Technologies

How to Talk to a Loved One Who Has Dementia: Never Say ‘No’

Holiday gatherings can mean communicating with relatives who have memory loss. An expert offers her best tips.

This story is part of Mysteries of the Brain, CNET’s deep dive into the human brain’s infinite complexities.

I’ll never forget the last real conversation I had with my wonderful late mother-in-law, Grace. She’d had Alzheimer’s disease for a number of years, and making a call on her smartphone was getting tough for her. So I was surprised to see her name pop up on my screen, calling me on a random Thursday night in the fall of 2021.

“Are you watching 60 Minutes?” she asked.

I paused. I hadn’t watched the news-magazine show in decades, but I knew it aired on Sunday nights, not Thursdays. I also knew how confused Alzheimer’s had made my mother-in-law.

Before her illness, she’d always kept up with the news and had strong opinions on politics — even campaigning for John F. Kennedy when he ran for president in the 1960s. She kept her mind active well into her 80s by doing the daily crossword puzzle in her favorite newspaper, The Los Angeles Times, and she loved to discuss new books with me.

But Alzheimer’s had robbed her of her focus, and often her words. I knew how hard that was for her, how she became frustrated to the point of tears when she couldn’t make herself understood. If she thought she was watching 60 Minutes on a night it wasn’t on, I was not about to disagree with her.

“Yes, I’m watching 60 Minutes!” I said instantly.

It was the right answer. In a happy, satisfied voice, she said, “They’re a nice couple, aren’t they?”

Couple? Who was the couple? Mike Wallace and Morley Safer? Weren’t they dead? It didn’t matter.

“Yes!” I said.

“OK, I’ll let you go now,” she said, and the call was over. Grace died about a month later, at age 85. She’d moved from her two-bedroom California condominium into a beautiful assisted-living facility just eight months earlier, barely getting a chance to enjoy its hair salon, field trips and other amenities.

Her health deteriorated quickly, and she soon needed 24-hour care. We moved her from the hospital to a board-and-care home run by a compassionate Russian doctor, and she lived there for just one week before passing away.

Every day, I’m thankful I agreed with her during that phone call. In her world, she was watching a “nice couple” on 60 Minutes on a Thursday night, and I knew enough about her dementia to try to enter the world she inhabited.

‘I’ve got your back’

Diana Waugh knows just how hard it can be to speak to someone with cognitive loss, whether it’s Alzheimer’s disease, Lewy body dementia or another condition. Waugh is a veteran nurse and a certified dementia practitioner. Her business, Waugh Consulting, focuses on giving caregivers and family members the tools to communicate with loved ones suffering from dementia.

But Waugh didn’t always know how to do this. Her own mother, Iona Kiser, suffered from dementia and died in 2008 at 95.

“I did everything wrong,” Waugh says. “I was less than successful with her.”

Since then, Waugh has published a short book, I Was Thinking: Unlocking the Door to Successful Conversations with Loved Ones With Cognitive Loss. She’s spoken to countless caregivers, and produced numerous videos explaining her approach.

Waugh says she can sum up her philosophy about conversations with them in one phrase: “I’ve got your back.” She also holds strong feelings about the word “no” — saying caregivers shouldn’t use it. And she encourages caregivers to divert potentially troubling conversations to focus on old memories their loved one can easily discuss, as opposed to trying to quiz them on new information their brains just can’t access.

Her work won’t give her that time with her mom back, but she’s helped numerous other people along the way.

Sheila Qualls’ 86-year-old mother has dementia, and Qualls has been working with Waugh on how to better communicate with her mom.

“I miss my mom, but Diana taught me how to ‘access’ her,” Qualls says. “Her techniques have made a huge difference in how we respond to my mother and have changed our lives.”

Short-term-memory drawer has no bottom

Waugh explains that your loved one’s memory has two “file drawers” — short-term and long-term memory. The items in long-term memory are generally still accessible. But the file drawer that should collect short-term memories has no bottom. The memories simply can’t stay put.

“So if you ask [a person with memory loss] to go to lunch with you tomorrow, they put that in the short-term drawer [and it’s forgotten],” Waugh says. “You show up, they’re still in pajamas. A smart person says, ‘Let’s go anyway.'”

The person with dementia can’t tell you how they feel today, Waugh explains, since that involves short-term memory. But they can tell you “how it felt when they hurt their knee at age 40.”

Tap into long-term memory

That’s exactly why Waugh encourages caregivers to tap into their loved one’s long-term memory whenever possible. Her slim book has a number of workbook pages where she encourages people to write down memories they can bring up with their loved one. What did they like to taste? To listen to? To touch?

Always have three stories at the ready, Waugh tells clients, and then use them to keep the impacted loved one in the conversation. Bring up those old memories and encourage them to talk about those things.

Qualls says this tactic works.

“My mom may not remember who I am, but when I begin talking about her childhood or my childhood experiences, she can engage right away,” she says.

It can also be helpful to show photos to your loved one, but “make sure they’re old photos,” Waugh warns. A new great-great-granddaughter may be cute, but it’s unlikely a person with cognitive loss will have any idea who that baby is.

Divert and redirect

Waugh tells a story of a woman who moved her elderly father from Nashville to Houston and worried he’d want to return to his familiar barn, which was now several states away.

In such a scenario, instead of telling him no, that his beloved barn was gone, Waugh says caregivers should calmly use the barn as a jumping-off place to get the man talking.

“Say, ‘I was thinking about that one racehorse you had,” Waugh says. “And once they start [talking], let them go.”

Qualls found this method valuable as well.

“Diana also taught me how to answer questions when my mother wonders where my father is,” Qualls said. “Divert and redirect. Works like a charm. Diana taught me to enter my mom’s world instead of trying to bring her into my reality.”

Taking away the car keys

Many people first tune in to cognitive loss when they realize their loved one can no longer drive safely. But how to get them to give up the keys? You might be tempted to lie and say their car is broken.

That doesn’t work, Waugh says. If the loved one is early on in their cognitive loss, “they’ll call AAA to get that ‘broken’ car fixed.”

Instead, she suggests telling them about a scary incident you recently experienced on the roads, or claim you recently got lost while driving. These kinds of stories might hit home with someone who’s almost certainly beginning to notice problems. You might also be able to convince them a family member needs to use their car for a while, just to have an excuse for why it’s suddenly inaccessible.

Here’s what to never say

Waugh encourages caregivers to avoid one word: no.

“‘No’ doesn’t do a darn bit of good,” she says, explaining that the word only angers the loved one. If you can divert the conversation instead, the person will likely forget the diversion in five minutes and happily move on. But if you make them mad by telling them “no,” they’ll be mad for the rest of the day, she says.

Waugh understands why frustrated caregivers might be tempted to say no. Their loved one might be insisting they need to get to work when they haven’t held a job in years.

By saying “no,” the caregiver is hoping, she says, to bring the person back to reality by denying their “erroneous thinking.” But the person they love is living in their own reality, and the caregiver will need to keep saying “no” over and over again, increasing stress on the relationship.

Avoiding “no” makes sense, but Waugh also says caregivers shouldn’t say, “Do you remember?” What may seem a gentle prompt can be seen as a demanding quiz to someone losing their memory.

“It’s like waving a red flag in front of a bull,” Waugh says. “The person likely does not remember whatever it is, and asking them to do so puts them under pressure they no longer know how to handle.”

What to say instead

Instead, Waugh encourages people to use a phrase from the title of her book, “I was thinking…” as a starter to encourage memories. If a loved one tells you they have to get to work, although they haven’t had a job in years, calmly say, “I was thinking…” and then launch into some detail about a job they once had.

If it suddenly occurs to them they’ve lost a loved one — even if that happened years ago, you might start off with “I was thinking…” and then relate a happy memory about that loved one’s pie-baking skills.

Successfully communicating with loved ones who have dementia can be wrenchingly hard. Waugh knows that only too well.

“We need to stop looking at [our loved ones] as we always have,” Waugh writes in her book. “When we change our expectations, we can find them as they are. We can have meaningful conversations. Our relationship, though different, will be so much more fulfilling. It will provide us with happy memories of the latter part of their lives.”

Technologies

AI is Changing How Lawyers Work — and Putting the Billable Hour Under Pressure

AI is reshaping the legal industry by reducing the time needed for routine tasks, challenging the traditional billable hour model, and changing how lawyers learn and practice.

Artificial intelligence is now used by almost 90% of legal professionals in the U.K. and Ireland, and it’s putting one of the profession’s oldest conventions — the billable hour — under the microscope. That’s according to legal software company Clio’s U.K. & Ireland Legal Insights Report 2026.

It found that among firms using AI, almost 80% said they can handle more work without increasing resources, while over 70% said it cut costs by absorbing administrative work once done by support staff.

As a result, AI is challenging some of the assumptions on which the legal profession was built, forcing firms to reevaluate how their lawyers spend their time, how they charge for it and how new lawyers learn the ropes. You can’t charge 16 hours for something that takes 16 secondsNick Rowles-DaviesLexolent Some of the U.K.’s biggest firms are already putting this into practice.

A&O Shearman has worked with legal AI company Harvey to develop artificial intelligence agents for tasks, including reviewing loan agreements and analyzing regulatory filings, which it says can complete in minutes work that previously took several hours. Slaughter and May, meanwhile, has rolled out Harvey across all practice areas this year, including for regulatory research and document analysis.

Billable hour pressure The billable hour is central to the business model of many law firms, but when AI significantly reduces the time lawyers spend sifting through and drafting documents, the economics are no longer so straightforward. “You can’t charge 16 hours for something that takes 16 seconds,” Nick Rowles-Davies, founder and CEO of legal finance fund Lexolent, based in London and Dubai, told CNBC.

About one in five firms that have widely adopted AI report difficulty meeting billable-hour targets, according to Clio’s report. Globally, senior legal leaders expect the share of work charged by the hour to fall from 72% to 44% over the next two to three years, according to a Deloitte survey.

Routine work is the most exposed, Rowles-Davies said. “If you’ve got standard documents and you’re just putting in detail, then clearly that’s an automatic process.” But complex legal work still requires human judgment, he added, particularly when interpreting AI output and determining the right strategy for a client.

Lawyers [are] telling us that their day is getting betterJoshua LenonClio

AI and workloads

Whether AI efficiencies ultimately make lawyers’ working lives better may depend on what firms do with the time they get back. Clio’s report found that 51% of legal professionals work evenings, but only 32% want to, while 22% work weekends compared with 11% who would choose to.

Joshua Lenon, Clio’s New York-based lawyer-in-residence, believes some lawyers are already seeing the benefits. “Lawyers [are] telling us that their day is getting better,” Lenon told CNBC, as AI becomes more commonplace.

“People are really looking at these tools and saying, ‘This is making work better.’”

Technologies

Trump’s diesel agreement with Putin accused of contradicting Russia sanctions law

Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said in a searing statement that the U.S. easing sanctions on Moscow “plays into Russia’s hands.”

President Donald Trump’s Friday announcement that Russia will supply diesel fuel to the global market marked an apparent pivot from recent efforts to pressure Moscow to end the Ukraine war by targeting Russian energy exports.

Trump claimed the move, unveiled with less than a month left in an affordability-focused midterm election, would swiftly bring down record-high diesel prices.

But commentators and critics were quick to highlight contradictions between the new policy and prior efforts by the U.S. to clamp down on Russian oil sales.

Those efforts most recently included the enactment of the Lindsey O. Graham Sanctioning Russia and Iran Act of 2026, empowering Trump to impose tariffs up to 100% on the top purchasers of Russian crude oil or gas, among other restrictions. Trump signed the bill into law just three weeks ago.

“Congress just passed a law giving Trump the power to impose new tariffs on major buyers of Russian oil & gas,” Scott Lincicome, vice president of the libertarian Cato Institute, said on X after Trump’s Friday announcement.

“Can America tariff America?” he quipped.

Sen. Richard Blumenthal, D-Conn., a member of the Senate Ukraine Caucus, accused Trump’s latest move of being “directly contrary to Congress’s intent in our bipartisan sanctions bill.”

Peter Harrell, visiting scholar at Georgetown University Law Center’s Institute of International Economic Law, in an X post said that the relaxation of Russian diesel restrictions “pretty much proves the point that the Graham Russia Bill was not going to force the Trump Administration to increase economic pressure on Moscow.”

Some of the criticism crossed party lines.

“Through the Lindsey O. Graham Sanctioning Russia and Iran Act, we gave the president significant authorities and leverage against China and Russia to bring Putin’s war to an end with a negotiated settlement,” Rep.

Michael McCaul, R-Texas, said in an X post. “Unfortunately, while I understand the desire to bring down diesel prices, I am concerned the lifting of sanctions on Russian oil will only fund the Kremlin’s war machine—emboldening more violence and destruction, as we have seen in recent days,” McCaul said.

The White House did not immediately respond to CNBC’s questions about the diesel agreement with Russia.

Less than a year earlier, the Trump administration slapped sanctions on multiple Russian oil companies in response to what it called “Russia’s lack of serious commitment to a peace process to end the war in Ukraine.”

Trump also had previously slammed NATO allies for continuing to buy Russian oil. In a September 2025 Truth Social post, he wrote, “the purchase of Russian Oil, by some, has been shocking! It greatly weakens your negotiating position, and bargaining power, over Russia.”

Later that month, Trump again harangued world leaders for doing business with Russia.

“They’re funding the war against themselves. Who the hell ever heard of that one?” he said in a speech at the United Nations General Assembly. “They can’t be doing what they’re doing. They’re buying oil and gas from Russia while they’re fighting Russia.”

Trump announced the diesel deal in a Truth Social post Friday afternoon after what he described as a “highly successful discussion” with Russian President Vladimir Putin.

Under the agreement, Russia will immediately supply more than 300,000 tons of diesel, then another 500,000 tons in November, followed by 1 million tons “immediately thereafter” and 3 million more depending on refinery conditions, Trump wrote.

The Treasury Department soon after said that Trump directed the Office of Foreign Assets Control to immediately issue a “temporary general license to allow the supply of Russian diesel to the global market.” OFAC specified that the sanctioned transactions will be authorized for about six months, until April 7.

Russia seemed to celebrate the move. “Russia-US cooperation on diesel and energy will benefit the world,” an X account associated with Putin’s economic envoy Kirill Dmitriev said in response to the announcement.

But Ukraine President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, whose military has started targeting Russian oil refineries, said in a searing statement that the U.S. easing sanctions on Moscow “plays into Russia’s hands.”

“Any easing of sanctions against Russia without a clear and lasting de-escalation agreement with Russia is an obvious weakness,” Zelenskyy said. “Allowing Russia to sell petroleum products is an investment in a war that must be ended, not prolonged.”

“We count on America’s fair support for our defense of life, for our defense of people in Ukraine – and on the United States having a correspondingly strong conversation with Russia,” he said.

“A strong one, not a weak one,” he added.

Trump thanked Putin later Friday afternoon for enabling “massive amounts of oil” to come to the U.S.

“We need oil for the world, and this is diesel, which is what we need, so we’re very happy to get it,” Trump told reporters before heading to Syracuse, New York.

The Trump administration has previously eased some Russian energy sanctions temporarily, though more narrowly than Friday’s announcement.

Earlier this year, in an attempt to stabilize markets after the start of the Iran war, the Trump administration issued limited, 30-day waivers allowing countries to buy sanctioned Russian oil that was already in transit.

But some interpreted the latest move as a more significant step.

“It looks like Trump cut a deal with the devil,” Jeremy Siegel, professor emeritus of finance at the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania, told CNBC’s “Closing Bell” Friday afternoon.

“It’s not a permanent solution at all. It’s sort of a short-term Band Aid,” Siegel said. “And cutting back on or eliminating sanctions on Russia for the invasion in Ukraine, I think, is a very unfortunate consequence.”

Technologies

The world needs Ukraine’s grain. Its farmers are running out of reasons to plant

Cash-strapped farmers have no incentive to sow for 2027 with exports remaining trapped, as analysts say commodity markets could “flip fast.”

Ukraine’s harvest season is moving from wheat and barley into corn, soybeans and sunflower, and farmer Oleksandr Chumak has had a strong yield so far. That should be good news.

Instead, after 11 years of growing a range of crops in the Odesa region of southern Ukraine, Chumak has had enough.

Storage facilities across both Ukraine and Russia are filled with millions of tons of produce that would normally be sent to Europe, the Middle East, Asia and Africa — but are instead trapped in the warring countries.

Russian drone and missile hits on Black Sea targets intensified over the summer and into fall, making it impossible to insure commercial ships. Kyiv’s retaliatory attacks mean Russian exports are now also stuck, further squeezing global supply.

And with fatal Black Sea attacks continuing into October, prospects of a ceasefire look slim, even as Turkey ramps up efforts to broker a deal due to the risk to global food security.

Chumak says that around 80% of his grain cannot currently be sold at a profit, and he is out of cash.

A collapse in domestic prices is giving farmers like him little reason to sow for the 2027 crop in the coming months.

“For the farmers, it’s very difficult because we need to pay taxes, we need to pay rent for land, and now we are not able to do this because we are not able to sell anything,” said Andrii Dykun, chairman of the Ukrainian Agri Council.

“The only crops we are able to sell are rapeseeds and sunflower seeds. But still, the volume is not enough… So why should we plant if today we have no profits at all?”

“If our stocks will be full, it makes no sense to do any farm operations in the spring because then it’s just a waste of time and money.”

PrivatBank, Ukraine’s biggest lender, told CNBC that it had disbursed 1.53 billion hryvnia ($34.2 million) in working capital finance to agribusinesses between June and August, more than double the 718 million hryvnia lent in the same period last year. Small and medium-sized producers account for 70% of its agricultural loan book.

“Funds effectively remain tied up in grain inventories, while farms still need to cover their ongoing operating expenses and secure financing for the autumn and spring sowing campaigns,” said Yevhen Zaihraiev, chief corporate and SME business officer at state-owned PrivatBank.

“We are seeing different strategies among our clients. Some agricultural producers are selling their crops sooner, even at less attractive prices, in order to maintain sufficient operating liquidity. Others, particularly those with access to storage capacity, are postponing sales in anticipation of more favorable market prices,” he said by email.

Ukrainian production of grains and oilseeds is forecast to increase to 85 million tonnes from 80 million tonnes this year, but carry-over stocks from the previous season are pressuring Ukraine’s storage infrastructure and logistics, Zaihraiev noted. Those facilities include long plastic silobags snaking across fields and towering metal grain elevators that are themselves increasingly vulnerable to military strikes.

“We are also seeing agricultural producers gradually revise their planting plans for next year in favor of oilseeds and niche crops, whose prices are less dependent on logistics costs,” Zaihraiev added.

Farmer Oleksandr Chumak said he will follow that strategy, significantly scaling back planting for next year, avoiding corn and barley altogether, and instead opt for crops which require less fertilizer — which is also facing a global squeeze following amid the U.S.-Israeli war with Iran.

Meanwhile, for Ukrainian farmers — those not currently being drafted to serve — the war with Russia is ever-present. “We are living and working in a place where any time you or your circle can be hit by [a] rocket or drone,” Chumak said by phone. “We are sleeping in beds with explosions 300 to 1,000 metres around.”

Stock release would ‘flip the market fast’

Ukraine’s agricultural sector has faced farm takeovers, mines and labor shortages ever since Russia’s full-scale assault began in early 2022. International bodies have struggled to preserve its export routes through various agreements, including the collapsed Black Sea initiative and the European Union’s politically contentious “Solidarity Lanes.”

Now, the situation inside the country and the consequences for global food chains are the most severe they have been since the war began.

Between them, Ukraine and Russia supplied the world with more than half of its sunflower oil, nearly a fifth of its barley and 14% of its wheat in the years leading up to the war, according to the UN. Ukraine is also one of the world’s biggest growers of corn, with China and the European Union among its biggest buyers.

Around 90% of Ukraine’s main agricultural exports typically run via the Black Sea. In August this year, its grain and legume exports totalled 981,000 tonnes, down about 58% year on year.

The risk is heightened by weakness elsewhere. Europe is expected to have a particularly poor corn harvest and needs larger imports just as its demand for feed remains high. The United States is also facing a weaker corn crop.

For now, better wheat and barley crops in Canada, Australia and Argentina, along with good harvests in the Middle East and North Africa, are cushioning the blow.

The continued blockage is supporting commodity prices outside of Russia and Ukraine, but the reopening of Black Sea ports would unleash a wave of cheap supply that would “flip the market fast… with little warning,” said Benoit Fayaud, senior manager for grains and oilseeds analysis at Expana.

A deal which restores Ukrainian and Russian exports could see grains prices in other origins decrease by a few dozen dollars, he told CNBC. “They have such big stocks it will be bearish for the market all over the world,” he added.

Prices for Russian and Ukrainian wheat, barley, oilseeds and other products have become so low within the countries that it has intensified the scramble to find alternative routes via rail, road and river, according to Fayaud.

But these alternative routes are “difficult and slow from both countries,” he said.

Ukraine’s Eastern European neighbors such as Poland and Romania are resisting a push to allow grain to transit through them — even temporarily — due to concerns about a glut destroying demand for their own crops.

Another option via the Danube river has been hampered by low water levels; and a key bridge out of Ukraine has been damaged. There are options to export via the Baltic states and through Georgia by land into the Middle East and Central Asia, but this can only cover a small portion of typical flows, Fayaud said.

Andrii Dykun of the Ukrainian Agri Council stressed that there was no alternative to the Black Sea routes when it came to pricing.

“It would always be cheaper for us, even for the farmers on the western border of Ukraine, to sell the grain to other ports from Black Sea ports because it’s much more profitable for the farmers than to sell it via the border to [the] EU,” he said.

“So without Black Sea ports, it will not work for us at all.”