Holland America adds new cruises for celestial events in 2026
(NEW YORK) — Holland America has created some picture perfect cruise itineraries for travelers with celestial events on their adventure bucket list such as seeing the northern lights or a total solar eclipse from the high seas.
The Seattle-based cruise line announced a new slate of celestial cruises on Monday that will take guests to prime locations throughout Europe to experience three different natural phenomena firsthand.
Three new Holland America solar eclipse cruises
Following the success of Holland America’s 2024 eclipse cruises, the company’s chief commercial officer, Beth Bodensteiner, said the team put together the 2026 lineup for more guests “to get a front-row seat for some of the world’s most special natural spectacles” with “in-depth exploration of exciting destinations.”
Three ships from the fleet will be positioned under the path of totality for the Aug. 12, 2026, total solar eclipse.
They include the Oosterdam, which will take guests for a 13-day Mediterranean cruise departing off the eastern coast of Spain, at sea in the path of totality between Alicante and Barcelona; the Nieuw Statendam, which is set to explore Northern Europe for a 28-day cruise, sailing off the northwest coast of Iceland at sea in the path of totality; and the 35-day Voyage of the Vikings, a roundtrip cruise from Boston aboard the Zuiderdam, will sail under the path of totality off the west coast of Iceland, just before arriving at Grundarfjörður.
Guests aboard each excursion can expect lectures from scientific experts, themed activities and proper safety equipment for viewing the total eclipse.
The Voyage of the Vikings sets sail July 18, 2026, and has calls at Portland, Maine; Sydney, Corner Brook, Red Bay, St. Anthony, St John’s and Halifax in Canada; Paamiut (Frederikshåb), Nanortalik and Qaqortoq (Julianehåb) in Greenland; Reykjavik, Seydisfjördur, Húsavík and Grundarfjørdur in Iceland; Eidfjord, Norway; Rotterdam, Netherlands; Dublin, Ireland; and Belfast, Northern Ireland.
The Scandinavian Solar Eclipse departs July 25, 2026, from Dover, England, or Rotterdam aboard the Niew Statendam, with multiple calls in Norway, Iceland, Greenland, the Faroe Islands and Scotland.
The shortest of the three voyages through the Mediterranean will have calls at Spain, France, Italy, Portugal, Greece and Montenegro.
Holland America debuts Northern Lights cruises
“As 2026 is predicted to be a highly active period for auroras, a growing number of travelers plan to prioritize seeing them on vacation. Guests seeking to pair that adventure with an in-depth exploration of Norway can do so on one of two Northern Lights cruises aboard Rotterdam and Nieuw Statendam,” Holland America announced. “The cruises feature an overnight in Alta, also known as The City of the Northern Lights, and spend five days above the Arctic Circle.”
The first of the two cruises, a 14-day journey departing Oct. 4, 2026, will sail from Rotterdam to Amsterdam. The 15-day option departs Oct. 16, 2026, from Dover to Rotterdam.
Summer Solstice Holland America cruise above the Arctic Circle
The Nieuw Statendam will take passengers on a 14-day cruise crossing the Arctic Circle to celebrate the summer solstice in Honningsvåg, Norway, one of the northernmost cities on the planet, to experience the maximum amount of daylight on the longest day of the year.
The cruise line is offering some early booking discounts for a limited time on premium packages for its Mariner Society loyalty members, which includes an up to $400 onboard credit for bookings made by Oct. 29, 2024.
(NEW YORK) — Trump Media & Technology Group’s stock dropped more than 11% this week, suffering from sour sentiment after a weak earnings report and the return of former President Donald Trump to rival social media platform X.
The company’s woes stretch back to the middle of last month. Since then, the stock for the Truth Social parent company has plummeted by about 43%. Yet as the stock continues to slide, some of its investors remain unfazed, telling ABC News they are optimistic about the company’s financial outlook, or intend to stand by it as an expression of their support for Trump.
Todd Schlanger, an interior designer from West Palm Beach, told ABC News that he purchased shares in Trump Media because he supports Trump’s politics and believes in his businesses.
“I’m a Republican, so I supported him. When I found out about the stock, I got involved because I support the company and believe in free speech,” said Schlanger, who said he owns approximately a thousand shares of the company.
A frequent user of the social media platform, Schlanger boasted about the user interface – “It’s like a combination of X and Facebook” – and said he looked forward to the expansion of the company’s streaming services.
“I think it’s going to be as strong as Facebook or Twitter,” said Schlanger.
Other investors said they primarily saw Truth Social as a way to support the former president.
“I did it more as a statement to President Trump and to show support at the time. I wasn’t really looking to make a lot of money,” said Teri Lynn Roberson, who bought five shares of the company as the company neared its peak stock price after going public in March.
Roberson said she was unconcerned about the stock’s poor performance or the impact of Trump’s potential return to rival X, the latter of which she said could benefit Trump’s presidential campaign by expanding his audience of supporters beyond the “echo chamber” of Truth Social.
“I’m way at a loss, but I am OK with that. I am just watching it for fun,” Roberson said.
Truth Social’s stock performance holds significant financial implications for the former president, who owns a 65% stake in the company. Truth Social shares make up a large portion of Trump’s overall net worth, according to Fortune.
Truth Social did not immediately respond to ABC News’ request for comment.
Truth Social’s recent losses
An earnings report released last Friday showed, Truth Social had lost more than $16 million over a three-month period ending in June. The company brought in revenue of about $836,000, down 30% from $1.2 million a year earlier, the earnings report showed.
In a statement released following the earnings report, Truth Social CEO Devin Nunes applauded the company’s balance sheet, including $344 million in cash and no debt.
“From the beginning, it was our intention to make Truth Social an impenetrable beachhead of free speech, and by taking extraordinary steps to minimize our reliance on Big Tech, that is exactly what we are doing,” Nunes said.
Investors, however, reacted poorly to the quarterly report when trading opened on Monday, and the stock price continued to drop when Trump then posted on rival X for the first time in roughly a year. It marked just his second post on the platform since January 2021, when the company suspended Trump in the aftermath of the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol “due to the risk of further incitement to violence.”
After tech billionaire Elon Musk purchased what was then known as Twitter in Oct. 2022, he lifted the ban the following month. On Monday, Musk spoke with Trump in an interview that was broadcast on the platform.
While the former president is bound by an exclusivity agreement with Trump Media & Technology Group to post personal content first to Truth Social, Trump can make “politically-related” posts on other social media sites, according to the agreement. Other than a series of political posts on Monday, Trump has refrained from using social media sites beyond Truth Social.
Michael Rogers, who owns a masonry company in Asheville, North Carolina, said he first bought shares of Truth Social in 2022, before the company went public. Since then, Rogers has acquired more than 10,000 shares, he said.
Rogers, who said he plans to vote for Trump in November, bought the shares as both an expression of political support and as a sign of confidence in the company’s financial outlook, he said. “It’s a 50-50 balance of the reasons I started investing in Truth Social,” Rogers told ABC News.
Trump’s return to X this week did not bother Rogers, since the platform allows Trump to reach a larger audience, Rogers said. The weak earnings report last Friday did concern him, however.
“The revenue just isn’t there,” Rogers said. “That’s something the company has to work on.”
Despite the stock’s recent struggles, Rogers said he retains confidence in the business.
“I’m in it for the long haul,” Rogers said.
Analyst outlook
Analysts described the performance of Truth Social as the characteristic fluctuation of a so-called “meme stock.” The term – made famous by pandemic-era examples such as GameStop and AMC – indicates a company that largely appeals to investors on the basis of ideology, rather than financial outlook.
Truth Social’s value climbed about 30% in the immediate aftermath of an assassination attempt against Trump in July, reaching a price of $40 a share. That figure marked the highest level for the stock in more than a month, but shares still stood well below a peak of about $66.
The share price now stands at about $23, amounting to a drop of nearly two-thirds from its peak.
Tyler Richey, an analyst at Sevens Report Research, said the decline of the stock price in recent weeks has coincided with the emergence of Vice President Kamala Harris as the Democratic presidential nominee. A surge for Harris in voter surveys has damaged perception of Trump’s election prospects, Richey told ABC News.
“The stock has ebbed and flowed with sentiment toward former president Trump,” Richey said. “It doesn’t help that Trump was pretty much exclusively using Truth Social and decided to join Elon Musk with X.”
Jay Ritter, a professor of finance at the University of Florida, said Truth Social’s poor financial performance leaves it vulnerable to negative news and darkens its long-term outlook.
“For a long time, I’ve been saying that the stock will be volatile but that the long-run trend will be down,” Ritter said.
“What’s lacking for the true believer in the company story is, ‘OK, where is the business strategy that will be generating revenue?'” Ritter added, noting by contrast that it makes sense for die-hard Trump supporters to back the stock.
“I don’t think it’s irrational for people to do that,” Ritter said. “On the other hand, I generally don’t go out of my way to further line the pockets of billionaires.”
Trump supporters rushing to purchase shares in Truth Social provided other investors an opportunity to cash in on the company’s tumultuous stock price. With anticipation building ahead of Trump Media & Technology Group’s merger in March with Digital World Acquisition Corporation, Mitchell Standley exercised a few call options – contracts that allow an investor to buy a stock at a predetermined price – to make a 1,500% return on his investment.
“It was basically just a pump and dump,” Standley told ABC News. “I knew that once they merged, all of his supporters were going to dump a bunch of money into it and buy it up.”
Since March, Standley has avoided the company, he said, attributing its volatile stock performance to a lack of business fundamentals.
“I made my money and am staying away from it,” Standley said.
(WASHINGTON) — When Kamala Harris ran for president in 2020, she released 15 years of her personal tax returns, the most of any 2020 presidential candidate. The disclosure offers a glimpse into how Harris, who has emerged as the front-runner for the Democratic presidential nomination after President Joe Biden’s sudden withdrawal from the race, became a millionaire as a public servant.
After Harris, in 2014, married Doug Emhoff, who was then an entertainment lawyer, her net worth increased significantly due to the couple’s combined assets, a review of her tax records and financial disclosures shows.
Before then, Harris’ income came mostly from her public salaries as district attorney of San Francisco and attorney general of California.
Before she was married, the highest annual income reported by Harris was in 2010, when she reported earning $263,000. The next year, when she became attorney general, her reported income dropped to less than $160,000 a year in 2011, 2012 and 2013.
After marrying Emhoff — whose clients have included retail giant Walmart and health care company Abbott Labs, as well as a Malibu real estate agent who found fame on The Real Housewives of Beverly Hills — Harris’ income went up significantly.
As a high-profile attorney for one of the world’s largest companies, Emhoff earned more than $1 million per year and held dozens of investments and stocks, according to financial documents reviewed by ABC News.
In 2014, Emhoff owned shares of at least 30 stocks from companies including Home Depot, St. Jude Medical, Comcast, and American Express, according to his statement of economic interest, a form required for California employees.
After Harris announced she would run for U.S. Senate in 2015, Emhoff sold off many of his stocks, including CVS Health and Oracle. Harris won her Senate seat in 2016.
From 2015 until 2019, Emhoff reported dozens of publicly traded investments known as “excepted investment funds,” according to annual reports filed by Harris when she was a senator.
As Harris’ profile grew, so did her earnings. According to a 2018 annual report filed by Harris, she received an advance of more than $300,000 for her memoir, The Truths We Hold, and she and Emhoff reported a gross joint income of $1,889,156 that year, according to tax returns.
Before Harris assumed the vice presidency in 2021, Emhoff announced in December 2020 that he would leave his law firm. He joined Georgetown University’s law school as a member of faculty, where he has earned nearly $200,000 per year.
As a result of the move, the couple’s income dropped significantly, from more than $3 million in 2019 to about $450,000 in 2023.
Nevertheless, with their real estate assets and pension, Forbes estimates Harris and Emhoff’s net worth to be about $8 million, up from $7 million in 2021. Property records reviewed by ABC News show Harris sold her Washington, D.C., condo in 2021 for $1.85 million, and the couple currently owns a house in Brentwood, California, that Emhoff purchased in 2012 for $2.7 million.
If Harris becomes the Democratic presidential nominee, she will face former President Donald Trump, who has long fought to keep his tax records private.
Forbes, in its most recent accounting, estimates Trump’s net worth to be $5.9 billion, which an earlier breakdown said consists of $2.5 billion mainly from his real estate properties, clubs and resorts, plus the value of his share of Truth Social’s parent company, minus the $540 million in legal liabilities from his civil trials over the last year.
(NEW YORK) — Toy giant Fisher-Price is recalling hundreds of thousands of dumbbell toys due to a potential choking hazard.
The dumbbell toys were included in the Fisher-Price Baby Biceps Gift Set, according to the Consumer Product Safety Commission, which announced the recall on Thursday. About 366,200 recalled units were sold in the United States, with another 37,850 sold in Canada.
Fisher-Price states on its recall website that the gray caps on the dumbbell toys can separate, leading to a potential choking hazard for infants. The company recommends taking away recalled toys from kids immediately.
The CPSC states that the dumbbell toys were sold between April 2020 through August 2024 and were part of Fisher-Price’s Baby Biceps Gift Set, which includes three additional toys and is marketed as suitable for children ages 3 months and up.
According to Fisher-Price and the CPSC, the dumbbell component features a plastic gray bar and red and orange plastic “weights” with gray caps on each side of the bar. The recalled dumbbell toys bear the model number GJD49 on the back of the kettlebell toy in the gift set.
The toys were manufactured in China and Vietnam and sold in the U.S. at stores nationwide, according to the CPSC. The toys were sold at Buy Buy Baby, Fred Meyer, Hobby Lobby, Kohls, Marshalls, Target, TJMaxx and Walmart stores and online at Amazon.com, Target.com, Walmart.com, Zulily.com and other websites, retailing for about $18.
Fisher-Price says it has received seven reports of incidents where the gray caps separated from the toy, but has not received any reports of injuries as a result of the incidents.
Customers with the recalled dumbbell toys can reach out to Fisher-Price for a $10 refund on the company’s recall website, which also provides instructions on how to dispose of the recalled toys. Fisher-Price says a receipt or proof of purchase is not required to receive a refund for the dumbbell toy.
ABC News has reached out to Fisher-Price for comment.