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By McKinnon de Kuyper
December 19, 2025
MBW’s World’s Greatest Songwriters series celebrates the composers behind the globe’s biggest hits. Here we talk to A.R. Rahman, a giant in the world of film soundtracks, with a hefty collection of Grammys, Oscars, Golden Globes, and Indian National Film Awards on his shelves. World’s Greatest Songwriters is supported by AMRA – the global digital music collection society, which strives to maximize value for songwriters and publishers in the digital age.
Some Oscar winners cry. Some holler deliriously about how their countrymen are coming to take over Hollywood. Some even slap the host.
But in 2009, when A.R. Rahman picked up his Academy Award for Original Score for Slumdog Millionaire, he was coolness and calmness personified.
“There’s a dialog from a Hindi film, ‘Mere paas ma hai,‘” he said, dressed all in black. “Which means, ‘I have nothing but I have a mother’.”
Sixteen years later, Rahman has garnered many more accolades and achievements (including two Grammys, a BAFTA and a Golden Globe) but, as he talks to MBW during a break from the immersive spectacle that is his The Wonderment world tour – which has been packing them in from Abu Dhabi to Los Angeles – it’s clear he still retains that sense of perspective.
“I was in a very Zen mood,” he laughs, of that Oscars speech. “Three months before, I had a very important spiritual experience, which was overwhelming for me, and I was not able to come out of it. So, everything seemed to be smaller than what I had experienced…”
That mindset helped him cope with the massive interest, both at home in India and abroad, that followed his global breakthrough. For many, a double Oscar win (he also picked up Best Original Song for Slumdog’s Jai Ho at the 2009 ceremony) might have been the pinnacle, but Rahman was just getting started.
Already an established name in Indian cinema and classical music, he has since become one of western cinema’s favorite composers, working on the likes of Couples Retreat, 127 Hours, The Hundred-Foot Journey, Million Dollar Arm, Pelé: Birth Of A Legend and Inside Man, alongside countless projects in Indian cinema and elsewhere.
He played for President Barack Obama at a White House state dinner, worked on the 2012 Olympics opening ceremony and has moved into the worlds of musical theater and pop, planning his own musical and collaborating with everyone from Mick Jagger to U2 and Diane Warren to Pharrell.
Hollywood is a long way from Rahman’s roots in Madras, India. Rahman’s father introduced him to the world of music – as a child, A.R. would deliver his father’s lunch and watch him conduct the orchestra at theater showings – and A.R. was playing piano from the age of four. His father passed away when AR was nine, and the young prodigy left school soon after to help support his family.
After working as a session musician and some early experiments with rock music, he started making jingles for adverts, only moving on when he realized his work featured on every single advert in a show he was watching.
He shifted into film music, making his debut with Tamil movie Roja and winning a National Film Award for Best Music Director. He became the go-to composer for Indian cinema and set up his own studio and label before heading for Hollywood.
Now, he shuttles between Mumbai and LA and now, having transcended classical music, can seemingly turn his hand to almost anything, fizzing with enthusiasm over future projects such as his avatar band Secret Mountain; his mentorship of classical music/dance ensemble Jhalaa; his work with Zimmer on the forthcoming epic Ramayana movie score; his numerous music education projects; and his April date at London’s Royal Albert Hall with classical composer Rushil Ranjan.
Rahman, however, remains supremely grounded – sharing many of his fellow musicians’ concerns over streaming and the studios’ approach to film music. Much of his catalog was recorded as a work-for-hire, a practise particularly common in Indian cinema, meaning he does not participate fully in its streaming success, despite having over 40 million monthly listeners on Spotify (“And we get peanuts from that!”).
That partly explains his recent enthusiasm for playing live, with his The Wonderment tour taking music from all stages of his career to a huge, mainstream audience; a bit like his own version of Taylor Swift’s Eras Tour – although he professes to know little about that particular cultural juggernaut. He is similarly bemused/amused to learn that Jai Ho has become the soundtrack to a popular college sports team drinking game, where people have to chug their beer between utterances of the song title.
But, before he heads for the stage, it’s time for the legendary composer to sit down with MBW and talk Hollywood, Bollywood and how he got involved with the Pussycat Dolls…
There is, but not as much as K-pop I believe! [Laughs]
I’ve told this to my team, after Jai Ho – which became a whole world rage – I should have been a little more aggressive and done more concerts, more entrepreneurial stuff in other countries, but I just chilled out. I was like, ‘Ah, I’ve arrived, let me chill out for five or six years’ – but it’s never too late!
Not missed. I could have done more, but then all my life I’d been slogging away from the age of 12 so I bought a house in LA, I chilled out and did stuff I never did before – like going to parties, meeting Spielberg, John Williams, JJ Abrams. I was flexing my power I guess!
I never thought I’d be crossing the border and people would be recognizing me on that side of the world. And people who I used to adore, like John Williams, Dave Grusin, Quincy Jones – I met all of them.
It was a dream. I always felt my music shouldn’t just be limited to Indian movies. In fact, from the start my interviews were like, ‘I want my songs to travel beyond India’, so I worked towards the production and sound recording having a vibe that everyone can listen to.
A good collaboration is not just a box tick, but it’s something where we jam, we talk about life, we talk about what we like and musical tastes. And then, when something comes out, it’s really genuine. That rarely comes.
Through that, we learn from each other and we also exchange audiences a little bit, we introduce each other to our audiences.
YOU’VE WORKED WITH DIANE WARREN [Pictured], WHO LIKES TO WRITE A SONG EVERY DAY. WHAT’S YOUR APPROACH?
I don’t write a song every day, but sometimes I sit and write five songs. It depends on the mood.
Sometimes I feel like only empty bullets are coming out, and sometimes I sit there and feel the energy, then it just flows. And then almost 80% are worthwhile songs.
I’m also very self-critical. When you go forward three decades, you need to leave many things which are your safeguards and walk into the fire.
Even when I listen to some of the K-pop stuff, I feel like for eight bars, you know which composer [was writing it] and then another eight bars feel like another composer, the hook seems to be [another] composer.
The average listener may not feel it but, because I’ve been writing songs for the past 35 years now, I can see how it’s been chopped together.
I am a little old school that way, but I love lyric writers. Now we have AI assistance with lyrics – like, what is the rhyme? It’s fun, it’s like an enhanced Google rhyme generator, so we use it like that.
Although, when it generates, after three times it hits the ceiling and starts repeating itself – and it also spits out what has been there, not a whole new perspective for life. Then you understand, that’s how much they’ve stolen, they will steal more to get even better.
Just as a reference point sometimes. It’s a good tool when it’s used right, it speeds up work, it opens up the imagination, especially in art.
I love stuff like that, when people are empowered, even though they don’t have the talent to be an artist, they have the vision to prompt and get something.
But it needs to be controlled so that it doesn’t fall into the wrong hands, where people lose their jobs and nasty things happen to humanity!
[Laughs] I’m not worried. Worrying is a bad thing. We always find ways to survive.
There’s always something this shit can’t do. The clichés will be there, and people will have to find new ways to express more human experience.
Like the whole live industry surge for the past two or three years has been amazing – there are great examples of what people want to come and watch; the artists whom they love, the songs which they love – they want to see flesh and blood, which is a good thing.
No. It was very underwhelming for me, because usually when I score a movie, I score around 120, 130 cues and for Slumdog, I probably worked for two weeks and had 18 tracks, that was it.
But with Danny [Boyle], every score was pushed up, he would crank it up in such a way that the whole world noticed it. I give it to him, his style of film-making and post-production definitely lifted the whole score and portrayed me to the whole world.
I wanted to get the award and move on with my life, but I couldn’t. For the next three years it was ‘Oscar, Oscar, Oscar – we want to celebrate you and felicitate you’.
I had to get away. We had bought a house in a village near Rajasthan. I told my Mum who was there at the time, ‘I want to get away from all that stuff’. I secretly went off until somebody spotted me.
We didn’t have screens in the bathroom because it was a new house, and there were 300 people standing on every damn house with cameras! I didn’t come out for two days, I was like, ‘Just feed me, I’ll just sleep’ – and they were standing there for nine, 10 days waiting for me to come out. That seems like another life now.
Jimmy Iovine liked the song a lot, so he said something which my agent hated: ‘How about AR and the Pussycat Dolls?’
My agent went, ‘No way is AR going to do that!’ But they called me and I said, ‘Why not? Think about the reach if I do it in English’.
“The only thing I’m remorseful about it is, I could have kept the momentum and expanded much more, done more things.”
So that really worked. In that movie, whatever decision I took was great for me! There were people insisting I should not do the movie, but I said, ‘No, I’m going to do this’.
I wanted to pat myself [on the back] like Snoop Dogg says, for doing all the courageous things. The only thing I’m remorseful about it is, I could have kept the momentum and expanded much more, done more things.
It could go either way. Sometimes you think it’s great and people don’t like it, sometimes you think it’s OK and then people are like, ‘Oh my God, what have you done?’ It’s hard to predict.
But they know that I want every song of mine to become a hit, rather than, ‘Oh, I’ll just write one OK song today’ – I won’t do that. I want to find something that is interesting.
Well, not a ‘hit’ hit. But something unique, something which gives a new perspective or a new vibe.
No artist wants to repeat themselves like, ‘Let me do a song like whatever I did three decades back or two decades back’, you only want to find what’s new.
You can see the enthusiasm in the team, the engineer or the musicians, and that’s really cool when they say, ‘I love this’. Mostly, you just want to write something that people will remember forever. The thought is, something that everybody can embrace in every situation. Like Lean On Me or I’m A Believer. All that stuff is very enticing; we’re all hard-wired to search for ourselves.
It was the mental torture, thinking, ‘No one’s going to respect me, because I left school’. That was the mentality I had, that the person who didn’t graduate was not respected in that society – I hope no one cares anymore! Now it’s like, ‘How much money does he have?’ [Laughs]
Well, I fail, but secretly! Unlike before, we don’t have to display our work in front of 70 people with an orchestra.
So, when I do tunes, probably around 50% get rejected by the director, but nobody knows about it.
I’m not a person who’s like, ‘This is it, take it or leave it’. I want them to be happy, to invest in it and come back again and say, ‘I love this, people love it, let’s work together again’ – and mostly that’s the case. I’m a people pleaser!
Remember, if I want to do my own thing, I have my platforms, I can put anything out, so that’s how I convince myself. Like, you can afford to do it yourself and commission yourself, why fight with people? Without compromising what I want to do of course…
Good directors come with vision and [when they] partner with good composers, great things can happen. But with the studios, I give up.
With all respect, studios want to rehash what is already there. In my experience, they put on temp music and ask the composers to copy it.
That’s the end of creativity – that’s why I lost the zest for scoring in Hollywood. I’d rather score some beautiful indie movies where people let me loose.
I have had great experiences, but with the big studios there’s so much bulldozing. And this scapegoat they use – ‘We screened it in five different places and they said how great the music was’ – it’s already chewed and spat, why do you want to pick that up? Why can’t you do something new – unless you do new, how will you know?
People still remember La La Land and Black Panther for the score, so the music makes the movies more memorable. We still remember Cinema Paradiso because of the theme, we still remember Schindler’s List. Imagine they had to put something derivative [on that], it would never have stood the rest of time. We still remember the first Gladiator for its music, even if you don’t remember anything else. There’s nothing like a tune. You remember Titanic for that tune, not for the temp music.
Musicians and writers should get paid fairly.
The credibility of the professional should go up. I made a movie called 99 Songs which addresses this whole thing – nobody takes a musician seriously. Like, if somebody says, ‘What does your son do?’ ‘He’s a musician’. ‘No, what does he do?’ That second question always comes. ‘He plays the cello’ – ‘Yes, the cello’s fine, but what does he really do?’
And that’s because the fairness is not there, there’s no credible structure for finance and pension, all that stuff. Music education should start from the lower grades [in school]. People can listen to a piece of music and be transported, but all that stuff only comes when you learn music and you understand it.
They should be educated from the ground up, so they become better humans and have more empathy.
Who: Villareal vs Barcelona
What: Spain’s La Liga
Where: Estadio de la Ceramica in Villareal, Spain
When: Sunday, December 21, at 4:15pm (15:15 GMT)
How to follow: We’ll have all the build-up on Al Jazeera Sport from 1215 GMT in advance of our text commentary stream. Click here to follow our live coverage.
Villarreal has quietly mounted a potential dark horse title campaign through most of the first half of La Liga.
list of 4 itemsend of list
Now it has a chance to make it official when the “Yellow Submarine” host Barcelona on Sunday.
Al Jazeera Sport takes a look at a game that could blow the Spanish top flight wide open.
The team coached by Marcelino Garcia Toral is in third place, eight points behind leader Barcelona and four behind second-placed Real Madrid. But it has played two fewer games than the powerhouses, so it could easily be in an even stronger position.
Villarreal has disappointed in the Champions League and was eliminated from the Copa del Rey by a lower-division side this week. But La Liga is a different story. Villarreal is on a six-game winning run, and its only two losses have come at Madrid and Atletico Madrid.
Marcelino’s men have also turned their La Ceramica stadium into a fortress, conceding a miserly four goals in eight home matches while remaining unbeaten and winning all but one of those league encounters.
The game will pit the league’s top defence in Villarreal, with 13 goals allowed in 17 games, against the league’s top attack. Barcelona has poured in 49 goals in that time – 15 more than closest challengers Real – and more than made up for a sometimes shaky defence by outscoring its opponents.
Barcelona will look to both quash thoughts of a challenge by Villarreal and close 2025 on a high note this weekend.
An eighth consecutive league victory for Lamine Yamal and company would also keep the pressure on a Madrid side which is struggling.
Madrid hosts Sevilla on Saturday, with coach Xabi Alonso in need of a convincing victory before they have the two-week winter break to ponder the team’s future.
Adding insult to the injury of Villareal’s difficulties outside of La Liga this season, they suffered a shock 2-1 Copa del Rey defeat to second-tier Racing de Santander on Wednesday.
Their last La Liga match was on December 6, and was a 2-0 home win against Girona. In between those two matches, Villareal also suffered a 3-2 home defeat at the hands of Copenhagen in the Champions League.
Andreas Christensen and Marcus Rashford struck late in the game to hand Barcelona a hard-fought 2-0 victory against third-tier side Guadalajara in the Copa del Rey on Tuesday.
Their last La Liga match also saw the Catalans pushed to the limit by Osasuna with Raphinha netting twice late in the game to secure a 2-0 win.
Villarreal has based its success on a team effort with several goal-scorers and playmakers. But left winger Alberto Moleiro stands out. He is having a breakout first season with the team and leads Villarreal with six league goals. Tajon Buchanan has added five goals, and midfielder Santi Comesana helps a solid midfield.
Barcelona coach Hansi Flick has so far succeeded in making a left-side centre-back of Gerard Martin, who struggled to fill in at left back when Alejandro Balde was injured late last season.
Martin has five consecutive starts in the centre of the defensive line as Flick tries to find a replacement for Inigo Martínez, who left earlier in the year for Saudi Arabia. Martin may be tested by Villarreal’s attack.
The Sunday showdown was originally earmarked for Miami until La Liga’s international expansion plans collapsed under heavy criticism, forcing the cancellation of what would have been the first European league match played abroad.
Villareal were 3-2 winners in the La Liga clash in May at Barcelona in the side’s last encounter, although the home side had already secured the league title five days previous to the match.
The away side took the lead through Ayoze Perez after only four minutes, but Yamal and Fermin Lopez turned the game in Barca’s favour before the break. Villareal were not done, however, with Santi Comesana levelling in the 50th minute before Tajon Buchanan scored the winner 10 minutes from time.
The first meeting between the sides last season resulted in a 5-1 drubbing as Barcelona ran amok at in Villareal.
Robert Lewandowski and Raphinha both netted braces either side of Pedro Torre’s strike. Perez was also on the scoresheet in this match for the home side, but it proved only to be a consolation.
This is the 55th meeting between the sides, with Barcelona winning 33 of the matches and Villarreal emerging victorious on 11 occasions.
Villareal have won their last two trips to Barcelona, but the Catalan club have the same record from their last two games at La Ceramica.
Villarreal received a timely boost as veterans Gerard Moreno and Dani Parejo returned to training on Tuesday and should be available to face Barcelona.
Pape Gueye and Ilias Akhomach, however, are away with Senegal at the Africa Cup of Nations.
Pau Cabanes is a definite injury absentee, while Thomas Partey, Gerard Moreno, Willy Kambwala and Santiago Mourino must prove their fitness before the match.
Dani Olmo and Gavi are both absent due to injuries, while Ronald Araujo is set to miss the game due to personal reasons.
Pedri missed training on Friday due to a calf strain, making him a major doubt for the match.
Luiz Junior; Navarro, Foyth, Veiga, Cardona; Buchanan, Comesana, Parejo, Moleiro; Perez, Mikautadze
Joan Garcia; Kounde, Cubarsi, Eric Garcia, Balde; De Jong, Pedri; Yamal, Raphinha, Rashford; Torres
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The US says its military has carried out a “massive strike” against the Islamic State group (IS) in Syria, in response to a deadly attack on American forces in the country.
The US Central Command (Centcom) said fighter jets, attack helicopters and artillery “struck more than 70 targets at multiple locations across central Syria”. Aircraft from Jordan were also involved.
It said the operation “employed more than 100 precision munitions” targeting known IS infrastructure and weapons sites.
President Donald Trump said “we are striking very strongly” against IS strongholds, following the 13 December IS ambush in the city of Palmyra in which two US soldiers and a US civilian interpreter were killed.
In a statement on X, Centcom, which directs American military operations in Europe, Africa and the Indo-Pacific, said Operation Hawkeye Strike was launched at 16:00 Eastern Time (21:00 GMT) on Friday.
Centcom commander Admiral Brad Cooper said that the US “will continue to relentlessly pursue terrorists who seek to harm Americans and our partners across the region”.
US Defence Secretary Pete Hegseth said the operation “is not the beginning of a war – it is a declaration of vengeance.
“If you target Americans – anywhere in the world – you will spend the rest of your brief, anxious life knowing the United States will hunt you, find you, and ruthlessly kill you.
“Today, we hunted and we killed our enemies. Lots of them. And we will continue,” the US defence secretary added.
Posting on Truth Social, President Trump said the US “is inflicting very serious retaliation, just as I promised, on the murderous terrorists responsible”.
He said the Syrian government was “fully in support”.
Meanwhile, the UK-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights (OBHR) said IS positions near the cities of Raqqa and Deir ez Zor were targeted.
It said that a prominent IS leader and a number of fighters were killed.
IS has not publicly commented. The BBC was unable to verify the targets immediately.
Centcom earlier said that the deadly attack in Palmyra was carried out by an IS gunman, who was “engaged and killed”.
Another three US soldiers were injured in the ambush, with a Pentagon official saying that it happened “in an area where the Syrian president does not have control.”
At the same time, the SOHR said the attacker was a member of the Syrian security forces.
No group has claimed responsibility for the attack, and the identity of the gunman has not been released.
In 2019, a US-backed alliance of Syrian fighters announced IS had lost the last pocket of territory in Syria it controlled, but since then the jihadist group has carried out some attacks.
The United Nations says the group still has between 5,000 and 7,000 fighters in Syria and Iraq.
US troops have maintained a presence in Syria since 2015 to help train other forces as part of a campaign against IS.
Syria has recently joined an international coalition to combat IS and has pledged to co-operate with the US.
In November, Syrian President Ahmed al-Sharaa – a former jihadist leader whose coalition forces toppled Bashar al-Assad’s regime in 2024 – met Trump at the White House, describing his visit as part of a “new era” for the two countries.
Elise Stefanik, loyal Trump ally, ends New York governor bid and will leave politics
Atlanta Hawks star Trae Young will make his first appearance since late October on Thursday night when the Hawks face the Charlotte Hornets. Young missed 22 straight games after suffering a sprained right MCL on October 29 against the Brooklyn Nets. His return gives the Hawks a key offensive piece as they fight for position in the tough Eastern Conference.
Young took part in full team practice Wednesday, which paved the way for him to be available for Thursday’s game. The Hawks listed him as questionable on the injury report before officially activating him for the Hornets matchup.
While Young was out, Atlanta managed to win 13 of 22 games, showing it could stay competitive without its All-Star point guard. Young has been a cornerstone for the franchise over the past several years, and the team now looks to his return as a potential spark.
Before the injury, Young was averaging 17.8 points and 7.8 assists per game this season, though he struggled from three in limited sample play.
Young’s presence early in the season still stood out in his career. Over eight NBA seasons with the Hawks, he has averaged more than 25 points and nearly 10 assists per game, marking him among the league’s elite playmakers.
Charlotte proved a tough matchup for Atlanta on Thursday night. LaMelo Ball, also returning from injury, poured in 28 points and 13 assists as the Hornets shot well from deep and outpaced the Hawks. Charlotte made a total of 24 three-pointers and used strong ball movement to build a lead earlier in the game.
Atlanta rallied late, led by Jalen Johnson’s 43 points, 11 rebounds, and nine assists, but the effort fell short in a 133-126 loss. Young finished with eight points and made 10 assists in limited minutes.
The Hawks now have their star point guard back, a boost the team sorely needed. Young’s court vision and shot creation can elevate Atlanta’s offense, especially in tight games. The Hawks will look to build continuity as Young gets more minutes under his belt.
Despite the loss, Young’s return is significant. Atlanta now has the pieces to make a stronger run in the second half of the season, and Young’s health will play a major role in the team’s push toward the playoffs.
Bringing a taste of Japanese camping flair and fashion to the United States, the Grayhus tent from Tokyo Crafts is a fantastically geometric wilderness abode that elevates the outdoor experience, whether you’re inside or viewing from afar its juxtaposition against the organic flow of its natural surrounds. The tent smartly adapts to the situation at hand, serving as spacious open-air canopy, insect-free screen room, and guyed-out, battened-down four-person glamping shelter tested to 55 mph (85 km/h).
We’ve long been quite enamored with Japanese camping gear, from the furniture that looks meticulously primped enough to make the cover of Better Homes & Gardens to ingeniously packaged tiny campers. And let’s not forget the massive multi-room indoor/outdoor base camp tents that feel quite paradoxical parked just down the path from those impossibly miniature RVs.
We were quite excited, then, to stumble on Kōrogi, a young Portland, Oregon-based curator and retailer of camping and outdoor gear. The company doesn’t limit its global reach to Japan, but introducing Japanese outdoor wares to the US market has definitely served as one of its driving focuses early on.
Kōrogi was founded in 2024 and opened its HQ in Portland earlier this year. Beyond selling gear from familiar Japanese names like Snow Peak and Toyo Steel, the company has launched a number of Japanese brands and creators on the US market for the first time ever, including Tokyo Crafts, Asomatous and Shim.Craft.
If we’re honest, we had never heard of Tokyo Crafts prior to discovering it on Kōrogi. In fact, we discovered both brands at the same time thanks to a picture of the Grayhus tent that yanked our eyes over to Kōrogi’s website during an entirely unrelated Google hunt. We’re quite glad it did.
A youthful, spirited brand founded in 2020, Tokyo Crafts builds a variety of camping gear that injects tightly focused, premium design and reimagined beauty into age-old recreation. It introduced the Grayhus tent in Japan in 2024, aiming to offer campers a roomier dome tent alternative with a compact footprint and extra-voluminous living area. The tent is meant to provide a more portable form of glamping compared to thick, bulky canvas safari tents.
In developing a tent that could join the vehicle carrying it comfortably within what it identifies as a standard camping plot (10 x 10 m, 33 x 33 feet), Tokyo Crafts sought to further develop the half-sphere form of the classic dome tent into a fuller sphere, thereby shrinking the floor area on the ground without ceding away any interior volume.
Tokyo Crafts/Korogi
Growing a half-sphere into a full(er) sphere that can stand stably on natural terrain is, of course, much easier on paper, where you don’t have to deal with the realities of physics. You can only bend solid aluminum or composite poles so far, and the dramatic oversized U-bends that would be required to craft a full-on orb tent frame are likely to blow well past that limit.
Instead, Tokyo Crafts turns to a geodesic construction meant to emulate the size and flow of a sphere. It turns rounded surfaces into sideways pentagonal pyramids that flare the ends of the tent wide and deep. The two flared pyramids are connected by an extended dual-peak central body that houses the tall, wide roll-up doors.
Tokyo Crafts/Korogi
Each doorway includes both a full mesh panel and a waterproof outer door, allowing campers to enjoy al fresco lounging when the weather and local fauna cooperate, mesh the open doorway over to keep out swarming pests, or close them up completely to guard against threatening weather.
Optional transparent TPU panels are available to deliver big views without giving up full weather protection during wet or cold conditions. The optional awning kit, meanwhile, repurposes the weatherproof door fabric into a large awning, further growing the shaded base camp footprint.
Tokyo Crafts/Korogi
The Grayhus ships without a floor as standard, setting up atop the bare earth. Interestingly, though, it has an inner and outer roof, the latter helping to filter out morning light while also cutting the condensation for which single-wall tent fabrics are notorious.
An optional 13.7 x 12.7-foot (4.2 x 3.9-m) 210D polyester floor is available, and while it doesn’t zip or otherwise secure to the body fabric, it does feature a raised tub construction meant to keep out flowing water and insects. The main Grayhus tent includes skirted edges that rest on the ground to further protect against unwanted intrusions.
Tokyo Crafts/Korogi
The Grayhus is designed to sleep up to four people and features a peak height of 8.5 feet (2.6 m) for plenty of standing room. A series of 14 interior hanging points allows campers to hang lamps, clothes and other items. Tokyo Crafts says it has tested the aluminum-framed 75D polyester-bodied tent to wind speeds up to 55 mph (85 km/h).
While it’s quite large at camp, the entire Grayhus body and frame pack into a carry bag measuring 28 x 14 x 14 in (71 x 36 x 36 cm). While the 44-lb (20-kg) package certainly isn’t lightweight, it can be easily carried by a single person.
Don’t expect the Grayhus to set up too quickly. Tokyo Crafts’ own setup video takes two people close to five minutes … and that’s inside, where they aren’t actually staking or guying it out. That said, this one serves more like a big safari tent as opposed to a fast-pitching dome tent, so a longer setup time comes with the territory.
Kōrogi launched the Grayhus in the US in August as part of its greater Tokyo Crafts rollout. It’s available now for a base price of $1,200. The optional floor costs $150, the transparent TPU door panels $220/pair.
Sources: Kōrogi and Tokyo Crafts
new video loaded: Riots Flare Up in Bangladesh After a Student Protest Leader Is Killed
By Axel Boada
December 19, 2025
The Justice Department released a massive trove of files related to the late sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein on Friday, but the site housing the information was failing to turn up any results.
The data dump came on the deadline that Congress established last month for disclosing the highly anticipated information, though a top Justice official suggested that not all the documents would come out at once with more due in the coming weeks.
While President Donald Trump, former President Bill Clinton, former Treasury Secretary Larry Summers, Microsoft cofounder Bill Gates and scores of other powerful men have been linked to Epstein, their names failed to come up in a search of DOJ’s “Epstein Library.”
“No results found. Please try a different search,” the site says after queries for their names.
The site adds that “Due to technical limitations and the format of certain materials (e.g., handwritten text), portions of these documents may not be electronically searchable or may produce unreliable search results.”
However, Clinton also appears in photos that were released as does the late pop singer Michael Jackson. Other records were heavily redacted.
Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche told Congress that the Justice Department had identified 1,200 victims of Epstein or their relatives and redacted materials that could reveal their identities, according to the New York Times.
Last month, an overwhelmingly bipartisan vote in Congress produced legislation to force the Trump administration to release the DOJ files, though emails and photos from Epstein’s estate had already come out.
One of the sponsors of that legislation, Rep. Ro Khanna, warned on Friday that if DOJ doesn’t show that it’s complying with the law, Congress could hold impeachment hearings for Attorney General Pam Bondi and Blanche.
Earlier on Friday, Blanche told Fox News that “several hundred thousand” pages would be released on Friday. “And then, over the next couple of weeks, I expect several hundred thousand more,” he added.
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