Italian designer Giorgio Armani dies

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This is the Global News podcast from the BBC World Service.

I'm Valerie Sanderson, and in the early hours of Friday, the 5th of September, these are our main stories.

Tributes are being paid to the Italian designer and giant of the fashion industry, Giorgio Armani, who's died at the age of 91.

The Israeli military says it now holds 40% of Gaza city as it presses ahead with plans to fully capture the city.

After talks hosted by France, President Macron says that 26 countries have signed up to contribute to Ukraine's security after any ceasefire with Russia.

Also in this podcast.

The more I picked up, the more I saw that this was a good thing to do.

Partly for the water and certainly for me.

How for one group of elderly women, happiness is diving into a murky lake looking for trash.

A symbol of the best of Italy, he was able to bring luster to Italian fashion and inspire the entire world.

That's how the Italian Prime Minister paid tribute to Giorgio Armani, who's died at the age of 91.

Giorgio Maloney joined a host of actors and fashion insiders who praised the Italian maestro for his contribution to style.

Armani was supremely successful in founding an empire which eventually included clothing, sport, music, and luxury hotels.

Sarah Manetta looks back at his life.

Armani is my best friend.

No, he's my best friend.

On a stage between actors Sophia Loren and Steve Martin, Judge Armani smiles somewhat shyly and pretends to walk away.

The Italian designer was a favorite of Hollywood stars who wore him on screen and on the red carpet.

Sister Armani designed it and it's really tight and it's really beautiful.

I'm not you know a real like show-offy kind of guy but I do want people to pay attention to it and I think spiritually he makes things that allow me to feel that joy.

Style is not about being noticed, it's about being remembered, Mr.

Armani used to say.

And the elegant simplicity of his creations truly was what made him stand out and successfully weathered the passing trends of fashion for more than half a century.

But in an interview for a BBC documentary, Giorgio Mani talked about himself with humility.

I don't present myself as some sort of great personality.

Born in a small town in northern Italy just before the Second World War, he grew up in poverty.

As a young man, he first tried to become a doctor.

Then he went into the army.

His first brush with fashion was a job as a window dresser in a department store in Milan.

From there, he moved to fashion brand Cheruti and only launched his own company in 1974 after selling his car to pay for his first collection.

One show after the other, he began building a name for himself, revolutionizing fashion by tearing the jacket apart and getting rid of its stiff padding.

I realized that a certain kind of woman was looking for a stealth dressing that was more men-like.

They liked deconstructed jackets, plain, soft, and flowing.

Something they could move in freely, like a second skin.

But cinema was really what gave him international recognition.

The iconic scene in the movie American Gigolo, where Richard Gere tears into his closet and lines up on the bed for Armani outfits, was the beginning of a long collaboration between Hollywood and the Italian designer who never made a secret of his love for the big screen.

Cinema was my great passion.

If, when I was young, I could have afforded it, I might have preferred being a film director rather than a designer.

By the end of his life, his brand, one of the few still fully independent.

And although now there will be questions over his company's future, Giorgio Armani's legacy is already pretty much set in stone.

For many people, having something Armani is an aspiration.

For a young man or woman, owning an Armani suit is a sign of success.

That report from Sara Mineta.

Fashion journalist Alexander Fury interviewed Giorgio Armani for an interview published last week.

He tore up the rule book and he literally tore up tailoring.

He deconstructed men's tailoring, and basically, every suit that we have in the world today is a reaction to an Armani suit.

But he did also change women's wear.

I think a kind of apt summary is to say that he softened men's wear and he hardened women's wear.

He opened a VIP dressing salon in 1988, which was incredibly early for anyone to be kind of interacting with dressing celebrities on the red carpet.

And he also worked with on over 200 films with different directors.

Martin Scorsese Scorsese even directed a documentary about Armani in the early 1990s.

There was very much a response, a kind of creative exchange between him and those celebrities and a mutual admiration.

At one point, Armani was the biggest fashion company in Italy.

It kind of outstripped all of its competitors.

I would say that was probably in its heydays of the 1980s and early 1990s.

But obviously, it's still a sizable business and it was entirely independent, which was something that for him was incredibly important.

There's a huge Armani flagship in the middle of Milan, which which incidentally is in a building from the 1930s, but one that's built in the shape of an A, which is very kind of in keeping with everything Armani.

You know, and in that building, you can buy Armani clothes, but you can buy Armani chocolates, you can buy Armani floral arrangements, you can stay in an Armani hotel, you can live in Armani residences.

It really was, I think, beyond 360 in terms of his kind of creative control over all of these different spheres.

He once told me that the designer he most admired was Gabrielle Chanel.

And I think, interestingly, you can talk about a Chanel style, you can talk about an Armani style, and everyone knows what you mean when you mention those names.

Those names resonate with everyone, they have a universality, and that's kind of part of the legacy that he's left behind.

Fashion journalist Alexander Fury.

The Israeli military says it now holds 40% of Gaza City, the largest city in the Palestinian territory.

A spokesman, Effie Deffren, said the military offensive there would intensify in the coming days.

Today, we hold 40% of the territory of Gaza City.

The operation will continue to expand and intensify in the coming days.

Hamas will meet the IDF forces in Gaza City in full force.

This week, we began to mobilise tens of thousands of reservists in preparation for the deepening of the attack on Hamas in Gaza City.

Our global affairs reporter, Mimi Swabi, has more details.

Israel has increased its bombardments of Gaza City despite mounting international pressure to stop its campaign.

The Hamas-controlled health ministry says Israeli fire across the enclave killed at least 53 people on Thursday, most of them in Gaza City.

One strike reportedly hit a tent sheltering a displaced family, killing five people, including three children.

Footage showed a pair of blood-stained pink slippers among the debris.

One resident told the BBC that despite receiving multiple evacuation orders, they can't leave, as moving is too dangerous and there is nowhere safe to go.

Mimi Swabi.

The French President Emmanuel Macron says 26 Western allies have formally committed to deploying troops to Ukraine.

Speaking on Thursday, after a summit of 35 countries dubbed the Coalition of the Willing, Mr.

Macron said the soldiers could be sent to Ukraine the day after a ceasefire deal is agreed.

You have 20 or so countries ready to put troops on the ground in Ukraine, to have support

in the air, to have support in Ukrainian seas, and that will

boost the implementation of the support and the reassurance for the Ukrainian defense.

Mr.

Macron also accused Russia of trying to delay the peace process in order to seize more Ukrainian territory.

Our Ukraine correspondent, James Waterhouse, told me more about the outcome of the Paris talks.

I was hoping for some kind of concrete outcome because it is these security guarantees being discussed which are central to any kind of lasting ceasefire or peace deal for Ukraine.

What does Europe want?

It wants a ceasefire before anything else, including Ukraine.

The German Chancellor Friedrich Merz called for it once more, but Donald Trump, after arguably being lobbied by Moscow, has said, I'll bypass a ceasefire, let's go straight

to a peace deal.

I think that's reflective of the difficulties in slowing Russia's war machine.

So, what have we learned today?

Well, 26 out of 30 or so countries have said we will put troops on the ground or some kind of military contribution.

But what's notable is who isn't?

You know, Italy, Poland, yes, supporters of Ukraine, but seemingly unwilling to provide the troops after a ceasefire is signed or after the war is paused.

We're told, according to the French President Emmanuel Macron, there is already a military and political solution that has been presented to Donald Trump, but here is the rub.

It needs the US President to go for it.

Because otherwise, this is just political.

This is just an argument.

It still needs the might of America to mean anything.

They talked to President Trump via video link today, didn't they?

What's emerged about that conversation?

Well, Volodymyr Mizelensky said he voiced his unhappiness with some European countries continuing to buy Russian oil and gas, notably Hungary and Slovakia, allies of the Kremlin.

But of course, you know, last year, the EU collectively bought more Russian fuel than it did provide Ukraine with aid.

It does have long-term goals to completely wean itself as a bloc, but clearly Donald Trump is perhaps looking to continue his policy of trying to gradually starve the Russian war machine.

He's already slapped India with heightened tariffs for buying Russian oil.

But the consensus in Europe is this, that there is still not enough external pressure being applied on Vladimir Putin to put the brakes on, to change course.

Just yesterday in China, he said, you know, we are still going to pursue our military goals.

And that is what Europe is desperate to change.

Could Donald Trump take stiffer action with Russia's biggest oil customers?

Europe certainly hopes so.

And meanwhile on the front lines, Russia is pushing and pushing, isn't it, to gain more Ukrainian ground?

Yeah, I mean that just has not changed.

If you look at the remaining Ukrainian-controlled part of the Donetsk region, I mean this is the focal point, right?

You've got three or four major cities that sit in hilly terrain.

It's a huge, it's militarily significant.

It is this area which is central to these negotiations, where Russia is saying, you give us the rest of the Donetsk region and we'll stop the war.

What Ukraine in Europe is saying is, these are cities we've staunchly defended.

I mean, I've been there countless times.

They have not become close to falling.

And what Zelensky is saying is: if you allow Russia to take this hilly terrain, to take the remaining Donbass region of eastern Ukraine, it will just regroup, regather, and have another go, just like it did in 2014 after it seized Crimea.

James Waterhouse.

The operator of the funicular tram in Lisbon, which crashed on Wednesday evening, killing at least 16 people, has promised to reopen the service in future.

The public transport company Carries has suspended the city's other funiculars while inspections are carried out.

More than 20 people, including foreign nationals and a child, are among those injured.

The initial findings of investigations into what caused the crash are expected to be published later today, Friday.

Our Europe correspondent, Jessica Parker, sent us this report from Lisbon.

The ding of the bell from one of the funicular cars on Elvedor de Gloria on Wednesday evening, moments before the journey went terribly wrong.

This sound is from the lower car, not the upper one, that careered out of control, derailed, and crashed on a bend.

The footage was filmed by Rasha on holiday with her husband and son as the carriage set off.

So we were driving up and all of a sudden there was no brakes in our cable card.

It was going down fast with acceleration, like there's no control, and it hit down.

The hit was very hard and people were crashing each other.

We didn't know what's happening and everyone started to shout and scream.

It was very scary because it was within some seconds.

Elvador de Gloria is the best known of Lisbon's famous funicular railways.

Within minutes it carries people between the Restoradores Central Square in downtown Lisbon to the buzzing streets above of Barroto.

The two cars, connected by a cable, run on a counterweight system.

As one car goes down, its weight lifts the other up.

But just after 6 p.m.

on Wednesday evening, horror struck.

Civil Protection Officer Antonio Rodriguez believes a big focus of the investigation will be the connecting cable.

There are indications that it may have ruptured at the moment of liftoff, when the strain and tension on the cable are greatest.

Experts are looking at the engineering mechanism to understand what failed.

Lisbon's public transport operator Caris told reporters they couldn't yet reveal what had caused the accident, but said they had increased maintenance spending in recent years.

Portugal's Prime Minister described the crash as one of the great human tragedies in the country's recent history.

Jessica Parker.

Now, what's the key to happiness and a long, healthy life?

Well, how about diving into a cold, muddy lake looking for trash?

One group of women, all over the age of 65, swear by it.

They're called OLAUG, or old ladies against underwater garbage, and together they're clearing up the waterways and ponds of Cape Cod in Massachusetts, in the US, but also it seems improving their own well-being, both physical and mental.

The founder, 85-year-old Susan Bauer, a retired psychologist, told James Benendez how it all began.

I started around 2018 because I had tried so hard to get towns to act so that turtles wouldn't lose their habitat, stop dogs from running in and out of the pond, stop people from making new beaches.

And I failed and failed and failed.

And so the one thing I sort of could do without asking anybody's approval was to pick up garbage.

And the more I picked up, the more...

I saw that this was a good thing to do.

Is it hard work?

Oh, yes, it's very hard work.

You can tell by the tryouts we have every year, and you have to swim a half a mile in under 30 minutes and then be able to complete that mile.

So you have to be a tireless swimmer.

But then when you get going on the beer cans and the golf balls, and you're diving eight to ten, sometimes twelve feet, time after time after time, and then you come up, you hand the can to the kayaker.

Often you'll give her three fingers, four fingers, meaning I've got four more down there.

Wait for me.

How many beer cans can you get in a single dive?

Yeah, you get tired.

And we're in the water, really whatever the temperature from May through September for an hour to an hour and a half.

I mean, you talked about the trials, but you don't seem to have any trouble finding volunteers.

We have 30 people on our team right now.

We have 45 volunteers.

I wish I could use every one of them.

Every one of them wants to join, wants to be part of this adventure, because there aren't that many adventures, and especially for women over 65.

Is that the bottom age limit then?

65 to 85, I'm the 85.

Is there something more to picking up the litter that improves your well-being, do you think?

We are an environmental service.

We get the spent fireworks with leaking perchlorates out of the water.

We get car batteries.

We get bad things out of the water.

But we're also an inspiration for women over 65.

We're active, we're strong.

As a retired psychologist, I think

the most active of the active ingredients is the fact that we're in the flow, in the zone.

And by that, I mean

that we present ourselves with a job that is so challenging, so difficult, slightly dangerous, very definitely slightly dangerous.

We never know what we're going to pick up or what we're going to find.

We lose track of ourselves and we are totally unself-conscious.

The 85-year-old founder of Old Ladies Against Underwater Garbage, Susan Barr.

Still to come, as new research suggests watching too much TikTok on the toilet is bad for the bowels, this doctor is understanding.

They're as addictive as a one-armed bandit in a casino, so we're sort of fighting that.

So I don't feel sort of too blameful of all of us as humans.

Suffs!

The new musical has made Tony award-winning history on Broadway.

We the man to be home!

Winner, best score!

We the man to be seen!

Winner best book!

We the man to be quality!

It's a theatrical masterpiece that's thrilling, inspiring, dazzlingly entertaining, and unquestionably the most emotionally stirring musical this season.

Suffs, playing the Orpheum Theater October 22nd through November 9th.

Tickets at BroadwaySF.com.

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After a week of turmoil at the United States Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the CDC, the man who sparked it all, America's controversial health secretary Robert F.

Kennedy Jr., has been defending himself in a bruising Senate hearing.

The nephew of JFK insisted to Republicans and Democrats that he'd been right to shake up the department and fire its recently appointed director, Susan Menares.

When my uncle was president, we spent zero on chronic disease.

Today, we spend $1.3 trillion.

We are the sickest country in the world.

That's why we have to fire people at CDC.

They did not do their job.

This was their job to keep us healthy.

Thank you.

And I need to fire some of those people to make sure this doesn't happen again.

And in a fiery exchange with the Colorado Democrat Michael Bennett, Mr.

Kennedy denied he was taking away parental choice with possible changes to vaccine policy for diseases including measles, mumps, and polio.

I'm asking the questions for Mr.

Kennedy on behalf of parents and schools and teachers all over the United States of America who deserve so much better than your leadership.

That's what this conversation is about, Senator Chairman.

Senator, they deserve the truth, and that's what we're going to give them for the first time in the history of that agency.

Our North America correspondent, Nome Igbell, followed the hearing, and she told us it was a very tough encounter for Senator Kennedy.

One Democratic senator described him as a charlatan.

I think it was always going to be very bruising.

I remember his confirmation hearing back in February.

RFK insisted he was an anti-vaccine.

Democrats did not believe him.

There were some Republicans that were skeptical.

And then, since becoming America's top health official, he's taken all these drastic steps.

You mentioned there, firing the the director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

It was someone he actually appointed, and he's also terminated research on some life-saving vaccines.

But as we heard there, he hugely defended himself.

And this hearing, it's worth mentioning, you know, it's not like he will lose his job or anything, but it was an opportunity for lawmakers to really sort of hold his feet to the fire and question him on what he's been doing the last few months.

So he won't lose his job, but will this hearing change anything?

I mean, might he change course?

It'll be difficult to see how that could happen.

So, it's worth mentioning that there are plenty of people who believe in the methods of RFK.

So, the Make America Healthy Again movement

is pretty vocal.

There are many Republicans that agree with him on being sceptical about vaccines.

You're already seeing the impact of some of his changes.

We're seeing in Florida where they've moved to end constitutionally upheld vaccine requirements.

But I think if you look at the polls, the Make America Healthy Again movement is pretty fringe.

There are plenty of polls won out today by our CBS partner station that say Americans tend to believe that Robert F.

Kennedy Jr.'s policies are making vaccines less available rather than more available and they want them to be more available.

But at the same time, the large majority of Americans feel that government policy ought to make vaccines more available if people want them.

And that is, I think, RFK's position generally.

But in terms of whether or not he will be fired, Donald Trump massively supports him.

How worried is the medical establishment about him and about his current policy?

I think they are really worried, especially if you look at the American Academy of Pediatrics, for example.

They've broken with the CDC advice.

They released vaccine recommendations last month, and that is a break from the federal guidance that they're usually shaped by when it comes to health.

And basically, they have said that they do recommend vaccines for healthy children and pregnant women, and they do not agree with the CDC's advice.

And just to mention, the AAP is a professional organisation, has more than 65,000 board-certified pediatricians.

And so you do have groups like that really concerned about what's happening.

Nomia Iqbal.

Another major concern in the debate over health in the US is, of course, the obesity epidemic, which affects numerous other Western countries.

Perhaps not surprisingly, it's more tempting, more rewarding for the brain to eat tasty combinations of sugar, fat, and salt than to devour broccoli.

Now, the American doctor who led the White House's scientific COVID-19 response team has written a book about food.

He himself has used weight loss drugs like Azempic and Manjaro, but he thinks they're not a complete solution to what he calls an abundance of addictive food.

David Kessler spoke to Evan Davis and began by explaining his battles with his own weight.

I've gained and lost my body weight repeatedly over my lifetime.

I have suits in every size.

Every time I lost it, I thought I was done and it would come back.

And this brings us then to the food that we're eating.

You think we are literally addicted to certain kinds of foods, and they're not foods that are giving us much nutrition.

They're foods that are giving us basically a lot of dopamine hits.

Addiction is not about the weak or the downdrotten.

The human brain evolved to deal with scarcity, not abundance.

For much of human history, there was no guarantee as to when our next meal would arrive.

So our biological systems are designed to seek out the sweetest, most energy-dense foods.

We're wired to focus on the most salient stimuli in our environment.

And that, for many people, it's that energy-dense food.

And only when you go without, try to, you know, stop doing it, do you see that craving, that relapse.

If you just keep on eating, you're not going to notice those addictive circuits, those reward circuits.

Those ultra-formulated foods, they have been engineered to manipulate the brain's reward systems.

I mean, these foods have become the new cigarette, and they have resulted in a health catastrophe.

One interesting thing is there are countries that have not gone as far down the road you're describing as the United States or the United Kingdom.

I'm thinking, say, of France, where they sit and they eat a lot, you know, they have a three-course meal at school for lunch.

They love cheese,

but they're nothing like as obese as the Americans.

And it's just what is going on there.

If you look, France and Italy, there's much less ultra-processed foods.

I mean, also, I think that if you look in some of the Asian countries, and certainly the ultra-formulated foods, you just don't see these unnatural combinations of fat and sugar, fat and salt.

I have to say, it rings so true to me.

I find when I go to the U.S., now I'm not eating at home if I go to the U.S.

I'm always eating in hotels or restaurants.

I feel

I never go anywhere without such big portions, and I'm never anywhere where I'm so hungry.

I'm always hungry in the U.S.

It's as though the food is designed to make you.

The next time you see yourself like that, ask yourself, what just triggered that?

It's what's called Q-induced wanting.

Now, a cue can be the time of day.

It could be you just passed that bakery.

It could be a memory of a food you ate even decades ago.

Now, all of a sudden, something triggers that thought.

If you eat the food, that thought goes away.

But if you try to resist, maybe I shouldn't have that.

Maybe it won't be good for me.

But then what happens?

And you have that craving.

And then what do you see with weight?

You lose it, but you gain it back.

You have that relapse.

So you have this cues-induced wanting.

You have this craving.

You have this relapse.

Those are the essential elements of an addiction.

David Kessler.

With AI-powered websites becoming a part of daily life for millions around the world, some in Africa are concerned that citizens there are being excluded from Western-focused software.

Efforts are being made in South Africa, Kenya, and Nigeria to create more AI products in African languages.

Researchers have recorded more than 9,000 hours of local speech to open up this transformative new technology to more people across the continent, as Pam Safilani reports.

In the blistering sun in Rustenburg, the heart of South Africa's platinum region, we arrive on a 21-hectare farm and find a small team hard at work tending to rows and rows of vegetables.

That's Gilebukhile, Leibu Musime.

She's a 45-year-old mother turned produce farmer.

Interchanging between two local languages, Setswana and Isethosa, she gives instructions to each of her workers on what needs to be done.

It's a small glimpse of language diversity at play, how many people, not just in South Africa, but across Africa, often weave between indigenous languages to communicate.

Africa is home to a third of the world's languages.

Despite this, in AI development, those languages are missing.

Critics say the issue is a lack of investment and readily available data.

Many of the well-known AI systems are trained on English, Chinese or European data sets, what researchers call high-resource languages.

But for millions of people across Africa who only speak indigenous languages, this means being left behind.

Yet, local experts say the opportunity for AI to help solve everyday challenges in Africa is immense if designed with local languages in mind.

Our farmer, Leibu, agrees.

She uses a homegrown app, AI Pharma, for help when problems arise on her farm and can act quickly, saving time and money.

Prompting it in her home language, Setsuana, the app understands and responds with suggestions.

You can see my cabbages, they're like opening.

So, you know, I can go into AI and ask them my cabbages are opening what that is.

I think for somebody in the rural areas like me, who is not exposed to technology or anything, you can ask in a simple language.

So, what did you just ask the APNA?

I just asked that for dinner.

But such language-savvy tools are extremely rare, and AI needs massive data to work well.

A new project called Africa Next Voices may help with this.

Its researchers have created the largest known data set of African languages.

Across South Africa, Kenya and Nigeria, they asked everyday people to talk about everyday things from farming, schooling to healthcare in 18 different local languages.

Language is not just the words.

That's South African Professor Bukhosi Marivate, a computer scientist and African languages enthusiast.

He's one of the leads on the African Next Voice project, which took two years to complete.

If I was to go to Nigeria, to Kenya, there are shared histories, things like colonialism, empire that have impacted in the way that we think about languages and the way that they develop.

You need some basis to start off with, and that's what we hope the African Next Voices is.

And then people will build on top of that and then add their own innovations.

Vukosi Maravate, Professor of Computer Science at the University of Pretoria, ended that report by Pumza Filani.

If you picture all the ways mobile phones have changed lives, you may not think bowels are anywhere near the top of the list.

But doctors are warning that mobiles are having a bigger impact on our insights than we might think.

The BBC's Will Chalk has the story.

In a first for my once relatively glamorous journalistic career, I've had to come to the toilet to record this piece because it's all about how we pass our time when we're sitting on the loop.

And one habit in particular.

That's your £36 model.

Namely, scrolling through apps like TikTok on our phones.

Scientists at the Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center in Boston, in the US, analysed the toilet habits and bowel health of 125 volunteers.

They found toilet scrollers were 46% more likely to have hemorrhoids than people who left their phones outside.

Why?

Well, put simply, it's because they're incentivised to sit there longer.

They found 37% of phone users spent more than five minutes on the loo, compared to 7% of those without one.

The longer you're on the toilet, the more pressure it puts on your anal tissues.

Chris Challant is a colorectal surgeon in Sheffield, in England.

Part of that is just the design of the toilet, that while you're sitting there there for a long period there's nothing actually supporting your pelvic floor so all of the weight and the gravity of while you're emptying is passing straight out through you hence increasing the risk of piles developing.

Now I'm not actually old enough to remember this but I am reliably told that before phones people would often take a book or even a newspaper with them to the toilet.

So what's changed?

Ellie Cannon is a doctor in London.

The phones are designed to be be addictive.

So they are designed to do this sort of scroll refresh thing and you always get something new, you know, so you have another quick look, you know, so they're sort of there as addictive as a one-armed bandit in a casino.

So we're sort of fighting that.

So I don't feel sort of too blameful of all of us as humans.

The participants in this study were all aged 45 or over.

And the researchers say amongst the younger generations, nearly everyone they asked said said they take their phone to the loo.

So they think this problem is only likely to get worse in the future.

Luckily, there's a solution.

The study's authors say setting yourself a two-ti-tock limit per toilet trip should do the trick.

In the words of one of the doctors, when you go in, you have just one job, and you should focus on that job.

If the magic hasn't happened within five minutes, take a breather and come back.

Now you know, we'll chalk reporting.

And that's it from us for now, but there'll be a new edition of the Global News Podcast later.

If you want to comment on this podcast or the topics covered in it, send us an email.

The address is globalpodcast at bbc.co.uk.

You can also find us on X at BBC World Service.

Use the hashtag Global Newspod.

This edition was mixed by Chris Cusares.

The producers were Alison Davis and Rebecca Wood.

The editor is Karen Martin.

I'm Valerie Sanderson.

Until next time, bye-bye.

Suffs, the new musical has made Tony award-winning history on Broadway.

We the man to be heard.

Winner, best store.

We the man to be seen.

Winner, best book.

We the man to be quality.

It's a theatrical masterpiece that's thrilling, inspiring, dazzlingly entertaining, and unquestionably the most emotionally stirring musical this season.

Suffs!

Playing the Orpheum Theater October 22nd through November 9th.

Tickets at BroadwaySF.com.