10 Best Books on Guns in America

Arts & Culture, Books

The gun has come to embody many contradictions over America’s history: individual liberty and the police state, empowerment and violence, defense and death. To understand America’s complicated culture of guns is an interdisciplinary pursuit: legal, historical, sociological, economic. The following books are all exemplary attempts at that understanding.Article continues after advertisementRemove Ads
One might begin at the Second Amendment, with its disputed meaning and the intentions of the Framers, the inextricable way in which gun rights sought to preserve existing systems of oppression and power, namely slavery, and that still today arguments around guns are inherently racialized. Guns, too, have always been a commodity, and in many ways, the gun industry created gun culture as we know it. One third of adult Americans own a gun. The NRA wields unfathomable political power. And every single day, at the hands of our own inventions, one hundred Americans die, seven of whom are children.
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Dominic Erdozain, One Nation Under Guns: How Gun Culture Distorts Our History and Threatens Our Democracy, 2024
One Nation Under Guns is a “brilliant and gut-wrenching” history and analysis of America’s gun culture as it has developed since the Second Amendment (The New York Times Book Review). The book opens with a man who is “a pillar of the gun culture,” an ex-Marine and columnist for Guns & Ammo, showing a Dutchman how to shoot a gun: “‘This… is what keeps our politicians from getting rid of the Bill of Rights,’” he says, referring to the semi-automatic rifle. Writer and historian Dominic Erdozain argues that “our interpretation of the right to bear arms has been not merely muddied but contrary to what most of the framers apparently intended.” The book “considers guns from cultural, legal and historical perspectives” in under 200 pages, situating each event in historical context, and examining each word of the Second Amendment; it “is so comprehensive and assured that the moment I finished it, I immediately went back to the beginning and read it again.” (The NYT Book Review) Article continues after advertisementRemove Ads

Pamela Haag, The Gunning of America: Business and the Making of American Gun Culture, 2016
It’s too easy to forget that even objects imbued with such political controversy, existential power and cultural deification as the “gun” are also products manufactured, goods—bought, sold and advertised. Pamela Haag’s The Gunning of America corrects “the perception of the gun’s inevitability in American life by showing its history as a commodity invented and then deliberately marketed and distributed like any other widget or household appliance.” (The New Republic). She contends that “the gun industry created, rather than responded to, America’s gun culture,” and “successfully exploited notions of frontier individualism, responsibility, and masculinity” to the exclusive benefit of the bottom line. Haag ascribes the origins of the gun industry to the Winchester Repeating Arms Company, illustrating how their business success calcified the American interest in the gun, as it is today.

Michael Waldman, The Second Amendment: A Biography, 2014Article continues after advertisementRemove Ads
The Second Amendment is a single, awkwardly constructed sentence of twenty-seven words, yet the history of its sustained interpretation and misinterpretation may reveal some essence of America. The Second Amendment: A Biography seeks to do so through careful historical analysis, depicting the transformation of belief “from defense of the homeland to defense of the home” (LA Times Book Review). Waldman, a constitutional lawyer and presidential speechwriter, insists “that the Second Amendment did not create an individual right to arms.” The book a “readable, often chatty, thoroughly documented recounting of the Second Amendment’s history shows it changing in character as American society changed” (The New York Times Book Review). How does the ongoing debate of this short text reflect an uneasiness at the root of the American identity?

Carl T. Bogus, Madison’s Militia: The Hidden History of the Second Amendment, 2023
In Madison’s Militia, Carl T. Bogus shows that “the right to bear arms was not about protecting liberty but preserving slavery.” He argues that “a close examination of the context in which Madison drafted the Second Amendment reveals the text as an offering to white southerners preoccupied with containing slave rebellion and uneasy about losing control of the primary instrument for it, the militia” (The New England Quarterly). Carl T. Bogus is a professor of law emeritus at Roger Williams University, but Madison’s Militia is a history, told with the scrupulousness of a lawyer, “a surprisingly fast-paced account of the events leading up to the Second Amendment” (Jeannine DeLombard, author of In the Shadow of the Gallows).
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Andrew C. McKevitt, Gun Country: Gun Capitalism, Culture, and Control in Cold War, 2023
“Andrew McKevitt’s excellent Gun Country… insists on an often neglected fact: guns are a commodity” (London Review of Books). Gun Country “recasts the story of guns in postwar America as one of Cold War and racial anxieties, unfettered capitalism, and exceptional violence that continues to haunt us to this day.” Beginning in the 1950s, after the WWII, the book describes how “young gun entrepreneurs connected American desires and consumer demand with a previously unexploited source of supply: war surplus guns from around the world.” McKevitt, a professor of history, contends that “war made the gun country,” and then war “became a metaphor for understanding it.”
Shortlisted, 2024 Cundill History Prize • One of the Washington Post’s Notable Nonfiction Books of 2023

Jennifer Carlson, Policing the Second Amendment: Guns, Law Enforcement and the Politics of Race, 2020Article continues after advertisementRemove Ads
Jennifer Carlson, professor of sociology and MacArthur Fellow, “shows how the politics of guns cannot be understood—or changed—without considering how the racial politics of crime affect police attitudes about guns” in Policing the Second Amendment. A sociological study, Carlson interviewed close to eighty police chiefs, and conducted extensive archival research, to dissect the racism that undergirds policing, and hence—the gun debate. She “reveals the troubling racial politics that animate gun laws and legitimize lethal state violence” (Forrest Stuart, author of Ballad of the Bullet). Carlson’s other two books also deal with guns in America: Citizen-Protectors: The Everyday Politics of Guns in an Age of Decline (an ethnography of gun-owners) and Merchants of the Right: Gun Sellers and the Crisis of American Democracy (which focuses on gun sellers leading up to January 6th).

Charles E. Cobb Jr, This Nonviolent Stuff’ll Get You Killed: How Guns Made the Civil Rights Movement Possible, 2015
This Nonviolent Stuff’ll Get You Killed is Charles Cobb’s “richly detailed memoir of his experiences with the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee during the civil rights struggles of the 1960s” (The New York Times Book Review). He “describ[es] the vital role that armed self-defense has played in the survival and liberation of black communities,” explaining how non-violence and armed self defense are not mutually exclusive philosophies. Charles E. “Charlie” Cobb Jr. is a journalist, professor, and former activist. In the introduction to the book, he describes his aims well: “In some respects, this book is a way to introduce readers to people and political currents that have never been particularly visible in the history of the civil rights movement… the larger story… is the story of black communities organizing and fighting for change, unwilling to live under white supremacy any longer.”

Alexandra Filindra, Race, Rights, and Rifles: The Origins of the NRA and Contemporary Gun Culture, 2023
To understand the state of guns in America requires understanding the history and influence of the NRA. In Race, Rights, and Rifles, Alexandra Filindra, professor of political science, “shows how ascriptive republicanism transforms the right to self-defense—a basic human impulse for survival—into a rallying point for political polarization and a justification for an investment in illiberal democracy,” by tracking the arguments for individual gun ownership over time (Jennifer Carlson, author of Policing the Second Amendment). The book is an “eye-opening examination of the ties between American gun culture and white male supremacy from the American Revolution to today.”

Gary Younge, Another Day in the Death of America: A Chronicle of Ten Short Lives, 2016
On a single day in 2013, ten American children and teenagers were killed by guns. Another Day in the Death of America is the account of this day—when more children died by gun violence than usual, but not by much. Gary Younge is an award-winning journalist and acclaimed author who also happens to be a Brit, “a personable, unusual narrator.” In the New York Times Book Review, the book is described as “exactingly argued, fluidly written and extremely upsetting.” “This is Gary Younge’s masterwork,” says Naomi Klein, author of Doppelganger, “you will never read news reports about gun violence the same way again. Brilliantly reported, quietly indignant and utterly gripping. A book to be read through tears.”
Winner of the 2017 J. Anthony Lukas Prize • Shortlisted for the 2017 Hurston/Wright Foundation Award • Finalist for the 2017 Helen Bernstein Book Award for Excellence in Journalism • Longlisted for the 2017 Andrew Carnegie Medal for Excellence in Non Fiction

Toni Jensen, Carry: A Memoir of Survival on Stolen Land, 2020
In Carry, Toni Jensen reflects on what it means to exist as an Indigenous woman in America, through snapshots of encounters with gun violence, and yet does so “with a controlled voice like a Philip Glass composition, smooth, meandering yet repetitive” (The New York Times Book Review). Powerful and poetic, Jensen combines the personal and the historical, depicting experiences that are, deplorably, not singular, indeed are endemic to the American experience. “This is America,” she writes, “Everywhere we live, our neighbors may commit gun violence. Everywhere we live, the police may commit gun violence on us or on our neighbors.” “We need more voices like Toni Jensen’s, more books like Carry” (Tommy Orange, author of There There). 
New York Times Editors’ Choice • Finalist for the Dayton Literary Peace Prize

Consider the Shipwreck: Ten Books on Maritime Disasters and Ecological Collapse

Arts & Culture, Books

I am a nature writer during ecocollapse. I have an incurable genetic kidney disease, polycystic kidney disease (PKD), inherited from my father, that has tracked down our family for more than one hundred and fifty years, and killed most of us before we reached fifty. After facing those twin tragedies, you’d think I’d be reading cat mysteries, romances, books about gardening. Instead, I find myself in indie bookstores looking for books about shipwrecks.Article continues after advertisementRemove Ads
It started when I was twenty-two, the year I was diagnosed. Lost and overwhelmed with the news that I had inherited the disease that killed most of my family, I wandered up and down the east coast, visiting friends and my remaining relatives to bring them the news in person.
“Take this,” said my friend Bethany before I left, handing me a dogeared copy of Moby-Dick. “It is actually really funny.”
I devoured the book, lying in guest rooms, resting at gas stations when I got too tired. I read it sitting on my childhood beach on Long Island Sound, the place that would inspire my own book, the place that inspired my mother to become a geologist and work for the Massachusetts Environmental Protection Agency—who would, in turn, inspire me to become a nature writer.
Bethany was right. Moby-Dick was hilarious, and joyful, and queer, and a book so much about America and community and race and class and whales and the ocean that I fell helplessly in love with it and have never recovered.Article continues after advertisementRemove Ads
Impulsively, I drove to New Bedford, Massachusetts, the historical hub of the American whaling industry and the site of the opening of Moby-Dick. I stood in the church where Ishmael worships before departure, read the preacher’s incredible sermon sitting in a pew, and cried in the room that held the grave markers for the lost sailors who have no graves but the sea. I realized how much my own lost family, my own shipwreck of a future, was universal.
There is a lot of research about how people who have experienced trauma often access media that helps them heal that trauma in a safe way. Horror movies, escape rooms, haunted houses—all of these can access some part of our limbic brain to practice the overwhelming fear in small, safe doses, so that we can heal.
I’ve come to call what I do “Practicing the Shipwreck,” or to paraphrase T.S. Garp in The World According to Garp, letting something be pre-disastered. After years of this practice of moving between the reality of disaster and the reality of repair, I have a muscle, an emotional muscle, that allows me to look at darkness, and then get back to work.
I have seen how much this helps in my life. I was told at twenty-two that I had five years before kidney failure, that I’d never have a child. I expected to die young and broke, all the books I wanted to write, all my hopes, locked up in my diagnosis. I got to work redefining what I wanted in the way of healing and support, community and the hope of survival.
And here, at fifty-three, an author and mother of a college student, my kidneys, while damaged and enormous, are still working well enough that I am not on dialysis. I have seen it at work in the Long Island Sound, where in 1987 the ecosystem was almost extirpated of all life in a mass hypoxic event, but where also, after decades of conservation, legislation, and community efforts, humpback whales were spotted in 2020.Article continues after advertisementRemove Ads
Those of us who have survived the worst things we can imagine know well—even in the end of one’s world or the end of the world entire, there is no end. We go on. Ishmael lives to tell the tale. Our families carry forward the dead in genetics and memory and love. Our planet carries forward the lost in fossils and tracks and changes and evolution, in recalibration, and in the best-case scenarios, return.
We all need this muscle during collapses personal or ecological. We need to learn how to face the worst things that have ever happened—clear-eyed and open-hearted—and believe that we can go on. We all need to practice the shipwreck.
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Herman Melville, Moby-Dick; Or, The WhaleArticle continues after advertisementRemove Ads
This book found me, child of a hydrogeologist and a fisherman, a willing reader. I grew up in view of Monument Mountain, where Herman Melville and Nathaniel Hawthorne hiked to the top and perhaps fell in love and for sure came up with the shape of this book. It picked up where my childhood obsessions with Greenpeace, animals, the ocean, and whales specifically, left off.
Making fictional the actual events of the whaleship Essex, it is about what leads nature to enact understandable vengeance on human overreach. Full of commentary on environmental, racial, and class issues in America, it feels prescient and modern at the same moment. It is one giant shipwreck story, even if the actual shipwreck holds off until the very last moments.
And for more eloquence about why this is essential reading, pick up Nathaniel Philbrick’s book Why Read Moby-Dick? Because he says everything that I believe about why you must read this book right now.

Sebastian Junger, The Perfect Storm: A True Story of Men Against the SeaArticle continues after advertisementRemove Ads
This book taught me how to connect a shipwreck story to the people who are impacted by it. Sebastian Junger’s journalism allows for the weather history and meteorological tracking of the storm itself, it invites descriptions of the fear and intensity of the experience of the storm in action, but it also allows us to see the full web of maritime life that surrounds the storm and its consequences.
Like Moby-Dick, you understand the experiences of the sailors, and feel that you’ve followed their lives to their ends, as well as understanding their beginnings.

Alfred Lansing, Endurance: Shackleton’s Incredible Voyage
I read this in a re-issued anniversary edition in 2015, after consuming a number of films and articles about the remarkable voyage of Earnest Shackleton. I loved the story so much—as many fans of arctic exploration do—that I named my bike Shackleton.
Endurance was the name of the ship that Shackleton took into the sea ice in his hopes to dogsled his way across the continent to the South Pole. Fortitudine vincimus, or “by endurance we conquer” was his family motto. As a person with chronic illness, the way this story invited me into claiming the dignity of endurance was a gift.
Endurance was stuck in early-forming sea ice and endured a slow-motion wreck over two years. All the while, Shackleton’s men lived inside, playing violin at night, singing for each other, and curating slide shows. The dignity and leadership that enabled Shackleton to keep all his men alive through the years-long disaster is detailed wonderfully in this book.
When I wonder how to go on through my own difficulties, this story, the violin, the portage of boats across the ice fields, the climb to rescue, comes back to me.

Jules Verne, Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea
There are many shipwrecks in this book, the ones that are caused by Captain Nemo and his Nautilus, the one that brings Ned Land and Doctor Aronnax to live with Nemo and his crew, and the possible end of the Nautilus itself, though whether that shipwreck occurs is left obscure. Mysterious shipwrecks occupy most of the beginning of this book, with dramatic descriptions of destruction and the loss of men and boats.
But the book comes to life when the survivors find themselves, through Nemo, discovering the beauties of the undersea world and the political motivations and scientific discoveries of their captor. The shipwreck reveals the complexities of worlds unseen.

Dan Kurtzman, Fatal Voyage: The Sinking of the USS Indianapolis 
The shipwreck in this book occurs early, a devastating result of Japanese attack on the USS Indianapolis during a battle in the Pacific theater in World War II. But the shipwreck is only the beginning of the harrowing days that follow, where sailors, having survived the sinking of their ship, floated in the wide ocean through five days of dehydration, drowning, starvation, and famously, shark attack.
A memorable scene in Jaws has Quint tell the story of what remains the largest loss of human life to shark attack in history. In the end, only 317 of the 1,196 sailors of the USS Indianapolis were rescued. This book connects those terrible statistics to individual accounts of the disaster.

Erik Larson, Isaac’s Storm: A Man, A Time, and the Deadliest Hurricane in History
Isaac’s Storm is a nonfiction recounting of the Galveston hurricane of 1900, which killed twelve thousand people, the worst weather disaster in American history. I bought the bestseller on impulse in a Midway Airport bookshop on my way from Chicago to Boston to care for my father as he was dying from the kidney disease we share. I read it through on the plane, then read it again for weeks at his bedside.
It is a town-wreck, a hurricane book, but it also features ships caught in the storm at sea, ships wrecking into a city, and the heartbreaking wreck of the raft made to escape a flooding home. It conveys the science of weather, the history weather prediction, and the American politics that made the disaster worse.
It presents a fully realized world within the creative nonfiction, with recreated conversations, the heat of the Gulf Coast, the smell of fresh sawn wood, the sound of the Bavarian beer hall, the heartbreaking feeling of losing the grip of the hand of your beloved underwater.

Diana Preston, Lusitania: An Epic Disaster
I brought this book on my honeymoon with my first husband. It is an engrossing read about the sinking of the Lusitania and how that disaster struck the spark for the American entry into World War I.
Preston created an epic book, one that makes the geopolitics of the moment of the Lusitania’s sinking strikingly vivid, and helped me connect not only with the sinking, the lives lost, the people changed, but also with the events that made it seem inevitable, and the hubris and war fever surrounding it.
The marriage I was celebrating didn’t last, but the book has continued to echo in my mind for twenty years.

Nathaniel Philbrick, In the Heart of the Sea: The Tragedy of the Whaleship Essex
Moby-Dick is my favorite book, and the greatest disaster novel in history, so it is no surprise that this book, In the Heart of the Sea: The Tragedy of the Whaleship Essex by Nathaniel Philbrick (2000), an examination of the history of the Essex, the whaleship whose story inspired Herman Melville to write his masterpiece, is a favorite as well. I picked it up on a table of ocean books at Women and Children First Bookstore in Chicago and devoured it in one day, skipping sleep to finish it.
In the Heart of the Sea has perfectly structured storytelling and wonderful details, such as the discovery of an antique dildo in a fireplace in the former cottage of a whaler’s wife on Nantucket, an item that the people of the time referred to as a he’s-at-home.

Rebecca Solnit, A Paradise Built in Hell: The Extraordinary Communities That Arise in Disaster
I read Rebecca Solnit’s incredible history half for comfort, and half to rewire my brain so that I understood disaster differently. The book traces five famous disasters, the 1910 San Francisco earthquake, the Halifax Explosion of 1917—technically the only shipwreck in the book, but what a shipwreck—the Mexico City earthquake of 1985, September 11, 2001, and 2005’s Hurricane Katrina in New Orleans.
Solnit makes the case that this story we tell, where disasters bring out the worst in people, the extreme violence, the rejection of collectivity, is a lie. The history of disasters, she argues, is one of communities built in rubble, in fear, in isolation, as people sought to protect each other, even strangers, when the worst happened. It is essential reading.

David Grann, The Wager: A Tale of Shipwreck, Mutiny, and Murder
I told myself that I shouldn’t buy David Grann’s latest book. I told myself that reading about a shipwreck was not a great move while my kid was on a ship off the Grand Banks, deep in the Atlantic Ocean. But the lure was too strong, and I tore through the story of bad captaining, bad luck, bad weather, cannibalism, survival, and leadership.
I remembered that humans are still human, good and bad, in the worst of times. I felt things. I worked that muscle. I lived in the space where the worst things happen. I lived in the space where the worst things are survived. I practiced the shipwreck.
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The Mourner’s Bestiary by Eiren Caffall is available via Row House Publishing.

Hong Kong International Optical Fair to open in November Focus on advanced technology and sustainable design

Technology

Over 700 exhibitors from 17 countries and regions to participate from 6-8 November at the Hong Kong Convention and Exhibition Centre
Exhibition reflects four prominent market trends: technology, lifestyle, functionality and sustainability
Concurrent Hong Kong International Optometric Symposium to explore latest breakthroughs in myopia control and prevention
Finalists of the 24th Hong Kong Eyewear Design Competition to be unveiled
HONG KONG SAR – Media OutReach Newswire – 25 October 2024 – The 32nd Hong Kong International Optical Fair, organised by the Hong Kong Trade Development Council (HKTDC) and co-organised by the Hong Kong Optical Manufacturers Association (HKOMA), will take place on 6-8 November at the Hong Kong Convention and Exhibition Centre. Under the theme of Seeing is Believing, the Fair features innovative and state-of-the-art eyewear designs and products, bringing together industry players to facilitate new business opportunities.

Last year’s Hong Kong International Optical Fair was a great success

Buyer Registration link: https://tinyurl.com/mwpzh324
Sophia Chong, Acting Executive Director of the HKTDC emphasised: “This year’s Hong Kong International Optical Fair, a long-standing industry highlight for over 30 years, is more international than ever, attracting more than 700 exhibitors from 17 countries and regions. The fair reflects the dynamic evolution in eyewear design and technology. Exhibitors worldwide are aligning their products with key trends in technology, lifestyle, functionality and sustainability to capture expanded market opportunities. This exhibition, which is truly a feast for the eyes, demonstrates Hong Kong’s advantages as an international trade and procurement centre.”
Hong Kong ranks as the world’s third-largest exporter of eyewear and frames. The total export value of Hong Kong’s eyewear, lenses and frames is estimated to have reached HK$19.9 billion in 2023, signalling substantial growth. The smart eyewear sector has emerged as an industry focal point, with the global market exceeding HK$40 billion in 2023 and projected to surpass HK$100 billion by 2029.
Exhibitors from around the globe, including Europe and Americas, such as France, Germany, the United Kingdom and the United States, as well as Asia such as Japan, Korea, Malaysia, Singapore, Taiwan, and Türkiye in the Middle East, and more, will present their latest offerings at the fair. Prominent Hong Kong brands will also have a significant presence.
This year’s Optical Fair will feature a number of group pavilions, including Mainland China, Japan, Korea and Taiwan, as well as the Visionaries of Style and HKOMA Pavilion; along with pavilions from cities in Mainland China, including Danyang in Jiangsu, Jiaojiang in Zhejiang, Shenzhen in Guangdong and Yingtan in Jiangxi.
The Brand Name Gallery, the focal point of the Fair, will showcase over 200 renowned global brands. Other zones will present a broad spectrum of eyewear products, including Smart Eyewear, Contact Lenses & Accessories, Designer Café pavilion, Sporting & Professional Eyewear, Kids Eyewear & Reading Glasses, Lenses, Frames & Parts, Eyewear Accessories, Diagnostic Instruments, as well as Optometric Instruments, Equipment & Machinery.
The 22nd Hong Kong International Optometric Symposium will be held on 7 November. Jointly organised by the HKTDC, the Hong Kong Optometric Association and The Hong Kong Polytechnic University, this year’s symposium will focus on myopia control and prevention. Scholars from Mainland China, Hong Kong, Australia, and Germany will lead discussions with industry professionals. The symposium is a pre-approved CPD Programme recognised by the Optometrists Board and attendees will receive a Certificate of Attendance. The Fair will also offer talks and seminars on smart eyewear, functional eyewear, sustainability and other advancements in the eyewear industry.
To foster Hong Kong’s creativity and innovation, the HKTDC and HKOMA will run the 24th Hong Kong Eyewear Design Competition under the theme of Be Bold. Results will be announced during the Hong Kong International Optical Fair. Winning and final entries will be on display at The Forum, Hall 1D during the fair period to showcase Hong Kong’s creativity to international buyers.
Under the EXHIBITION+ hybrid model, exhibitors and buyers can meet online through the Click2Match business matching platform in addition to attending the physical fair until 15 November. Buyers can also use the Scan2Match feature of the HKTDC Marketplace App to scan the QR codes of exhibitors and view product materials, bookmark favourites, browse product information and floor plans, as well as engage with exhibitors before and after the fairs to continue their sourcing journey.
Featured Products Exhibitors at the forefront of the industry are unveiling an array of innovative eyewear products in line with technology, lifestyle, functionality and sustainability trends. Some of the highlighted products are:
Technology：

Solos AirGo™ V – Smart Eyewear Equipped with a camera, Solos AirGo™ V is the world’s first smart eyewear with ChatGPT-4 functionality, and provides instant responses to what you see Solos Technology Limited Product Zone: Visionaries of Style Booth: GH-B26

Reform Eyewear Reform features a new patented flexible frame technology that seamlessly adapts to any frame shape, size, colour or material, suitable for both prescription and sunglasses. This innovation offers endless possibilities for eyewear design, while ensuring safety and comfort. Icare (Hong Kong) Company Limited Product Zone: Hong Kong Optical Manufacturers Association Pavilion Booth: 1E-C08

Lifestyle：

Fashion-Forward Yagioka Eyewear The local design brand Big Horn has launched the Yagioka eyewear line, featuring a modern and refined design that is perfect for fashion-forward people. This eyewear design was a finalist for the USA Accessories Council’s Design Excellence Awards 2024. The Panda eyewear series draws inspiration for its colours and shapes from the beloved animal. Crafted with precision and made from high-quality biodegradable materials, it combines functionality with aesthetic appeal. Winky International Limited Product Zone: Brand Name Gallery Booth: GH-R03

Rosie Allan – A Design for Both Parents and Children Established in 2020, Rosie Allan transcends being just a brand; it celebrates family bonds and unforgettable moments. Specialising in 100% handcrafted acetate sunglasses, the matching parent-child collection symbolises love and togetherness. Rosie Allan Pty Ltd Product Zone: Brand Name Gallery Booth: GH-D07

Luxury Jewellery-inspired Handcrafted Eyewear This Japanese brand merges high-end jewellery design with eyewear, utilising premium materials, such as 18K gold and natural diamonds. Each pair is meticulously handcrafted with a commitment to artisanal craftsmanship and is specifically designed for Asian facial features, exuding elegance. Inon Co. Ltd. Product Zone: Japan Pavilion Booth: GH-B12

Functionality:

Nano Vista Children’s Sports Eyewear Crafted exclusively for kids and young athletes, Nano Vista – a Spanish brand – offers eyewear designed for outdoor activities. It is internationally recognised for safety, meets European EN166:2001 standards and is endorsed by top sports federations. Opticon Ltd Product Zone: Brand Name Gallery Booth: GH-C06

Sustainability:

Sustainable Eyewear Frame Solution The eyewear frames are made from BioCell material. BioCell is a cellulose acetate derived from cotton or wood pulp, certified as biodegradable according to ISO 14855 standards. It contains no industry-standard plasticisers and is compatible with polycarbonate lenses. Eleung Limited Product Zone: Hong Kong Optical Manufacturers Association Pavilion Booth: 1E-D14

Eco-Friendly Nylon and PC Lenses Eco-friendly nylon and polycarbonate (PC) lenses are produced using sustainable materials, reducing carbon emissions during the manufacturing process. They feature high abrasion and scratch resistance and have received multiple certifications. Even in low-temperature conditions, they maintain hardness and toughness, providing excellent clarity and optical transmission performance. Mellan Limited Product Zone: Frames & Parts Booth: 1E-C28

Websites:
The 32nd Hong Kong International Optical Fair：https://www.hktdc.com/event/hkopticalfair/en
Event Details of the Hong Kong International Optical Fair: https://www.hktdc.com/event/hkopticalfair/en/intelligence-hub
The 22nd Hong Kong International Optometric Symposium: https://www.hktdc.com/event/hkopticalfair/en/the-22nd-hong-kong-international-optometric-symposium
The HKTDC’s Media Room: http://mediaroom.hktdc.com/en

Fair Details (Physical)

Date:
6 – 8 November (Wednesday to Friday)

Time:
(6 to 7 November) 9:30am – 6:30pm (8 November) 9:30am – 5:00pm

Venue:
Hong Kong Convention and Exhibition Centre

Admission:
For trade visitors aged 18 or above only. Onsite Registration Fee: HK$100 per person (free for e-Badge registration and pre-registered buyers)

Click2Match – Smart Business Matching Platform

Date:
30 October – 15 November

Hashtag: #HKTDC
The issuer is solely responsible for the content of this announcement.

About HKTDC
The Hong Kong Trade Development Council (HKTDC) is a statutory body established in 1966 to promote, assist and develop Hong Kong’s trade. With 50 offices globally, including 13 in Mainland China, the HKTDC promotes Hong Kong as a two-way global investment and business hub. The HKTDC organises international exhibitions, conferences and business missions to create business opportunities for companies, particularly small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs), in the mainland and international markets. The HKTDC also provides up-to-date market insights and product information via research reports and digital news channels. For more information, please visit: www.hktdc.com/aboutus. Follow us on Twitter @hktdc, LinkedIn.

“This is our business”: Putin comments for the first time on the deployment of North Korean military to Russia

Business News

10:27, todayAuthor: Asia=-PlusRussian President Vladimir Putin, at the closing press conference of the BRICS summit in Kazan, commented for the first time on reports about North Korean military personnel being sent to Russia, possibly to participate in the war against Ukraine.

BBC’s Russian Service says he did not deny their presence in Russia but did not clarify the purpose of their arrival.

The question was reportedly posed by a journalist from the American NBC television company. He said that satellite images show the presence of North Korean military personnel. “What are they doing here?” the journalist asked. “And isn’t this a serious escalation of the conflict?”

“It was not Russia’s actions that led to the escalation,” Putin responded, once again speaking about the “coup” in Ukraine in 2014. He also accused Western countries of arming the Ukrainian army and helping it fight.

Putin reminded that earlier on Thursday, the State Duma ratified the treaty on “comprehensive strategic partnership” with North Korea, signed by the Russian president in Pyongyang this summer.

The treaty involves “mutual assistance in case of aggression” against one of its participants.

“There is Article 4,” Putin said, adding that Pyongyang “takes our agreements seriously.”

Article 4 of the agreement states that “if one of the parties finds itself at war due to an armed attack by one or more states, the other party will immediately provide military assistance with all available means in accordance with Article 51 of the UN Charter and the laws of the DPRK and the Russian Federation.”

“What we will do under this article is our business,” Putin concluded, without providing any details about the deployment of North Korean military personnel in Russia or their objectives.

Some sources say North Korean (DPRK) soldiers are being trained at five military sites in the far east of Russia, and will have to pass a training course lasting several weeks before being deployed in the war against Ukraine.  The United States confirmed on October 23 that thousands of North Koreans are training in Russia alongside Kremlin troops. 

The Washington Post reported on October 11 that North Korean soldiers are supporting Russian troops on the ground, and some may have already been killed and injured,  

Politico reported yesterday that according to updated estimates from Kyiv, Pyongyang has transferred about 12,000 troops to Russia, including 500 officers and three army generals.  Earlier this week Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said Ukraine had already spotted North Korean army officers in the Russian-occupied territories of Ukraine’s eastern region of Donbas.

North Jersey filmmaker releases ‘Alone Together’ to streaming services

Arts & Culture, Film & TV

HAWTHORNE — Blood spatter, creaky floors and a secluded cabin in the woods.All of the classic tropes that one may expect to see in a suspense movie this time of year turn up in “Alone Together,” a new feature-length picture by borough native William Kresch.Yet the movie, released this month, diverges from most Halloween film fare in that it explores societal issues on a deeper level.Kresch, who lives in Oradell with his wife, Cassandra Kresch, and their 2-year-old son, Remy, said the nail-biter is an allegory for female empowerment and generational trauma.“I love scary stuff,” said Kresch, 36. “I love things that test the limits of human ability and resilience.”Need a break? Play the USA TODAY Daily Crossword Puzzle.LOCAL BUSINESS:Billy’s Midway, an arcade in Hawthorne, is fighting for survivalSet against the backdrop of the pandemic, a woman is trapped in an abusive relationship with her boyfriend. To escape the chaos of those early days of the COVID lockdown, she reluctantly leaves Brooklyn with him to quarantine at a family cabin in remote Vermont.Their intimacy is shattered by a host of problems. First, there is the obvious fact that the woman, played by actor DeAnna S. Wright, does not want to be there. That is compounded by her hallucinations, nightmares and overall paranoia.The boyfriend is fighting demons, too — he witnessed the suicide of his war hero father in that very cabin.As the tension mounts, Wright’s character discovers — despite spotty Wi-Fi — that calamity has befallen her own father back home. She also finds out that her remorseless boyfriend is spying on her by tapping her cellphone and by using surveillance cameras.She later gets him drunk, anticipating that he will be too groggy and hungover to notice her attempt to make a break for it the next morning. But when that does not work, the plot unwinds to a violent climax.Kresch directed the movie and co-wrote its script with his friend, A.V. Bach, whom he met at Syracuse University. In fact, most of the crew were college pals. That is the reality of indie filmmaking, he said, and trying to finance a project on a shoestring budget.Raising money for such a movie is difficult, Kresch said, adding that it is “one of the surest things” to fail. “It’s the ultimate gamble,” he conceded.Kresch said he was fortunate to have the backing of his hometown. Mark Fiorina, a borough resident whose family once owned Boylan Bottling Co., a Manhattan soda manufacturer known for birch beer and cane cola, helped to pay for the production, he said.The movie is dedicated to Fiorina’s son, Christian Fiorina, who Kresch said was a constant presence on the set and a “guarantor of everything.” Tragically, he died in May 2023.“It can’t, but haunt me,” Kresch said. “I want to share this victory with him so badly. We never could’ve made the movie without him.”“Alone Together” debuted a year ago, at the Screamfest Horror Film Festival at the famous TCL Chinese Theatre in Los Angeles. It has won multiple awards, including best thriller feature at the Atlanta Horror Film Festival and best supernatural feature at the Philip K. Dick Film Festival in Queens.Another achievement for the movie came just last month when Buffalo 8, a California-based film production company, acquired its worldwide rights.Kresch, who is also a freelance EVS operator and a podcast host, said the positive reception could be the springboard he needs to continue making movies. He said he is working on another script about a female warrior whose tribal village is destroyed by miners. The story delves into a similar theme of women’s liberation, he said.“Whether a movie is successful, or not, is decided on the page — way before anyone gets a chance to see it,” Kresch said. “It’s that script — it’s the characters and the narrative. If it exists there, it’s your job to keep it alive.”Buy or rent “Alone Together” on Prime Video. The movie is also streaming for free on Tubi, an ad-supported online platform.Philip DeVencentis is a local reporter for NorthJersey.com. For unlimited access to the most important news from your local community, please subscribe or activate your digital account today.Email: [email protected]

‘Bhool Bhulaiyaa 3’-‘Singham Again’ Clash: Makers of Kartik Aaryan’s Horror-Comedy Film Approach CCI Seeking Equal Screen Allotment With Ajay Devgn’s Cop Universe Movie

Arts & Culture, Film & TV

Two of the most highly awaited Bollywood films are facing off against each other at the box office next week. The 2024 Diwali Bollywood clash witnesses Rohit Shetty’s Cop Universe film Singham Again, starring Ajay Devgn, clash with Anees Bazmees’ horror-comedy film Bhool Bhulaiyaa 3.  The internet was buzzing with speculations that makers of any one of these big films would back out and announce a new release date. However, things are going the way it is, and as of now both the films will hit the theatres on Diwali, November 1. Now, as per the latest report, T-Series, the production giants bankrolling, are concerned about the Ajay Devgn-starrer due to their screen count. ‘Singham Again’: Did Akshay Kumar Confirm Salman Khan’s Chulbul Pandey Entry in Rohit Shetty’s Cop Universe? (See Pic).
According to a report in The Indian Express, makers of Rohit Shetty’s Singham Again approached PVR INOX, the biggest theatre chain in India and have reportedly secured 60% of shows. This has left the team of Bhool Bhulaiyaa 3 in connection with the clash. It is a matter of concern as certain single-screen theatres have dedicated all shows to the Ajay Devgn starrer.
Watch the Trailer of ‘Bhool Bhulaiyaa 3’:
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‘Bhool Bhulaiyaa 3’ Makers Approach CCI To Secure More Screens
According to the reports, Bhool Bhuliayaa 3 makers reached out to the Competition Commission of India (CCI) and demanded a 50-50% split in the screens. The report said, “T-Series has petitioned the Competition Commission of India (CCI), the regulatory body responsible for promoting economic growth and consumer welfare through healthy competition, to intervene in the screen allocation issue. The production house is seeking a fair distribution of screens, proposing a 50-50% split for their movies Bhool Bhulaiyaa 3 and Singham Again.”
Watch ‘Singham Again’ Trailer Here:
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About Bhool Bhulaiyaa 3
Bhool Bhulaiyaa 3 marks the return of Kartik Aaryan’s Rooh Baba after the blockbuster first two instalments. The movie is directed by Anees Bazmee and bankrolled by Bhushan Kumar’s T-Series Films and Cine 1 Studios. The movie features Vidya Balan and Madhuri Dixit as Manjulika and Triptii Dimri as Kartik Aaryan’s love interest. Apart from them, the movie also features Sanjay Mishra, Vijay Raaz, Manish Wadhwa, Rajpal Yadav, Rajesh Sharma and Ashwini Kalsekar, among others.
About ‘Singham Again’
Singham Again is the fifth movie in Rohit Shetty’s Cop Universe and the third instalment of Ajay Devgn’s Singham franchise. Rohit Shetty also co-produces the film along with Reliance Entertainment, Jio Studios, and Devgn Films. The ensemble cast includes Ajay Devgn, Kareena Kapoor Khan, Deepika Padukone, Arjun Kapoor, Tiger Shroff, Jackie Shroff, Ranveer Singh, and Akshay Kumar. Telangana HC Grants Bail to Jani Master in Sexual Assault Case: Choreographer Drops ‘Bhool Bhulaiyaa 3’ Title Track BTS Video With Kartik Aaryan As His First Insta Post.
Which movie are you more excited for? Let us know in the comments section below. (The above story first appeared on LatestLY on Oct 25, 2024 02:36 PM IST. For more news and updates on politics, world, sports, entertainment and lifestyle, log on to our website latestly.com).