Month: September 2026

BRITISH Airways has confirmed one of its routes won’t start up again until next winter at the earliest, due to the Iran conflict.

It first suspended flights to the destination in February of this year.

British Airways has confirmed the suspension of its flights to Abu Dhabi won’t lift until winter 2027 at the earliest.

The airline cited the Middle East conflict and ‘airspace instability’ as the reason for its continued delay.

Talking to Simple Flying, a BA spokesperson said: “Due to the ongoing situation in the Middle East, we have made further changes to our flying schedule to provide greater clarity for our customers.

“We’re keeping the situation under constant review and are directly in touch with affected customers to offer them a range of options. (…) Our flights to Abu Dhabi are scheduled to resume in Winter 2027/2028.”

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However, Simple Flying noted that Abu Dhabi appears to have been removed from BA’s long-haul plans for 2027 altogether.

Currently for those wanting to travel to Abu Dhabi with BA, they will have to book a flight from Heathrow to Doha, then switch to another airline like Qatar Airways to continue their journey.

The indirect route takes around 11 hours rather than seven.

But there are two routes back on the cards this year with British Airways – the first is to Dubai.

The airline will resume flights to Dubai from November 3.

These will initially operate once a day during the winter season before increasing two services each day during the summer season.

Flights to Amman will also restart on November 3 after being suspended in March.

DUBAI: The US House of Representatives has gone into an early recess without voting on a Republican lawmaker’s bid to impeach Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth over the US’ war on Iran.

House Speaker Mike Johnson sent lawmakers home on Wednesday, ending the chamber’s scheduled business a day early and delaying action on a resolution by Republican Rep. Thomas Massie that accuses Hegseth of conducting military operations against Iran without congressional authorization.

The move comes as President Donald Trump said on Wednesday that the seven-month war on Iran was “hopefully” nearing its end and that Tehran wanted to reach a deal.

Trump is also expected to meet GCC leaders on the sidelines of the UN General Assembly in New York, with discussions expected to include the conflict and its aftermath.

Massie, a Kentucky Republican and longtime critic of the administration’s Iran policy, introduced eight articles of impeachment against Hegseth on Tuesday. 

He accused the defense secretary of violating the War Powers Resolution by continuing hostilities against Iran without congressional authorization, as well as other alleged abuses of power related to US military operations.

Massie had sought to force a vote in the House within two legislative days. His resolution was therefore left pending after Johnson ended the House’s session early.

Massie condemned the decision, accusing Johnson of avoiding a debate over the US military campaign.

“I’m trying to stop a war,” Massie said from the House floor on Wednesday, while criticizing the speaker for sending lawmakers home.

Johnson defended the House’s record and dismissed Massie’s impeachment effort as a “stunt,” saying the chamber had completed its legislative work.

The early recess also comes after the House voted this week on a separate war powers measure concerning the Iran conflict, with several Republicans joining Democrats in backing efforts to rein in the administration’s military authority.

The House is now expected to return after the November midterm elections, leaving Massie’s impeachment resolution and other pending legislation unresolved.

– With AP

KELLY Osbourne fears her son will become an addict like she and her father Ozzy were.

The TV personality, 41, used alcohol and drugs from 13.

She said it was to “numb that pain” she felt after becoming a child star.

Her rocker dad struggled with addiction for decades.

And the mum of Sidney, three, said: “I do believe it to be a genetic disorder.

“It’s something I even worry about with my son.

Read more on Kelly Osbourne

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“I never want him to go through what I went through. Ever.”

Kelly leapt to fame on reality TV show The Osbournes.

She told the We Need To Talk podcast that she took drugs and drank not because she “wanted a party” but to cope.

She said of her woes: “I went to bed one night.

“And then I woke up and I was the most famous 16-year-old in the world. It didn’t make sense.”

Ozzy died last year aged 76.

Socialist Hotels is the first photography book to focus solely on the architecture of hospitality in Eastern Europe and the post-Soviet landscape. These state-constructed buildings were used by visiting government workers and ordinary citizens. Today they are a fascinating legacy of a social and cultural idiosyncrasy.

Below-par showings were forgiven last season as Celtic simply just had to get by to stay in touch at the top before eventually leapfrogging Heart of Midlothian on the final day with a seventh successive league victory.

That Premiership-winning streak has been extended to 13 games following six straight victories to start the campaign, but concerns about performance level remain. Four of those six wins have been by a one-goal margin.

Twelve goals over three wins at Kilmarnock, Dundee United and in the first leg of the Champions League play-off against LASK sent an ominous warning to Celtic’s domestic rivals amid a period of high spending, particularly in forward areas.

Camilo Duran has been the standout summer recruit so far with six goals and three assists in 10 appearances, while record signing Kasper Hogh and fellow big-money arrival Haissem Hassan are yet to fully settle.

Sutton said his old club have been “flat-track bullies” by “beating the teams you expect them to beat”, but the collapse in Austria, plus Sunday’s bruising loss, has highlighted glaring deficiencies.

Even captain Callum McGregor lamented Celtic’s “team of individuals” after the weekend defeat at Ibrox.

Speaking on BBC Radio 5 Live’s Monday Night Club, former striker Sutton also expressed his “great concerns” for O’Neill’s men and said they have “big issues” after a “lightweight” midfield was “run all over” by Rangers.

Celtic have struggled to build up play against coherent pressing teams, which results in opposition sides being offered too much encouragement when the ball turns over.

They faced a whopping 60 shots across both legs with LASK. Forty of them came in a mess of a second leg. In the Premiership alone this season, they have faced 64 attempts, the same number as Hearts and six more than Rangers.

Over just six games, that tally already makes up almost a quarter of the total they faced in the entirety of the 2024-25 league-winning campaign under Brendan Rodgers.

That said, in comparison to last term, which was overseen by Rodgers, Nancy and O’Neill, Celtic’s Premiership numbers show they are currently averaging a far better goal concession rate while scoring and shooting more.

Come Sunday, though, the most crucial statistic could be in the points column.

With a rapid rematch against Rangers offering the chance to move eight points clear of their city rivals after a test against European-level opposition, the next four days will at least be mood-shifting.

Whether that is to O’Neill’s benefit remains unclear.

New Delhi says it has ‘made clear’ its determination to ‘protect its trade and economic interests’.

India has warned the United States that new measures to levy tariffs over the purchase of Russian oil could impact ⁠bilateral ties, hours after the US Congress approved a bill that would give President Donald Trump new abilities to punish buyers of Russian oil.

The US House of Representatives on Wednesday passed a sweeping sanctions and tariff bill intended to increase economic pressure on Russia over its invasion of ⁠Ukraine.

The bill targets Russia’s energy and defence sectors, President Vladimir Putin and other senior officials, as well as Moscow’s so-called shadow fleet of tankers used to circumvent Western sanctions.

It also authorises President Donald Trump to impose stiff tariffs of up to 100 percent on countries, including India, to reduce their dependence on Russian oil and gas, and⁠ extend sanctions on Iran.

The bill has been sent to Trump to sign into law.

India’s foreign ministry said on Thursday that it “remains firmly committed to ensuring energy security for its 1.4 billion people”.

The Indian foreign ministry said that it had noted the bill’s passage, adding that New Delhi had raised the issue with various US interlocutors in recent months, and had “very clearly articulated” the potential implications for the bilateral relationship and the international energy market.

“The Indian side has also made clear its determination to take all necessary measures to protect its trade and economic interests,” it said in a statement.

The government would work closely with trade and industry bodies to deal with the legislation’s implications, it added.

India, the world’s third-biggest oil importer, is among the biggest buyers of Russian oil, which is seen as helping Moscow replenish its budget since it launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022 and was hit with ⁠sweeping Western sanctions.

New Delhi has repeatedly sought to resist pressure to reduce its oil trade with Russia, saying its large population and economy need secure, affordable and reliable energy supplies.

The ChatGPT creator says it is introducing a public reporting framework to share unexpected AI behaviour, admitting the industry has not solved safety challenges yet.

OpenAI says it has identified additional incidents of its AI models allegedly acting deceptively and taking unsanctioned actions during internal training and testing.

Alongside these disclosures on Wednesday, the creator of ChatGPT stated it was introducing a public reporting framework intended to frequently share instances of what it termed as unexpected or misaligned AI behaviour.

In a post on its website, OpenAI claimed that under the newly outlined framework, it will publish updates on concerning model behaviour on an ongoing basis rather than delaying disclosures to group multiple incidents into larger, periodic reports.

The company said the initiative aims to increase industry transparency around troubling model activities in the absence of standardised safety disclosure norms.

The announcement comes amid broader calls from prominent technology leaders urging a slowdown in frontier AI development over concerns that rapid scaling could outpace human oversight and control.

Last week, Anthropic claimed to have thwarted multiple malicious operations using its Claude models, ranging from cyber-espionage and weapons design to mass surveillance campaigns.

“We must slow the pace at which we improve the capabilities of AI models,” Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei wrote in an essay published on Saturday. “Progress will still seem fast, and we must make wise use of the time we gain.”

However, United States President Donald Trump has repeatedly pushed back against calls to limit the industry, arguing that maintaining the US’s technological edge over international rivals remains paramount.

Responding to slowdown proposals, Trump described critics as “very negative forces” raising exaggerated scenarios that “won’t happen”.

Escalating debate on alignment

Despite political resistance to statutory slowdowns, OpenAI signalled agreement with its industry rival regarding alignment pressures.

“As AI systems grow more advanced and more widely deployed, we need to build a broader and better-informed consensus on the progress of alignment research,” the company stated in the post.

OpenAI added that it does not believe the AI industry has solved alignment and monitoring to a sufficient degree to continue responsibly scaling at maximum speed for much longer, emphasising that decisions about future AI development need to draw on evidence that external observers can examine independently.

According to the company, safety teams observed what they categorised as “misaligned behaviour” across six specific circumstances over the past six months during training and evaluation runs.

However, OpenAI maintained that these reports document individual, rare instances rather than frequent operational failures across deployed products.

The reported incidents allegedly included unreleased research models concealing mistakes in task summaries, unauthorised file uploads to the internet to generate citation links, and agents sharing files across public servers or internal repositories to bypass local boundaries.

OpenAI further stated that its future reports will detail observed behaviours, severity, setting, discovery dates, and the specific models involved, adding that it remains committed to disclosing complex cases requiring longer investigation or third-party coordination.

In a matter of days, Ed Sheeran has gone from the most agreeable, defiantly middle-of-the-road singer-songwriter on the pop charts to music’s newest villain. The Times’ August Brown and Mikael Wood gathered to break down what happened — and to figure out what it all means.

August Brown: To recap, Sheeran dropped his tour opener, the rapper Macklemore, after the MC described Israel’s actions in Gaza as a genocide and said “Free Palestine” onstage this month at two New Jersey dates of Sheeran’s ongoing stadium tour. Macklemore, in a statement, cited his long friendship with Sheeran while criticizing the singer for allegedly acquiescing to a demand from Robert Kraft, the owner of the NFL’s New England Patriots, that the rapper not be allowed to perform at the Patriots’ Gillette Stadium outside Boston due to his comments.

Kraft, a Trump-supporting billionaire with his own colorful history, released a statement about the tour, saying he was “ensuring that events held at our venue do not provide a platform for hate speech.”

But Sheeran, who performed at Kraft’s wedding in 2022, arguably made things much worse with his own comments on the decision to drop Macklemore from the tour, which ranged from shifting accountability (“Macklemore coming off tour was the promoter’s decision, it was not mine”) to promising that he held compassionate beliefs on this volatile issue but wouldn’t articulate them publicly (“I am not complicit. I have my personal views on this devastating conflict. Just because I choose not to speak publicly, it doesn’t mean I don’t have them, and it doesn’t mean I don’t care.”)

This prompted Sheeran’s remaining openers — including the musician and producer Finneas, the Danish rock combo Lukas Graham and singer-songwriter Aaron Rowe — to drop off the tour, each giving their plainspoken support for both Macklemore’s advocacy and the Palestinian people as their reasons for leaving. The traditional Irish group Beoga, which backs Sheeran for a portion of his nightly show, also quit the tour, saying it was responding to “the silencing of Macklemore by Zionist lobbies.”

It’s too soon to know how this will affect a CVS-core pop star like Sheeran, but it’s clear that for the first time in his career, he’s chosen the path of maximum conflict and controversy for little gain. What do you think he should he have done instead?

Macklemore

(Morgan Hancock / Getty Images)

Mikael Wood: Not let Macklemore be booted from his tour?

Look, I understand Sheeran’s position here: that he views himself as an artist whose audience comes to his show precisely because they’d like to avoid the messy realities of the world for two or three hours. We can choose a different day to discuss how tenable (or not) that position is here in the era of a reality-TV president who long ago blurred the line between politics and entertainment.

But setting aside one’s views on Israel and Palestine, it’s impossible for me to see how Sheeran ever thought his actions would be seen as anything other than allowing a fellow artist to be silenced — a clear loser in the eyes of both the left and the right.

It would be one thing if Macklemore’s comments in New Jersey truly resembled the hate speech that Kraft accused him of dispensing. (Many online have posted images of a costume the rapper wore onstage in 2014 that resembled an ugly Jewish caricature; Macklemore apologized at the time, saying he understood the criticism.)

And of course I get that the very idea of hate speech is slippery — one reason, perhaps, that the folks at AT&T Stadium near Dallas (where Sheeran is scheduled to perform next month) appear to have no problem hosting a concert in November by Ye, who not so long ago released a song called, uh, “Heil Hitler.”

But given how measured Macklemore’s comments were, Sheeran’s decision to go along with the demands for his removal feels less like a fulfillment of his desire to create a conflict-free zone and more like a capitulation to a rich and powerful friend.

August, what do you make of the various statements from the musicians who’ve opted to leave the tour in the wake of all this?

August Brown: The other openers had the most to lose here by bowing out of a huge tour. Yet they took unambiguous stances in favor of Macklemore’s Palestinian advocacy. (On Wednesday, the rapper said on Instagram that he planned to donate “the entire $1 million of my net earnings” from Sheeran’s tour to six organizations “working directly to support the Palestinian people.” He also invited Kraft to match his donation.)

“Artists must not be silenced when they speak up for the oppressed,” Finneas wrote. “I stand with Palestine and its people.”

Lukas Graham went even harder: “We should be able to speak about war, about civilians being killed, about children who deserve to grow up,” the group wrote. “Money doesn’t give you the right to own the conversation.”

Sheeran could have done what many fans regard as the right thing: Defy Kraft’s demands, cancel the Gillette Stadium dates with Macklemore and reroute the tour to somewhere that would support an opening act’s fairly anodyne support of a popular human rights cause. Sheeran is extremely wealthy, and he’d have been on the right side of history, if for no other reason than to say that billionaires shouldn’t have a veto over an artist’s human rights advocacy onstage.

I’m sympathetic to the idea that crews’ livelihoods and fans’ investment in the shows are meaningful things to toss out. But an artist as big as Sheeran can make up the difference. Even a hypothetical statement like “I stand for Macklemore’s freedom of speech and the rights of the Palestinian people. My team’s livelihoods depends on the shows happening, so I will play the Gillette dates as planned,” with a promise for a donation or a benefit show with Macklemore down the line — even that would have smoothed this over.

But his actions here — deflecting accountability, being vague yet defensive about his own politics — and his history with Kraft suggest his sympathies might not lie with the causes his opening acts stand for.

It’s interesting that Beoga and Aaron Rowe, both Irish acts, acknowledged their own country’s history of colonial occupation as reason to stand up for Palestinians (and free speech around it). “Ed has been a friend to me and has changed my life, I could never thank him enough for this,” Rowe wrote in his statement. “But as Irish people we know all too well about genocide, forced famine, and violent occupation.”

Even Lukas Graham cited the band’s roots in Christiania, a Danish enclave with a history as an anarchist commune, as an example they’re following by bailing on this tour. Sheeran likes to say that, through his father, he is culturally Irish though he was born and raised in England. In a country that rallied for Kneecap, the Irish rap group and advocates for Palestinians, his reputation is likely taking a real hit. Whether that extends to his ultra-mainstream U.S. fan base remains to be seen.

Not every artist is obliged to comment on contentious issues — though the success of Olivia Rodrigo’s Daisy Chain Fields festival, which raised money for an array of abortion-rights advocacy groups, showed that A-listers can speak out when they want to. But whatever he actually believes, Sheeran’s long-cultivated neutrality is in tatters. Taking a stand would have been the path of least resistance. Instead, he committed the most basic onstage error: a failure to read the room.

Sydney: Australia will reduce migration by curbing “visa hopping”, tightening rules on students and working holiday makers as well as cracking down on overstayers, its interior minister said Thursday, as the far-right surges in the polls.

Home Affairs Minister Tony Burke told the National Press Club in Canberra that immigration was “fundamentally a strength” for Australia, but accepted that housing pressures required changes.

He denied his ruling Labor party was tightening visa rules in response to the rise of One Nation, which has become one of the country’s most popular parties this year with pledges to drastically slash migration. Business groups warned such cuts would cause economic damage.

“We need immigration to soften enough that housing has a chance to catch up,” he said, while stressing the housing shortage was not caused by migrants.

Net overseas migration – the net gain or loss to the population through movement to and from Australia – reached a peak of 538,000 in 2022 after a surge in arrivals when borders re-opened after the Covid-19 pandemic.

Numbers fell to 292,100 in the year to March, data on Thursday showed.

Burke said this was 47 percent below the post-Covid peak — and that policy changes would help to reach a target of 225,000 for next year.

Australians want to know the government was “taking control” of migration but also “being decent about it”, he said.

Students are the largest group of arrivals, with 753,000 international students in Australia, most from China and India, data shows.

Under the new rules, family members seeking to join students in Australia will face new curbs and it will become harder for students to move between courses to extend their stay, Burke said.

A backlog of applications from the UK for working holiday visas would continue to be processed slowly after a record 80,000 applications — a matter that is under discussion with the UK government, he said.

Working holiday makers in rural areas will enter a ballot to stay for a second or third year, with just 5,000 visas available for the latter.

Family members seeking to visit Australians will have “no further stay” conditions attached to their temporary visas.

Migrants with construction and housing skills will be prioritised for visas, he said.

Australia would return to a policy of a decade earlier in which visa overstayers were given two weeks to leave the country or face detention and deportation, he said.

An additional 100 compliance officers and 250 more beds in immigration detention centres would show there are consequences to overstaying a visa, he said.

But he stressed “this is not the sort of operation that some people have seen on TV happening in other countries” — a nod to hardline immigration policies in the United States.

A third of Australia’s resident population of 27.6 million was born overseas, the latest census data shows.

A grainy photograph, dated 1938, hangs in a frame on the downstairs wall of my B&B. It shows 100, perhaps 200, elegantly attired trippers sitting on the green at Shipley Glen in West Yorkshire. They’re picnicking, chatting, taking the air and enjoying the sunshine, while admiring the rocks and woods that frame the deep gully below. It’s local, low-carbon, cheap-as-chips tourism before the jet age – and also a model for how we may travel in the future.

I arrived here thanks to a new trail, launching on 19 September, that runs through the also newly established Bradford Pennine Gateway national nature reserve – astonishingly, the first reserve of this kind to be created in West Yorkshire. The trail uses almost the same name and is a savvy bit of sustainable planning, connecting the three towns of Ilkley, Saltaire and Haworth but, by appealing to walkers, hopefully inspiring people to explore beyond the confines of these honeypots.

I began at Ilkley on a Monday morning. I’d been on its moor once before, for a long circular hike. But I actually prefer linear walks, and it felt like a challenge to start out by crossing the moor. The first half hour was all upward, with lots of stone staircases and some steep sections. A hovering kestrel welcomed me to the top as a reward.

In fact, the great ridge of moorland above Ilkley is called Rombalds Moor; named after a legendary giant, and which comprises several named moors. I tramped across Ilkley, Burley and Bingley moors in a single lunge, stopping only a few times to drink water, take in the massive views back to the “golf ball” radomes of RAF Menwith Hill near Harrogate, over to Leeds – increasingly a high-rise city – and down to the Emley Moor transmitter near Wakefield (the tallest freestanding structure in the UK), and to admire the Twelve Apostles stone circle near the summit.

I had an easy downward stroll before ascending, more gently this time, to the shoulder of Baildon Moor. The vegetation on these moors is mainly heather (pinkish purple now), dense swathes of bracken, tough upland grasses and peat bog, broken up by gritstone outcrops. The NNR designation recognises that it is an area rich in biodiversity, for flora and fauna, and that it plays an important role in tackling challenges like the climate crisis, floods and wildfires. I was walking more than I was watching, but I clocked skylarks, meadow pipits, wheatears, swallows and, on the south side of Baildon, a colony of tree sparrows. As well as clusters of forestry conifers, there were patches of native trees, including birch, rowan and elder, and the occasional willow. Though it’s not wild all the way: I passed tourist chalets, crossed a few fast roads, and walked through a busy golf course (where there were benches, few and far between on the first half of the trail).

The moors are dotted with human history. A big hole, like a meteor crater, turned out to be an abandoned pit, for extracting coal in the preindustrial era. Signage and traces in the landscape point to second world war tank training. Quarries litter the moorlands and dry-stone walls and extensive ditches point to centuries of management.

The trail is 18 miles (28.9km) long. I could probably have walked it in a day with a bit of effort. I’m glad I didn’t, not least because Shipley Glen was a revelation. Despite having visited nearby Saltaire several times, I’d never gone up the hill to see the ravine, which probably became a “glen” because it sounded Scottish and picturesque. For more than a century and a half, it has served many purposes: as a place for radical rallies and suffragettes’ meetings, a temperance hotel and teashop, Victorian pleasure gardens and quirky amusements and rides – and a tramway, opened in 1895, which still operates. I recommend breaking the walk here, even if it’s not quite a midpoint, because the setting is glorious; Bracken Hall House is a gorgeous B&B (doubles from £110 a night), and Saltaire is full of art, industrial history, and great food and drink. There are benches beside the glen, if you decided to pause for a picnic.

While overnighting, I met Danny Jackson, the former countryside and rights of way manager for Bradford council, who devised and plotted the trail. “I want to change people’s perceptions of what Bradford is,” he said. “It’s not just a city. It’s a district. And it’s very rural.

“I also want to highlight things that are overlooked. Through the NNR and the trail, we want to maximise the benefits from air quality, carbon capture, wildfire and flood reduction, rewetting, peat restoration – and obviously all the health benefits from being outdoors.”

From Shipley Glen, I walked on via a series of nature-rich spots to Haworth. The first, Trench Meadows, is a Site of Special Scientific Interest (SSSI), notable for its grasses and wildflowers, including red fescue, sweet vernal and crested dog’s-tail. The path took me through an elaborate beautiful old kissing gate, and along cobbled and flagged paths; Victorians and Edwardians made their footpaths beautiful as well as functional – and built them to last.

I passed through Bingley by way of several smart housing estates above the town. I recalled John Braine’s 1957 novel, Room at the Top, set precisely in these airy heights; the novelist renamed it “Warley”, perhaps to make more locally innocuous his tale of social-climbing and adultery. The trail takes in the Five Rise Locks and Three Rise Locks sections of the Leeds-Liverpool canal, which I had only ever spied from the main road. Between the two lock-ladders is Bingley North Bog – a small but precious site that supports a variety of insects, birds and amphibians.

Over the previous 10 miles or so, I’d swapped Wharfedale for Airedale and now found myself walking along attractive stretches of the River Aire. At Bingley St Ives, I skirted a large pond full of waders, another golf club and a large equestrian centre; some mouldering old properties had ecclesiastical-looking doorways, perhaps harking back to the pre-dissolution period when the estate was in the hands of Rievaulx Abbey and Drax Priory. A splendid hide has been built where you can watch bullfinches, goldcrests and siskins that come to use the feeders.

I got my first proper blast of a west wind on Harden Moor – the third of the day’s special sites, being a very rare dry heath alongside mixed woodland, and an ideal habitat for bees (including the nationally scarce tormentil mining bee), wasps, spiders, flies, grasshoppers and other invertebrates. With Haworth now on my mind, slightly irritating Kate Bush-related earworms began to wriggle. I had a cheese butty and tea at a suitably Heathcliffian area called Catstones End, all wild heather and quarried rocks – with huge boulders forming natural sculptures.

Rain came in with the wind and I got absolutely drenched on the final approach to Haworth. But soon after, I was entering Bradford’s prettiest township and thinking about coffee and cake. The walk officially ends at Penistone Hill country park, but after taking walking therapy a few years ago, I am no longer a completist – and was satisfied with my walk and mini achievement. I bowed out on Haworth high street, without so much as a glance at the Brontë Parsonage Museum.

The visit was supported by Bradford Culture Company, which is developing projects related to the 2025 UK City of Culture

Ilkley, Saltaire and Haworth are easy to reach by train or bus. If arriving by car, park at Keighley and use the 62 bus to get to Ilkley and the B1, B2 and B3 Brontëbuses to travel from Haworth back to Keighley

Ed Sheeran’s Loop tour, in the span of less than two weeks, became an unexpected lightning rod for controversy and conversation about artist activism amid Israel’s deadly war in Gaza. Still, the show will go on.

Sheeran’s tour will proceed as planned, The Times has learned. He is scheduled to play on Saturday at Lincoln Financial Field in Philadelphia. The venue also confirmed on Wednesday that the Saturday concert is still a go, but that supporting acts have yet to be finalized.

A representative for Sheeran’s tour did not immediately respond to requests for additional information, including who will be the new supporting acts.

In a rapid turn of events since rapper and former opening act Macklemore called for Palestinian liberation onstage earlier this month, Sheeran — the singer of inoffensive hits including “Thinking Out Loud” and “Shape of You” — fell out with the fellow Grammy winner, witnessed all supporting acts drop from his lineup and defended himself against accusations of complicity in silencing criticism of Israel. Additionally, Sheeran confronted scrutiny over his largely apolitical public presence. He attributed this to his longtime desire to “bring people from all backgrounds and cultures together” via his music and performances.

“I am not complicit. I have my personal views on this devastating conflict,” he wrote Tuesday on Instagram. “Just because I choose not to speak publicly, it doesn’t mean I don’t have them, and it doesn’t mean I don’t care. Nor does it mean I don’t support causes in my own, personal way.”

Ahead of Sheeran’s first concert since the scrutiny surrounding Macklemore’s performance, read on for what preceded the fallout of Sheeran’s Loop tour.

Macklemore goes from “Thrift Shop” to “Hind’s Hall”

Macklemore performs at Rod Laver Arena on May 15, 2024, in Melbourne, Australia.

(Morgan Hancock / Getty Images)

Before hitting the stage for Sheeran’s Loop tour, Macklemore famously burst onto the music scene in 2012 as part of the duo Macklemore & Ryan Lewis. The pair gained popularity for the then-inescapable hit “Thrift Shop,” the fourth single off their acclaimed debut album, “The Heist.”

The duo gained further notoriety with hits “Can’t Hold Us” and same-sex marriage anthem “Same Love.” They notoriously bested Kendrick Lamar at the 2014 Grammy Awards in the rap album category. Lamar was nominated for his striking debut “Good Kid, M.A.A.D City.”

A year after releasing their 2016 album, “This Unruly Mess I’ve Made,” the duo announced an indefinite hiatus. Macklemore focused on his solo work, including collaborations with Kesha, Lil Yachty and Skylar Grey. In recent years, Macklemore has taken on a new purpose with his platform.

Macklemore, like many musical acts including Kehlani, Finneas and Irish rap group Kneecap, became a vocal supporter of the Palestinian cause after Israel began its offensive in Gaza in the wake of the Hamas attacks on Oct. 7, 2023. The rapper has channeled his views on the conflict into his music, releasing his protest song “Hind’s Hall” in May 2024. The song calls for a ceasefire, an end to Israeli occupation in Gaza and highlights pro-Palestinian protests on college campuses.

Ed Sheeran announces his Loop tour

Ed Sheeran performs during iHeartRadio Kiss 108’s Jingle Ball 2025 at TD Garden on Dec. 14, 2025, in Boston, Mass..

(Scott Eisen / Getty Images for iHeartRadio)

Last September, Sheeran unveiled his plans to hit the road to promote his eighth studio album, “Play.”

The British “A Team” singer announced at the time that his tour would begin June 2026 with a stop at Arizona’s State Farm Stadium and would run through early November. The announcement did not disclose the supporting acts set to share the stage with him, but informed fans the singer would perform shows across large venues including Inglewood’s SoFi Stadium in August and a pair of performances at MetLife Stadium in New Jersey.

The concerts at MetLife Stadium would later embroil Sheeran, his tour, Macklemore — and somehow pop star Pink — in controversy.

Macklemore calls to ‘Free Palestine’: Performance or ‘propaganda?’

When Macklemore took the MetLife Stadium stage as the supporting act for Sheeran’s Sept. 4 and 5 concerts, he did not mince words in his message. During his set, Macklemore criticized Israel for its war in Gaza and accused it of genocide of Palestinians. He also projected an edited version of his “Hind’s Hall” music video, which features footage of pro-Palestinian college encampments and protests and military strikes in Gaza.

Video of Macklemore’s performance spread online, drawing ire from some Jewish advocacy groups including StopAntisemitism, which accused Macklemore on Instagram of turning “a mainstream event into a political nightmare against the Jewish state.” Pop star Pink, who is Jewish, shared StopAntisemitism’s post to her Instagram story. She faced backlash for the repost and later clarified in a three-part statement that she took issue with the imagery Macklemore displayed during his performance. She also accused the rapper of taking “the mic to tell all the Jews in the stadium that it wasn’t about them.”

In the wake of Macklemore’s performance, the Israeli American Council and the Anti-Defamation League also decried Macklemore’s performance on social media, with the former publishing a petition calling on Sheeran to remove the rapper from the remaining shows of his tour.

“Freedom of expression does not give anyone the right to turn someone else’s stage into a platform for political propaganda,” the Israeli American Council said on Instagram.

Amid the mounting backlash, Macklemore defended his stance and shared video on social media of his full address to the MetLife crowd. “I said ‘Free Palestine.’ I want those words to be loud and clear so that the people in Gaza all the way to the occupied West Bank know that we have not forgotten them,” he tells concertgoers in his introduction to “Hind’s Hall.”

“To all my Jewish brothers and sisters, criticism of Israel, criticism of apartheid, being against genocide in no way is a criticism of you,” he adds, according to video of his address. “My message is for peace, love for all human beings to be treated with dignity, respect and equality.”

The fallout begins: Macklemore fired from Loop tour

Whether Macklemore would remain on Sheeran’s tour amid the public outcry remained uncertain, until he confirmed his status earlier this week. He said in a lengthy statement shared to Facebook that his continued, vocal support for Palestinians amid Israel’s war in Gaza has cost him professionally.

The rapper said he was removed after “some difficult conversations” with Sheeran. He also went into depth about the inner workings that led to his removal from the tour, including conversations between Sheeran and wealthy venue owners, including billionaire Robert Kraft, whose Kraft Group owns Gillette Stadium in Massachusetts, where Sheeran is set to play later this month.

“Ed told me that Kraft said I would not be allowed to perform in his stadium,” Macklemore wrote. “Ed also told me that Kraft had rallied some of the other stadium owners and collectively they gave him an ultimatum: if Macklemore stays on the tour, you will not be allowed to play in our venues.”

Sheeran in a separate statement shared on Tuesday confirmed he had conversations with Kraft but did not speak to the alleged ultimatum. The singer also said removing Macklemore from the tour “was the promoter’s decision, it was not mine” and that Macklemore’s contract was with its promoter. Messina Touring announced on Monday it had dropped Macklemore from the remaining tour dates “after discussions with stakeholders.”

Additionally, Macklemore wrote that Sheeran’s “typical apolitical stance was being challenged” amid the public scrutiny and “he couldn’t get past his public facing, ‘I don’t take sides.’”

Sheeran appeared to address that criticism, writing in his missive that attendees at his concerts “do not expect a political forum.” The singer also wrote he thinks there can be different ways to work toward peace.

“If we only focus on shouting the loudest, nothing will ever change,” he wrote.

Macklemore said in his Monday statement he was hopeful this turn of events would not mean an end to his friendship with Sheeran and he was grateful for the opportunity to play on tour, regardless.

“I didn’t need 10 Shows from Ed. I needed 2,” he wrote. “Two chances to stand in front of 90,000 people and say … ‘Free Palestine.’”

Supporting acts depart tour in solidarity

Grammy winner Finneas was among the supporting acts who announced their departure from Ed Sheeran’s tour on Tuesday.

(Monica Schipper / Getty Images)

Hours after Sheeran shared his side to the controversy, numerous musical acts including Grammy winner Finneas and folk band Beoga, Sheeran’s backing band, pulled from the Loop tour in solidarity with Macklemore and in support of Palestinians.

“Artists must not be silenced when they speak up for the oppressed. I have decided to withdraw from my upcoming tour dates with Ed Sheeran,” wrote Finneas, who has been a vocal supporter of Palestinians. “I stand with Palestine and its people.”

Pop band Lukas Graham and Irish singer-songwriter Aaron Rowe, both billed as supporting acts for several upcoming dates on Sheeran’s tour, voiced support for the Palestinian people and spoke against the inner workings that led to Macklemore’s removal.

In its statement, Lukas Graham wrote: “Money doesn’t give you the right to own the conversation. Nobody’s bank balance should decide who gets to speak or which suffering we’re allowed to acknowledge.”

Rowe in his Instagram statement said that Sheeran “has been a friend to me and has changed my life” but that he is sympathetic to the Palestinian cause. “As Irish people we know all too well about genocide, forced famine and violent occupation,” he wrote. The “Hey Ma” singer accused elites of leveraging their power to “silence the rightful voices” and criticism of Israel.

“I need to be true to myself and my ancestors who resisted colonisation, and fought for a freedom that I enjoy today in Ireland,” Rowe continued.

Macklemore announced Wednesday that he will donate his earnings from his shows with Sheeran to charities supporting Palestinians. He also invited Kraft to match his donation and reaffirmed his dedication to the Palestinian cause.

“This is what this has always been about,” he wrote. “Not me. Not a tour. Not the headlines or the controversy.”

The North American leg of Sheeran’s Loop tour is scheduled to end Nov. 7 at Raymond James Stadium in Tampa, Fla. — the same venue that platformed controversial rapper Ye (formerly Kanye West) earlier this summer.

Crypto traders are assigning Anthropic an implied valuation more than $1 trillion (€866bn) above its last funding-round price, before public investors have even seen its accounts.

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The company behind Claude has filed its IPO paperwork confidentially and chosen Nasdaq for its initial public offering.

What remains is the public release of its S-1 filing, the official registration package that a US company submits to the Securities and Exchange Commission.

Until it arrives, the only live price on Anthropic comes from a corner of the crypto market where pre-IPO speculation runs rampant, and it currently sits far above anything the company has ever agreed with an investor.

The last agreed valuation was $965 billion (€836bn), set when a $65 billion (€56bn) Series H round closed at the end of May, led by Altimeter Capital, Dragoneer, Greenoaks and Sequoia.

That was already an extraordinary figure for a company founded in 2021 by Dario and Daniela Amodei, and it followed a valuation of $61.5 billion (€53.3bn) barely a year earlier, representing a nearly sixteenfold increase in roughly 12 months.

Revenue has moved almost as fast.

Anthropic’s annualised revenue run rate passed $65 billion (€56bn) by the end of July, driven by enterprise adoption of Claude.

The losses are also enormous, reportedly reaching close to $42 billion (€36.4bn) in 2025, reflecting the cost of training frontier models. Amazon has committed to investing as much as $33 billion (€28.6bn) in the company, while Anthropic has committed to spending more than $100 billion (€86.6bn) on AWS technologies over the coming decade.

Given these figures, investors are already aiming considerably higher than the valuation in the last round.

Reports have put the target IPO valuation at $2 trillion (€1.73tn), with Goldman Sachs, JPMorgan and Morgan Stanley leading an offering expected to raise more than $60 billion (€52bn).

The market that is already trading

Perpetual futures contracts tracking Anthropic’s pre-IPO valuation are currently trading on Hyperliquid, the largest decentralised derivatives venue, where the implied market capitalisation reached an all-time high of roughly $2.36 trillion (€2.05tn) and sits near $2.15 trillion (€1.86tn) at the time of writing.

That is about 2.2 times the Series H valuation.

Heng Yu Lee, partner at market maker DWF Labs, which is active in these instruments, rejects the suggestion that leverage rather than conviction is driving the premium.

“Whether it’s leveraged or not, everyone trading the pre-IPO market is genuine demand at the price that’s reflected,” he told Euronews, adding that “the premium is pricing in public information that’s available, such as expected revenue numbers and expected market demand for the stock.”

These contracts will also be the first instruments to react when the filing lands, trading around the clock while equity markets are shut.

“At a moment like the S-1 dropping, you typically see volume spike and prices fluctuate heavily as the market digests the information,” Lee explained.

However, the market remains small relative to what it is valuing.

“Currently, the market isn’t super deep, with just $6M in 24-hour volume and $31M in open interest on Hyperliquid,” Lee said, adding that liquidity should improve as the listing approaches, given that more investors are likely to pile in.

Lee is also candid about how much weight the number deserves.

“As of now, I wouldn’t rely too heavily on the absolute pricing as we have yet to have a public S-1,” he stated while clarifying that “the direction of how the prices move typically still accurately reflects the shifting sentiment towards the company as things develop.”

A crowded year for AI listings

Once Anthropic files publicly, it will cement 2026 as the year of AI IPOs.

It started with chipmaker Cerebras Systems, which designs wafer-scale processors pitched as an alternative to Nvidia’s. The firm listed on Nasdaq in May after two false starts, raising $5.55 billion (€4.76bn) at $185 a share, above its revised price range.

The stock opened 89% higher and closed its first day near $311, valuing the company at roughly $67 billion (€58bn) compared with the $23 billion (€20bn) it had been worth three months earlier.

Investor appetite for a credible Nvidia challenger proved fierce, though the enthusiasm cooled quickly after a disappointing first earnings report. Cerebras is currently trading at a valuation of around $43.7 billion (€37.8bn).

Then came SpaceX, which listed in June, raising more than $85 billion (€73.6bn) at a valuation that briefly touched $2.8 trillion (€2.4tn) before falling back to around $1.95 trillion (€1.69tn).

OpenAI was also slated to hold an IPO this year and had already filed confidentially, but has now stepped back entirely. The company has a private valuation of $852 billion (€738bn), set during a $122 billion (€105bn) round in March.

CEO Sam Altman told Fortune on Saturday that listing this year would be “ill-advised”, ruling out 2026 and declining to commit to 2027. He said the company had “a lot of stuff to do” on safety and alignment and that being private made that easier.

Altman’s comments arrived the same day that Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei published an essay titled “We Must Pace the Frontier”, arguing that AI companies should deliberately slow the rate at which they improve their most capable models.

Amodei proposed three steps: independent evaluators with employee-level access to frontier systems, coordination on safety standards among labs in democratic countries, and international agreements on the most dangerous categories of use.

Anthropic has already committed unilaterally to the first, and the endorsements came quickly, with Sam Altman saying he agreed on the need to pace the frontier and Elon Musk replying simply: “Dario is right”.

However, US President Donald Trump did not.

In his first public response to the three CEOs, Trump, speaking in Ireland on Sunday, dismissed the argument.

“We’re leading China in AI. We’re the most sophisticated country in the world, and frankly, I want to keep it that way, because whoever wins AI wins,” Trump said, describing some warnings as things “that won’t happen”.

Trump has since reiterated that argument in several social media posts.

Likewise, China’s foreign ministry called the warnings “fearmongering”.

Markets registered the exchange, with shares in SoftBank, Kioxia and SK Hynix falling sharply on Monday. Shares in the Japanese and South Korean companies fell more than 6% and 4.3%, respectively.

This leaves Anthropic in an awkward position as it approaches what could be the largest listing ever attempted in public markets.

The company is asking public investors to fund frontier AI development while its founder argues publicly that such development should proceed more slowly.

That is not necessarily a contradiction, since pacing is not stopping, and Anthropic has always argued that safety-focused labs should be at the frontier rather than ceding it.

However, it is a story the S-1 filing will have to tell convincingly, and the risk factors section will be read unusually closely.

Ospreys will be “stoked” if the new quartet make an impact like Smith did in his first season.

Wales might also be watching with interest after the signing of former Wallabies captain Wright.

The 28-year-old has won six caps but, courtesy of his grandfather from Pembroke, will be eligible to play for Steve Tandy’s side next summer.

That opens up the possibility of Wright targeting a World Cup spot, but the forward is concentrating on Ospreys after injury torment since a shoulder blow suffered playing against Wales in 2024.

“I know that I want to get myself back playing good enough footie and consistent enough footie to push for international honours again,” he told Scrum V.

“I’ve always imagined that for Australia, I didn’t come over here because of the Welsh heritage and trying to flip.

“But given my journey, it would be irresponsible to try and think too far ahead. I want to play good footie for Ospreys and put a lot of minutes under my belt, making sure that I am loving footie again.”

The symbolic move comes as Argentina escalates its claim over the British-administered territory.

An Argentinian judge has ordered the suspension of a British-Israeli oil project near the Falkland Islands in a purely symbolic move as Argentina escalates its claim over the British-administered territory.

Wednesday’s interim ruling issued by a court in Argentina’s southernmost province, Tierra del Fuego, follows a lawsuit filed by 1982 war veterans and environmental lawyers earlier this month.

The plaintiffs sought to block Britain’s Rockhopper Exploration and Israel’s Navitas Petroleum from the Sea Lion oilfield, located about 220km (137 miles) from the islands.

The judge ordered the companies to “refrain from initiating, pursuing, carrying out or having carried out any material actions” that would involve drilling, installing infrastructure or extracting hydrocarbons, according to a ruling seen by the AFP news agency.

Additionally, the suspension applies “until such time as the environmental impact assessment procedure has been conducted before the national authority competent in environmental matters”.

The judge gave the parties 10 days to provide information, including details about the status of the project, its contractors and its financiers.

President Javier Milei’s administration has also taken legal action against the project, arguing it violates a United Nations resolution calling for both sides to desist from unilateral actions in the islands until their dispute is resolved.

The court order comes just a day after Argentina announced it would file further legal complaints against companies exploring for oil near the islands, intensifying its campaign against businesses operating in the British overseas territory.

Britain and Argentina fought a brief but bitter 10-week war in 1982 over the South Atlantic islands, known to Argentines as the Malvinas.

The 1982 war ended with an Argentinian surrender after 74 days of conflict that killed 649 Argentines and 255 British troops, as well as three Falkland Islanders.

Buenos Aires has doubled down on its claim over the Falkland Islands after US President Donald Trump said Washington was open to reviewing its historically neutral stance on the territory.

London maintains the islands are British and rejects the jurisdiction of Argentinian courts in the Falklands.

The islanders themselves voted overwhelmingly in 2013 to remain British.

But Argentina rejects that outcome, arguing that the principle of self-determination does not apply to a population it considers implanted by Britain after 1833.

Strictly Come Dancing is reportedly getting a new spin-off show, its first new show in 22 years, and it will be led by pro dancer Dianne Buswell

Strictly Come Dancing is reportedly getting a new spin-off show, 22 years after It Takes Two launched. According to TV insiders, the BBC’s dance competition will launch Strictly Pro Dance Off, led by popular star Dianne Buswell.

The show would see Strictly’s pro dancers go head-to-head in dance challenges and would launch alongside the next series, which launches this Saturday.

In it, a ‘teacher pro’ would show a dance routine to two other stars, who would then perform it on the dancefloor, with the ‘teacher’ picking who did it best. The winner would go on to the next week to face another star. Each duel is set to last seven minutes, so the show is short and draws in the social media generation.

According to The Sun, a source said the goal was to appeal to a younger audience. “It’s obviously part of the renewed drive to bring in a younger market to the show, which, along with hiring more influencers to compete, is seen as future-proofing the contest,” the source explained.

They added that there would be “inevitable” comparisons to the US version of Dancing With The Stars, as their series, The Next Pro, also featured professional dancers competing in head-to-head challenges. The source acknowledged that they were “different formats” but said the focus on the pros would still cause some to see similarities.

The source also said that Strictly was putting more of a focus on the pro dancers as they are aware that much of the appeal of the show comes from the public’s love for pros like Dianne.

Another popular pro dancer is Johannes Radebe, but he will not have a partner this year – as he has been announced as one of the three new hosts.

Emma Willis and Josh Widdicombe are the other two, replacing Claudia Winkleman and Tess Daly. Unlike Claudia and Tess, who had fixed roles on the dancefloor and in the ‘Claudetorium’, Emma, Josh and Johannes will operate in a more fluid team.

There are set to be a lot of changes to the hosting roles this year. Emma previously revealed that she and her co-hosts would be dancing as well, which Tess and Claudia didn’t do. “We have to dance in the opening show, the three of us together have some choreography,” she said.

Johannes seemed excited by the plans. “Can you imagine?” he laughed. “For my own mental health and well-being, I need to be shaking my tush. You’ll see me, and not only me, in the launch show — there’s going to be more dancing than you’ve ever seen.”

The three of them also shared that Claudia and Tess sent them good luck messages. Emma said: “They have been in touch with all of us, sending love and congratulations and just saying enjoy it – it’s so fun.”

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WASHINGTON, United States: The US military honor guard has been rehearsing and the new White House helipad is ready. But will Xi Jinping and Donald Trump achieve lift-off at their summit next week?

Warnings of an AI apocalypse hang heavy over the Chinese president’s first talks at the White House with his US counterpart, with both countries racing for supremacy in this technology.

Trump’s Iran war casts a long shadow too, as China seeks to avoid US sanctions against countries dealing with Tehran, despite reports that Beijing supplied Tehran with intelligence for a strike on US troops.

A trade war is of even greater concern and the world’s two largest economies are still seeking to mitigate the fallout from Trump’s global tariffs. The threat of war over Taiwan looms large as well.

Behind it all is desire to manage tensions between a superpower keen to keep its place at the top and a rapidly rising rival determined to make the 21st century a Chinese one.

“I’ll be discussing almost everything with him,” Trump told reporters aboard Air Force One on Sunday, ahead of their meeting on September 24.

‘Don’t expect much’

But the two leaders are more likely to simply extend a relative truce rather than produce any concrete results, like when Xi hosted Trump in Beijing four months ago, experts said.

“I don’t expect much to come out of this,” Jonathan Czin of the Brookings Institution told AFP.

“In many ways, this is going to be a recapitulation of Trump’s visit to Beijing back in May, where the focus was really on the ostensible rapport between the two leaders.”

With fears about AI making global headlines, agreement to cooperate on regulation or a slowdown is expected to be a major topic of discussion between Trump and Xi.

But any major deals are “politically out of reach for now,” said Wang Dong, a professor at Peking University, as Beijing and Washington both fear losing out in the race for AI dominance.

Tensions over Iran will also come up. US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent is due to meet his Chinese counterpart He Lifeng this weekend for pre-summit talks including on Iran sanctions.

Trump has, however, played down reports that Chinese entities supplied Iran with satellite imagery for an attack on a US military base in Jordan, saying Xi had “behaved reasonably well” and that “we spy on them, too.”

On trade, there is “room for progress on tariffs, agricultural purchases and selected export controls,” Yue Su of The Economist Intelligence Unit told AFP.

‘Spectacle’

Yet Trump has, as so often before, appeared more interested in the optics of his meeting with a powerful foreign leader than with the substance.

“This is less a summit and more a spectacle. This is designed for deep public consumption,” said Kurt Campbell, former US Deputy Secretary of State and now Chairman of The Asia Group.

Trump pushed for a new granite helicopter landing pad on the White House South Lawn to be open in time for Xi’s visit, which will include a grand state dinner.

Troops in flashy uniforms have been rehearsing on the White House driveway this week ahead of the welcome ceremony.

Trump’s only disappointment is that his under-construction $400 million ballroom won’t be ready — though he has said that when finished it will “top” Beijing’s Great Hall of the People, where Xi hosted him in May.

During the Beijing trip Trump showered praise on Xi, only for the Chinese leader to warn about possible “conflict” over Taiwan.

Fears of a possible Chinese invasion of the self-governing island and global semiconductor hub — which Beijing claims as its territory — remain the most sensitive topic between Washington and Beijing, said Peking University’s Wang.

One possible concrete deliverable is an announcement of further summits.

Trump and Xi are expected to meet in November at the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) forum in Shenzen, China. The Kremlin has suggested a three-way meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin.

Trump is meanwhile expected to invite Xi to the G20 summit in December at his Doral resort in Miami.

Brian Wolfe, a standout pitcher at Servite who played three seasons with the Toronto Blue Jays, has died at age 45, his wife shared Tuesday on Facebook.

“I’m am sorry to write this but after a really really difficult and torturous battle Brian Wolfe passed away early this morning,” Rachell Wolfe wrote.

No other details have been provided.

Wolfe was one of Orange County’s most dominant high school pitchers during the late 1990s. After going 8-0 with an ERA of 0.27 as a sophomore in 1997, he was the Friars’ ace the next two seasons.

Honored both years as a member of The Times’ All-Orange County team, Wolfe went 11-2 with a 1.37 ERA and a county-best 139 strikeouts as a junior and was 12-0 with a 1.30 ERA and nearly 100 strikeouts as a senior.

After committing to Cal State Fullerton in the fall of 1998, Wolfe opted to sign with the Minnesota Twins organization after being drafted in the sixth round (179th overall) the following summer. He spent the next several years working his way up through the minor leagues with the Twins, Milwaukee Brewers and Blue Jays before making his major league debut with Toronto as a relief pitcher in 2007.

Wolfe appeared in 72 games over three seasons with the Blue Jays, compiling a 5-5 record and a 3.81 ERA in 82.2 innings pitched. He became a free agent after the 2009 season and spent the next nine years playing in Japan with Nippon Professional Baseball, playing for the Hokkaido Nippon-Ham Fighters (including the 2013 season as teammates with Shohei Ohtani), Fukuoka SoftBank Hawks (winning the Japan League title in 2014 and 2015) and Saitama Seibu Lions.

Former MLB outfielder Brandon Barnes posted a tribute to Wolfe on Wednesday, calling his fellow Orange County native “one of my best friends and a mentor.”

WASHINGTON: US President Donald Trump threatened on Wednesday to cut trade with the European Union after the bloc proposed to make Canada its first ever associate member.

EU chief Ursula von der Leyen raised the prospect a day before Canadian leader Mark Carney was due to address the European Parliament.

Her pitch comes as both Canada and the European Union seek to pivot away from an aggressive United States under Trump’s leadership.

“I think it’s laughable,” Trump told reporters when asked about the plan.

“If they do that, if I think it’s at all a hostile act, I will put very serious tariffs or stop trading with Europe, on many things.”

He added: “If it’s a good intention, that’s fine. If it’s a bad intention, we’ll put very heavy tariffs on Europe, which is a possibility.”

Von der Leyen pitched closer cooperation on tech, defense and energy to Carney, who became the first non-European head of government to attend the annual “State of the European Union” speech.

The German told the European Parliament in Strasbourg that, as democracies face a “fracture in the international rules-based system,” Brussels and Ottawa needed to pull closer together.

“I would like to work with you on opening the door for Canada to be the first associate member of the EU,” von der Leyen told the Canadian premier, drawing a standing ovation in the chamber.

A broader alliance

Carney has been pursuing closer ties with the European Union as Canada gets drawn ever deeper into a trade war with the United States.

He is set to address the parliament on Thursday, with his visit meant to act as a catalyst ahead of an EU-Canada summit in Montreal next month.

Von der Leyen said it was time to move from cooperation based on trade to a broader “alliance for the future” and “bring the relationship with Canada to the highest level possible.”

“We will work on intelligent manufacturing. We will create a tech alliance. We will integrate defense industrial bases. We will make the Arctic a flagship joint project,” she said.

She listed energy, critical minerals, batteries, AI, cyber and economic security as other fields of cooperation.

“This is a partnership not against anyone else, but for our common strength,” she said.

But both the EU and Canada have been buffeted by tariffs and territorial threats from the US and competition from China.

“In a more dangerous and divided world, Canada is forging stronger relationships with trusted partners,” Carney’s office said in a statement.

What’s in a name?

While EU treaties do not envision the possibility of becoming an “associate member,” the idea was first floated by German Chancellor Friedrich Merz this year for Ukraine.

Under that plan, which met a cold reception from a country pushing for full membership, Ukraine would have been allowed to attend the bloc’s summits and have a representative in the European Commission.

It would have also benefited from parts of the EU budget, but without full voting rights.

“We don’t really know yet what it means,” said Tobias Cremer, a center-left European lawmaker from Germany and the main sponsor of a resolution urging stronger EU-Canada cooperation, after von der Leyen’s “associate membership” pitch.

Under EU rules, member states have to approve any form of partnership with a third country and it was unclear how much support von der Leyen’s proposal would receive from capitals.

Brussels and Ottawa already enjoy a considerable level of cooperation.

The CETA free-trade agreement that abolished almost all tariffs has been credited with boosting trade in goods and services by more than 80 percent since 2016.

And this year Canada became the first non-EU country to join a flagship defense loan program.

Carney later flew to Britain for his first meeting with new UK Prime Minister Andy Burnham.

They attended a football match between Everton and Wolverhampton together before Carney’s return to Strasbourg for his Thursday speech.