Leonard got the ceiling-high cabinets she was hoping for, which she complemented with a white marble countertop that extended to the backsplash.
“I just loved the idea of it looking a little more rich and and grand by using that marble slab,” she said.
The real marble was one of the biggest splurges Leonard and her husband made on the kitchen, and she said that even though some people think marble can be hard to maintain, it “was definitely worth splurging on” for her.
“Any of the etchings are great signs of life, and it shows that it’s natural, real stone,” she said.
Leonard chose brass finishes throughout the kitchen, from the hardware to her oven and a rack that hangs by a window. It elevates the kitchen’s otherwise neutral tones.
Leonard also incorporated her personal style through small details, such as the sconce on one side of her sink, which serves as a high-end nightlight they turn on when their kitchen is closed for the evening.
“I just love those little bits of character that are a little different,” she said.
In the fall of 2023, Taylor and her family were living in a condo that they loved. They knew they would buy a bigger property someday, but they weren’t in a rush. Then the algorithmic fates stepped in when Taylor spotted a historic home on Zillow that was a little over 3,500 square feet and built in the 1920s.
“It wasn’t too far from where we were in Detroit,” she told Business Insider of the house. “It’s in a historic neighborhood in the city.”
Since the four-bedroom house was nearby, Taylor and her husband decided to take a look, driving by it before setting up an actual tour. For Taylor, it was love at first sight.
“The moment we drove up, I just had a good gut feeling about it,” she said. She fell even more in love when they saw the interior layout.
Taylor and her husband put in an offer, and soon, the house was theirs.
Katie Davis lived the typical busy college student life when she first started feeling stomach pain.
Then a 20-year-old junior and marketing major at Westchester University in Pennsylvania, Davis split her time between classes, her job at Playa Bowls, and her sorority. The pain in the top right of her abdomen was easy to ignore because it was so sporadic and fleeting.
Davis was living the normal life of a college student when she started experiencing pain in her abdomen.
Katie Davis
“It was on and off, it would come in waves,” Davis, now 21, told Business Insider. “I would go a good while without it, and then it would come and only last a few minutes, sometimes even a few seconds.”
Over time, the pain — when it showed up — got more severe, sometimes causing her to double over in pain. Three months after it started, she went to a local urgent care while at her boyfriend’s family beach house. There was no ultrasound equipment at the facility, and she was told that, based on her symptoms, it could be an ovarian cyst that would hopefully go away after her next period.
Her doctor suspected colon cancer before the biopsy
Davis had a feeling she had colon cancer because of the private room she was placed in after her colonoscopy.
Katie Davis
Davis was told to keep an eye on the pain and go to an emergency room if she felt other symptoms like fever or nausea. A few days later, when she started getting chills and vomited at her parents’ home, Davis did just that.
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“That was the first time anything more serious than an ovarian cyst was brought up to me,” Davis said. According to her ultrasound and CAT scan, her colon was inflamed and appeared to have free fluid, a potential indication of infection, trauma, or cancer.
The ER doctor thought it could be Crohn’s or ulcerative colitis, or, in more serious cases, colon cancer. He scheduled a colonoscopy.
“I didn’t think I was going to come out of it having cancer or anything really serious,” Davis said. Her first clue that something was wrong was when she woke up from the procedure. She noticed she was placed in a separate room from the other colonoscopy patients.
The doctor who performed the procedure told Davis and her mom that he was “pretty positive” the mass in Davis’ colon was cancerous. “He said he’d been doing it for long enough that he could kind of tell,” she said.
Shortly after, Davis was diagnosed with stage 2 colon cancer.
“I didn’t really know what to think or feel,” Davis said about learning her diagnosis. “Definitely just numb and confused at first, like ‘how did I get this?'”
Treatment dragged on due to side effects like vision loss
Davis had to switch to a milder and prolonged treatment plan when traditional chemo led to serious side effects.
Katie Davis
After diagnosis, Davis had surgery on her colon and was supposed to start three months of chemotherapy soon after. But, the side effects complicated her treatment.
“I couldn’t tolerate the more hardcore chemotherapy,” Davis said. She developed extreme fatigue, nausea, and neuropathy, which she said felt like “pins and needles” in her hands every time she encountered temperature changes.
The most alarming side effect was her vision loss. “My vision would go completely black,” Davis said. Her parents researched the drug,oxaliplatin, which can cause vision issues in some patients. Davis also found the Colorectal Cancer Alliance (CCA) and said hearing similar stories around common side effects helped her stay informed about alternative treatment options.
Davis was put on oral-only chemotherapy medication, prolonging her treatment from three to six months. The only upside was that she no longer had to travel back and forth for treatment, since she could take it wherever she was.
Davis tried to keep her life as normal as possible during treatment.
Katie Davis
All the while, she was still attending her college classes in person as often as she could, even though her professors knew about her colon cancer diagnosis. “My boyfriend lives there, all my friends live there, so I tried to be there as much as possible,” she said. “I tried to keep up with my stuff as much as I could, but it definitely was difficult to do schoolwork when I felt as horrible as I did on the chemo.”
She’s glad she listened to her body
Davis finished chemo in June 2025 and was declared cancer-free shortly after. Going forward, she’ll have blood tests every three months and an annual colonoscopy.
Now a senior, she’s a marketing intern at a financial advisory firm and is trying to figure out her plans post-graduation. She said finishing treatment made her feel “excited to be normal again” and get back to her normal college life without worrying about doctor’s appointments or treatment side effects.
Now cancer-free, Davis advocates for more awareness of colon cancer symptoms in young people.
Katie Davis
Looking back, she’s grateful for noticing the warning signs early enough. “A lot of my doctors said that most people at my age or with my stage wouldn’t really have the symptoms that I had that let me know that something is wrong,” she said. “I’m glad that I learned to listen to my body.”
It’s her biggest piece of advice to young people with similar or subtle symptoms, as colon cancer recently became the leading cause of cancer death in people under 50. She said joining the CCA and colon cancer Facebook groups can also help raise awareness of potential symptoms.
“You’re not really alone going through it,” she said, whether you’re worried about symptoms or actively undergoing treatment. “There are other people who are experiencing it too who can help you.”
When Jordan Piluso went to a New Jersey estate sale in late January, she had one goal: to purchase a porcelain rabbit from the designer brand Herand.
She’d learned about the sale online and viewed photos of the items available. She didn’t plan to buy any other decorative animals.
But her mission quickly changed.
“When I walked into the house, this [ceramic] cat was sitting on a piano right in the entryway,” the 34-year-old stay-at-home mom told Business Insider. “No one was looking at it, so I just grabbed it. I thought it was such a whimsical, out-there decor piece, and that’s my style.”
She later purchased the $25 cat decoration, along with a few other pieces. She didn’t know it at the time, but her secondhand find was actually an Italian art piece from Fornasetti.
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“I love very eclectic, conversational pieces, and I just thought: I’ve never seen anything like this cat,” she added.
Jordan Piluso and the Fornasetti cat she bought at an estate sale.
Jordan Piluso
Hidden in plain sight
When Piluso purchased her cat statue, she didn’t immediately look for markings or a signature indicating the artisan who made it.
“I picked it up and was like, ‘You’re coming with me,'” she said. “It was just a no-brainer.”
The people running the estate sale were equally unaware of its origins.
“They were just happy to get rid of it,” she said.
The Fornasetti cat that Jordan Piluso found at an estate sale.
Jordan Piluso
It wasn’t until Piluso got home and did a Google image search that she realized it might be valuable. She saw photos of similar cat pieces by the Italian artist Piero Fornasetti and noticed that each had a stamp at the base of its tail.
Sure enough, her cat statue has one too. It reads “Fornasetti Milano, Made in Italy” and features an image of a hand holding a paintbrush.
The Fornasetti stamp at the base of the cat statue.
Jordan Piluso
Cats have been a signature motif for the late artist and his brand for decades.
Its modern feline pieces retail between $73 (€62) and $2,353 (€2000) each, while vintage cat statues like Piluso’s have sold for upward of $2,500 on secondhand sites.
Piluso confirmed with the brand via email that it’s authentic and was hand-painted between the late 1950s and early 1960s. Business Insider reviewed the email exchange.
Ken Farmer, an antique and fine-art appraiser, told Business Insider that Fornasetti created over 13,000 designs during his career and aimed to bring art into ordinary homes.
“This playful, smiling cat ceramic figure with black leopard spots on a white field, circa 1960, is likely worth $1,000 to $1,500 at auction and $3,000 retail,” he said.
Valuable, but priceless
The potential profit she could gain from her Fornasetti piece doesn’t matter much to Piluso. She has no intentions of selling it.
“It’s something that brings me so much joy,” she said. “I’m always going to be able to talk about this when people come over. I can tell my kids the story someday.”
“To me, that is a far more valuable gift than the monetary value this cat could bring,” she continued.
Her husband, a dog person, was less convinced that they should keep the decor piece when Piluso originally brought it home. However, he’s since come around, she said.
The couple is keeping the ceramic cat, which doesn’t have a name, on a tall mantle out of reach of their toddler.
Secondhand treasures
Don’t worry — Piluso didn’t leave the estate sale without the pink-and-gold embellished bunny she had initially gone there for.
She purchased the rabbit piece for $600 and a ceramic tiger for $50 — both of which will be displayed prominently in her home.
The decor pieces Jordan Piluso bought at a recent estate sale.
Jordan Piluso
Piluso said she’s relatively new to shopping secondhand. She was looking for a hobby after having her second child, and eventually landed on decorating her home with vintage pieces.
She said she loves the charm vintage decor adds to her home and the stories she can share with guests. That’s why her husband encouraged her to create a TikTok account to share her finds with a wider audience.
And clearly, she’s a natural at finding hidden gems.
“When you go to estate sales or thrifting, don’t be afraid of the oddities,” she said. “They can be the coolest, and in this case, some of the most valuable things you can find.”
Two Alexander brothers had sex with a protesting woman in the backyard of a Hamptons rental as other partygoers joined in or watched, according to testimony in the third week of the siblings’ Manhattan sex trafficking trial.
“She was over and over and over asking them to stop,” a witness told the jury of an unnamed woman she described as intoxicated and “screaming” for help in a hot tub.
It was Saturday night on Memorial Day weekend in 2009. Tal Alexander and “one of the twins” — the witness couldn’t say if it was Alon or Oren Alexander — were among those sexually assaulting the woman, according to the testimony.
“It seemed nobody was taking action,” said the witness, Avishan Bodjnoud, an information management executive at the United Nations.
Bodjnoud said she asked the people around her to do something, but no one would. In the midst of a party, “there were no allies there to help,” Bodjnoud said.
She felt too fearful and too alone in her outrage to contact the police, Bodjnoud told the jury.
Instead, she fled the party in a taxi, but not before scrawling “Rapists” and “You need to apologize” in eyeliner on the front door and wall of the Southampton rental, Bodjnoud testified.
Photographs of the graffiti, recovered from Tal Alexander’s hard drive, were shown in court. “I hoped that someday this could be used as evidence,” Bodjnoud said, seeing the photographs and tearing up on the witness stand.
The disturbing testimony capped the third week of the trial of former luxury real estate brokers Tal and Oren Alexander and their brother, Alon.
So far — roughly halfway through the federal trial — nine accusers have taken the stand. In sometimes tearful testimony, they have described being sexually assaulted behind closed doors by one or more of the brothers, including on a cruise ship, at two Hamptons rentals, and at an Aspen ski resort.
The hot tub incident stands out as the only alleged assault totake placein public view, with a pool party in full swing. It is not clear whether prosecutors will call the woman herself to the stand or whether she was ever identified.
Lawyers for the brothers say that any sex was consensual and not trafficking. In their cross-examinations of witnesses, the lawyers have repeatedly pointed out that none of the women called the police or took a drug test that could substantiate their claims of being drugged.
During cross-examination, a defense lawyer for Tal Alexander challenged Bodjnoud’s testimony that she remained silent out of fear for the brothers’ power and influence.
“Were you aware that in 2009, Tal Alexander was a 21-year-old copy machine salesman?” asked the lawyer, Milton Williams.
A second witness to the alleged hot tub assault testified on Thursday and Friday under the pseudonym “Isa Brooks.”
Brooks told jurors she saw “a girl, I believe, in a green bikini with a bunch of guys on top of her.”
She said she heard another woman — who, like her, was indoors looking out into the yard — cry out, “I work for the UN and I know what you’re doing!”
Oren Alexander, who was outside, slammed the door in that woman’s face, Brooks testified.
Brooks was called to testify to her own alleged assault, which she said took place earlier in the day on that same Saturday. She was days away from her 17th birthday.
She described struggling and falling in and out of consciousness as Tal Alexander and Alon Alexander, whom she described as the “quieter twin,” joined with two other men in violently assaulting her on a bed.
The four men were saying “degrading words” during the attack, Brooks told the jury.
“I was wondering why they hated me,” she recalled thinking.
On cross-examination, Brooks was questioned by the defense about photographs showing her celebrating her 17th birthday with school pals days after the incident, and was asked why, days after that, she and a girlfriend stayed overnight at another Hamptons home where Tal Alexander was also present.
“I was scared to rock the boat,” she responded of her reluctance to speak out or call the authorities. “I was scared that I would get in trouble.”
The brothers face up to life in prison if convicted of a top count of sex trafficking conspiracy.
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A woman gave birth in a robotaxi in San Francisco earlier this week, Waymo confirmed.
Waymo told local media that the robotaxi safely delivered its passengers to the hospital.
It’s not the first birth recorded in a Waymo, and with the company expanding rapidly, it may not be the last.
One San Francisco robotaxi arrived at its destination with an unexpected extra passenger on Monday.
A woman in labor gave birth in the back seat of a Waymo robotaxi while traveling to the hospital, the company confirmed in a blog post on Wednesday.
“Some people just can’t wait for their first Waymo ride,” the company said.
A spokesperson for the Google-backed robotaxi firm told The San Francisco Standard, which first reported the news, that Waymo’s remote monitoring team detected “unusual activity” in the backseat of the driverless vehicle.
Employees called 911 once they realised what was happening. But the robotaxi delivered its passengers to the hospital without needing assistance, and was subsequently removed from Waymo’s fleet for cleaning.
Apparently, it’s not the first time someone has given birth in a Waymo, with the company confirming to The San Francisco Standard that a similar incident previously occurred in Phoenix.
Waymo is growing up fast
Waymo has had a big year, with the company’s robotaxis becoming a regular sight on San Francisco’s streets, alongside expansions into new markets in Austin and Atlanta.
On Wednesday, Waymo said it had served over 14 million trips so far this year, and expected to hit 1 million rides a week by the end of 2025.
It hasn’t all been smooth sailing. Last month, Waymo issued a software update to 3,067 robotaxis after reports that its vehicles were driving past stopped school buses, according to a regulatory report filed on Thursday.
Waymo is planning a major expansion next year as it faces competition from Tesla’s nascent robotaxi service, which launched in Austin in June.
Fiona Harvey, the woman who says she’s the real version of the semi-fictionalized stalker on Netflix hit “Baby Reindeer,” is suing the streaming giant.
Harvey, a 58-year-old Scot, filed a lawsuit on Thursday in California, seeking more than $170 million and a jury trial. She’s suing over defamation and intentional affliction of emotional distress, among other points.
She did not sue creator and star Richard Gadd, who plays a fictional version of himself called Donny Dunn. “Baby Reindeer” is based on his experiences with being stalked by a woman earlier in his career, when he was trying to make it as a comedian.
In the complaint, Harvey’s lawyers said the show was a “brutal lie” that brought her unwanted attention, including death threats.
“Netflix and Gadd destroyed her reputation, her character and her life,” the attorneys wrote.
On- and off-screen, Netflix has repeatedly said “Baby Reindeer” is a true story.
“We intend to defend this matter vigorously and to stand by Richard Gadd’s right to tell his story,” a Netflix spokesperson told Business Insider.
The company has not yet filed a response to the lawsuit.
The real Martha Scott
As the show picked up viewers, armchair sleuths raced to find the “real” stalker, named Martha Scott in the show, and the man who Gadd said abused him.
In late April, Gadd asked fans not to speculate about who the real people were behind the show’s characters. He told GQ he disguised the stalker’s identity in the show.
“What’s been borrowed is an emotional truth, not a fact-by-fact profile of someone,” Gadd said.
In the lawsuit, Harvey said she was identified days after the show’s April debut. Her attorneys said people found a public 2014 tweet she sent to Gadd that used a phrase repeated in the show.
Harvey’s court filing outlined similarities between the stalker character and herself: a Scottish woman about 20 years older than Gadd living in London, with similar appearance and speaking patterns. Both the character and Harvey were accused of stalking a lawyer. It’s unclear if that reference is to an old colleague of Harvey’s, who told BI on Thursday that Harvey harassed her from 1997 to 2002.
But unlike the fictional Martha Scott, Harvey said she is not a convicted stalker, nor has she pled guilty to any crime. Her complaint said Netflix did not check any facts central to the show, including that the stalker sexually assaulted Gadd. She said she did not have any sexual encounters with the comedian.
In an interview with Piers Morgan in early May, Harvey said that while she may have emailed Gadd, it was nowhere near the 40,000 messages he said the stalker sent him. She denied harassing Gadd and said she knew him from when she was bartending in London.
