favorite part of the cruise (we saw thousands of king penguins in their beautiful orange plumage, alongside their baby chicks, which looked like they were wearing lush fur coats).

His perspective started to shift during the trip

Every day was a different adventure: hiking up snow-capped peaks; kayaking among icebergs looking for whales and seals; getting face-to-face with several types of penguins (we quickly learned the difference between rockhopper, macaroni, gentoo, Adelie, and chinstrap varieties).

Far from GPAs and college chatter, surrounded instead by penguins, elephant seals, and endless ice, Jack’s perspective started to shift. College stopped feeling like the entire world — and started looking like just one chapter.

One night we had dinner with Rich Pagen a naturalist and Kristen Wornson the Young Explorers guide. When Jack asked them how they knew what they wanted to do with their lives, they shared their experience of trying to find the right college and then moving into different career circles. It was great for Jack to hear that their path wasn’t always straightforward, but they ultimately found jobs they loved.

For Jack to see people loving their jobs — and to realize that no one thought they’d end up where they did, leading expeditions in Antarctica — was a great wake-up call.

Also, because this was the family holiday cruise, several other families with teens were on board. It was great for Jack to get out of his comfort zone and talk to teens from all over the world. One was taking a gap year before college, and it really got him realizing that there are so many paths out there.

The trip brought us closer together

The trip also brought Jack and me closer together; away from the distractions of everyday life, we connected in a way that’s rare during the teenage years.

On this trip, Jack and I always did the excursions together, and we ate dinner together every night. But on sea days, I attended every lecture, and he opted to go to the gym or sleep. By giving each other space, we really enjoyed the time we did spend together. I didn’t nag him, and he, in turn, didn’t give me an attitude.

It was one of our favorite trips together.

• A significant winter storm will pummel much of the Northeast from Sunday to Monday.
• Airlines are delaying and canceling thousands of flights as a result.
• Adding to the travel chaos, Homeland Security said it would shut down TSA PreCheck and Global Entry.

The Monday morning commute won’t be messy in New York City. It will be nonexistent.

New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani declared a state of emergency and a travel ban during a press conference on Sunday as a giant winter storm bore down on much of the Northeast.

The National Weather Service said to expect blizzard conditions and up to 20 inches of snow over the next 24 hours. Parts of New Jersey, Rhode Island, and Massachusetts could get up to 25 inches.

“The state of emergency closes the streets, highways, and bridges of New York City for all traffic,” Mamdami said. The travel ban begins at 9 p.m. Sunday and lasts until 12 p.m. on Monday.

US airlines, meanwhile, are canceling and delaying thousands of flights. As of Sunday afternoon, airlines had canceled over 3,000 flights and delayed over 2,900, according to the flight-tracking website FlightAware.

New York City’s John F. Kennedy and LaGuardia airports have the highest number of cancellations, followed by Newark Liberty International Airport, Philadelphia International Airport, Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport, and Boston Logan International Airport.

Anyone hoping to catch a flight in the region on Monday can also expect major disruptions, according to Cirium, an aviation analytics company. At LaGuardia Airport, for example, 82% of flights scheduled for Monday have been canceled.

Adding to what will likely be a chaotic 48 hours for travelers, the Department of Homeland Security announced Saturday night that it was suspending TSA PreCheck and Global Entry due to the partial government shutdown.

Despite the announcement, however, TSA Precheck and Global Entry lanes remained open at major airports on Sunday. In a statement, the Transportation Security Administration said it is evaluating the situation “case-by-case.”

“At this time, TSA PreCheck remains operational with no change for the traveling public,” a spokesperson said. “As staffing constraints arise, TSA will evaluate on a case-by-case basis and adjust operations accordingly.”

The federal government entered a partial shutdown earlier this month, delaying funding for some agencies, like DHS. TSA agents are essential workers, so they’re still working — for now. During the full government shutdown earlier this year, TSA agents and air traffic controllers went 43 days without a paycheck.