Bayern Munich host Arsenal on Wednesday, as the teams clash for the 16th time in Europe’s premier club competition.
Who: Bayern Munich vs Arsenal
What: UEFA Champions League, match day 3
Where: Allianz Arena, Munich, Germany
When: Wednesday, October 21, at 9pm (19:00 GMT)
How to follow: Al Jazeera Sport will bring you all the build-up and live updates from 16:00 GMT.
The Champions League will live up to its name as the title holders from two top European leagues face-off in the group stage on Wednesday.
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Bundesliga winners Bayern Munich host Premier League champions Arsenal at their Allianz Arena Munich fortress.
Bayern are on a 10-game unbeaten streak across all competitions this season, largely thanks to the striking prowess of Harry Kane and Michael Olise.
But the German giants, aiming for a seventh UCL crown, face an early test of their title credentials when they play Arsenal in Munich without in-form winger Olise. London-born Olise, who started in Arsenal’s junior system, is unavailable following a silly suspension in the last game.
The Frenchman’s absence hands a huge advantage to Arsenal, who have made a strong start to their English top-flight title defence, losing just one game all season. Bukayo Saka and Victor Gyokeres have led from the front, while Declan Rice has lived up to his reputation as a playmaker.
Bayern and Arsenal are familiar foes in the UCL, and it’s Vincent Kompany’s side that leads the head-to-head record, having won eight of the previous 15 meetings in the competition.
Before Wednesday’s fixture, here’s everything you need to know:
Bayern are top of the Bundesliga table with 14 points after six games. They have won four games and drawn two.
Arsenal are second in the Premier League standings with 18 points after seven games. The Gunners have won six games and lost just once.
Bayern thrashed 10-man Bodo/Glimt 5-0 at home to kick off their UCL campaign and were held to a 3-3 draw by Viking in their next away game.
Arsenal started their campaign with a 1-0 away win over Napoli before beating Lille 3-0 at home in the second game.
Those results keep Arsenal seventh in the Champions League standings on six points and Bayern 10th on four points.
Opta’s supercomputer has given Bayern a 46.4 percent probability of winning this fixture, while Arsenal have a 29.3 percent chance.
There are 24.3 percent odds of the game ending in a draw.
(Only in the Champions League)
(Last five matches across all competitions; latest game first)
Bayern Munich: W-D-D-W-W
Arsenal: W-W-W-L-W
Harry Kane and Luis Diaz (Bayern Munich): Forward Kane has been unstoppable for Bayern this season, with his nine goals in all competitions making him their joint leading scorer alongside Olise. The England international also has six assists. Winger Diaz, on the other hand, has five goals, which include a hat-trick over RB Leipzig in the last match.
Bukayo Saka and Declan Rice (Arsenal): Winger Saka is Arsenal’s joint-top scorer this season, alongside Victor Gyokeres, with four goals in all competitions. Rice, on the other hand, leads the chart for the most assists (four).
Olise is suspended after picking up two yellow cards inside a minute in Bayern’s 3-3 draw with Viking last week.
Goalkeeper Manuel Neuer is doubtful, while midfielder Jamal Musiala is out for a few weeks with a thigh injury.
Predicted starting XI:
Manuel Neuer; Konrad Laimer, Dayot Upamecano, Jonathan Tah; Alphonso Davies; Joshua Kimmich, Aleksandar Pavlovic; Lennart Kartl, Ismael Saibari, Luis Diaz; Harry Kane
Arsenal have three injuries in the squad – Piero Hincapie (ankle), Christos Tzolis (hamstring) and William Saliba (back).
Predicted starting XI:
David Raya; Jurrien Timber, Ezri Konsa, Gabriel, Riccardo Calafiori; Declan Rice, Myles Lewis-Skelly; Bukayo Saka, Martin Odegaard, Noni Madueke; Kai Havertz
Katie Boulter moved into the quarter-finals of the Japan Open after she beat Viktorija Golubic in less than an hour.
The British number two defeated her Swiss opponent 6-2 6-1 in Osaka and will face either Croatia’s Antonia Ruzic or American Kayla Day in the next round.
Boulter saved a break point in the opening game but dominated from 2-2 in the first set, winning nine games in a row before Golubic took the penultimate game of the match.
The 30-year-old lost the British number one spot to Sonny Kartal on Monday, but is set to retake the position following her run this week.
Boulter, who is seeded eighth in the competition, said she was pleased with how she handled “difficult conditions”, with a strong wind affecting play.
“I think one of the biggest things for me is staying patient in the wind,” she said.
“Sometimes I can get a little frustrated, and I’m very pleased that I didn’t allow that to affect me today and I think I ended up playing some really good tennis in the second set. I’m really pleased with the performance.”
JOEY Essex has confirmed he will be returning to the boxing ring after signing a ‘big fight deal’.
It comes a week after he took on Dapper Laughs in a Misfits Boxing event last weekend, with the clash ending in a controversial draw.
Freshened up and having swapped the gloves for a suave suit, Joey walked the Pride Of Britain red carpet on Monday.
Talking to The Sun at the event, he shared: “I feel great, there isn’t a scratch on me! I feel like I’ve come out the ring better than when I first went in – I look even better.
“But yeah, feeling good and very proud of myself, it was a good night.”
Last week, we told how an investigation was underway into the result of the fight after some fans claimed it shouldn’t have been a draw.
Answering whether he was happy with the result, Joey replied: “Yeah of course, it’s boxing – you know?
“It’s how it goes. Win, lose or draw, you’ve got to look back and to learn. You just keep learning, experience is a massive thing in boxing so onto the next.”
And the next won’t be too far away, he says.
“I’ve signed a big fight deal, so I guess I’ll be back in [the ring] soon. I don’t know who against, but yeah, I’ll be back in soon,” confirmed Joey.
While he may appear fighting fit now, Joey says he was in the depths of a tough training camp this time last month.
“The training for boxing is very intense, the training is harder than the actual night itself.
“This time around my camp was only about 5 and a half weeks, so it was a very short camp. A lot of my opponents were dropping out and stuff so longer camps are harder. But you learn and the harder you train the better you fight.”
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An animal rights group is urging Crystal Palace to retire their live bald eagle mascot with immediate effect, saying a “bright stadium filled with boisterous fans is no place for animals”.
In a letter to Palace CEO Sharon Lacey, People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (Peta) asked the Premier League club to stop using the eagle, named Phoenix, in pre-match displays at Selhurst Park and to never use live animal mascots again.
The London team, known as the Eagles since 1973, introduced a live eagle to matchdays in 2010. Kayla, who died in 2020, performed the role for 10 years and her replacement Phoenix made her debut against West Ham in August 2024.
Peta says birds can become “frightened, disoriented and panicked” in stadium environments, putting themselves and fans at risk.
Using them for displays and entertainment also denies the animals, who “would naturally avoid humans”, the opportunity to engage with their natural instincts, leading to “frustration and stress”, the group said.
The organisation has “detailed records” of incidents involving live mascots, including birds, being injured or killed in collisions with walls, windows and match balls, as well as a falcon embedding its talons in a spectator’s scalp after landing on his head.
In 2017, a Charlton Athletic fan was found guilty of trying to punch Kayla the eagle at a League Cup fixture two years earlier.
“Many professional sports teams use only willing humans as mascots and the club already has Pete the Eagle to excite the crowd,” said Dr Carys Bennett, Peta’s senior corporate projects manager.
“Bald eagles are widely recognised as symbols of freedom. They deserve better than to be used as an entertainment prop to amuse the Eagles’ fans.”
Manchester United manager’s troubles grow as seven players are out injured before a Champions League trip to Como.
Published On 21 Oct 202621 Oct 2026
Manchester United manager Michael Carrick says he needs no reassurances from the club’s hierarchy as he knows winning games is the only way to silence speculation over his future.
Before a Champions League trip to Italian side Como on Wednesday, United have won just two of their 10 games in all competitions this season.
The Red Devils are off to their worst start to an English top-flight campaign in 40 years, having been knocked out of the League Cup by Brighton last month and comfortably beaten by Atletico Madrid last week in the Champions League.
Carrick was appointed manager on a permanent basis in May only after an impressive spell as interim boss in the second half of last season.
But he has quickly become just the latest manager under pressure at Old Trafford at a club that has fallen from grace since Alex Ferguson’s retirement in 2013.
“I know we’ve got to win football games for everything to flow and everything to fit into place. That’s the great thing about it; we can do something about it,” Carrick told his pre-match news conference in Italy.
“I don’t need any reassurance. It’s pretty clear.
“I know the role, I know the responsibilities. I don’t need anyone else to kind of tell me that or tell me when it’s going well or when it needs to be better. I know that myself.”
Carrick’s hopes of turning things around have not been aided by a growing injury list.
Lisandro Martinez started Sunday’s 1-1 draw at Leeds, despite his stinging criticism of the club’s lack of transfer activity following the defeat at Atletico, but had to be replaced at half time.
The Argentinian international will miss the trip to Como, as will Luke Shaw, Kobbie Mainoo, Marcus Rashford, Benjamin Sesko, Patrick Dorgu and Ayden Heaven.
This autumn, the Supreme Court will consider a question with potentially far-reaching consequences for civil rights in the United States: Who gets to enforce them? On November 30, the justices will hear a case over whether employees of federally funded universities can sue under Title IX over alleged workplace sex discrimination. The Trump administration has urged the court to rule that they cannot, arguing that Congress never gave university employees a private right to bring such claims.
The dispute is the latest front in a broader legal push to restrict the ability of individuals and advocacy groups to take rights violations to court themselves. In June, the Supreme Court declined to hear a challenge to a federal appeals court ruling that barred Arkansas United, an immigrant advocacy organisation, from suing to enforce protections for voters who need assistance at the polls. Across a growing number of cases, Republican-led states and the Trump administration are advancing the same basic principle: Unless Congress has clearly authorised private citizens to sue, enforcement should largely be left to the government.
That may sound like an arcane legal argument, but its implications are anything but. If individuals and civil rights groups cannot go to court when laws protecting them are violated, the power to decide which rights are actually enforced increasingly rests with the very government that may be violating, ignoring or choosing not to enforce them.
A private right of action allows individuals, or groups acting on their behalf, to file lawsuits to enforce rights protected by law. These lawsuits can seek compliance with the law or compensation for past violations. Private rights of action are not automatic under US federal and state law. Congress and state legislatures sometimes explicitly authorise private lawsuits. Where they have not, courts have had to determine whether a law implicitly allows individuals or groups to sue, or whether enforcement rests solely with government authorities.
In practice, private litigation has been an essential part of enforcing rights throughout much of US history. As University of Virginia School of Law Professor George Rutherglen writes in a 2015 law review article (PDF):
“The long history of civil rights, dating back to Reconstruction, makes them quintessentially private rights, whose exercise and enforcement should depend primarily on the initiative of the individuals who bear those rights. Public enforcement no doubt remains necessary, and it has an equally long and distinguished pedigree in civil rights law, but it cannot entirely displace individual control over individual rights.”
Proponents of private rights of action, such as AARP, consider them an effective tool for vulnerable individuals and groups to protect their rights when government agencies are unwilling or unable to act. Critics, such as the US Chamber of Commerce Institute for Legal Reform, however, argue that private lawsuits can encourage frivolous litigation.
These critics, often from the political right, have attempted to restrict private litigation through legal arguments against private causes of action. An example is the 2001 Alexander v Sandoval decision, in which a Supreme Court majority led by Justice Antonin Scalia ruled that Title VI did not provide a private right of action to enforce regulations prohibiting policies or practices with a disparate impact on protected groups – discrimination that can occur without clear evidence of intent.
The legal push against private rights of action has intensified in recent years. Republican-led states have increasingly challenged the doctrine of implied private rights of action, arguing that courts should reject private suits to enforce various types of rights. The Trump administration has also adopted this stance. When the court decided a 2021 voting rights case, Justice Neil Gorsuch submitted a one-paragraph concurrence, joined by Justice Clarence Thomas, questioning whether “the Voting Rights Act of 1965 furnishes an implied cause of action,” despite that issue not being raised in the case itself.
The conservative push to restrict private rights of action has extended to a variety of areas. In June, the Supreme Court ruled against Falun Gong practitioners who accused Cisco Systems of helping the Chinese government develop surveillance technology used to facilitate their persecution, concluding that they could not pursue those aiding-and-abetting claims under the federal laws they had invoked.
One of the most consequential implications of restricting private rights of action is the threat to voting rights. In the Arkansas United case, the Eighth Circuit ruled that the immigrant advocacy organisation did not have the right to sue on behalf of non-native English speakers over the right to have language assistance in the voting booth. The ruling concerned Section 208 of the Voting Rights Act of 1965. But it extended a much broader argument already adopted by the Eighth Circuit: that private individuals and advocacy organisations cannot sue to enforce key provisions of the Voting Rights Act. The Supreme Court’s refusal in June to hear Arkansas United left that ruling in place.
This argument has also been pushed by Republican-led governments in two redistricting and vote-dilution cases: Board of Election Commissioners v NAACP in Mississippi and Turtle Mountain Band of Chippewa Indians v Howe in North Dakota. In May, the Supreme Court vacated judgments in both cases and sent them back for reconsideration in light of its ruling in Louisiana v Callais, without resolving the private-enforcement question. That decision sharply raised the bar for some racial vote-dilution claims, endangering the voting power of Black, Hispanic and Native American communities across the US. At the same time, conservative-controlled governments are attempting to deny members and advocates for these communities the right to even bring some of these cases before the courts, arguing that only the Department of Justice can initiate action over such voting rights violations.
The broader danger is that, as private rights of action are curtailed, enforcement of federal law increasingly depends on decisions made by the executive branch.
The Trump administration is now pursuing a different means of restricting private enforcement. The Clean Air Act explicitly gives private citizens the right to bring certain lawsuits, yet the Justice Department has sought to intervene and dismiss a case brought against xAI over allegations that gas turbines at its power facility in Southaven, Mississippi, are violating federal environmental law and polluting surrounding communities. The facility powers xAI’s Colossus 2 data centre in nearby Memphis. In September, the Justice Department appealed to the Fifth Circuit and sought to halt the case. The department has argued that allowing the suit to proceed would threaten national security and the US pursuit of global leadership in AI. Here, the issue is not whether Congress created a private right to sue – it did – but whether the executive branch can nevertheless step in to stop such a case when it conflicts with its priorities.
Relying solely on the Justice Department to pursue such cases at the federal level is a particularly dubious proposition under the current administration. The department has also been weaponised to target political foes of President Trump. Its Civil Rights Division has been steered away from defending the rights of racial and ethnic minorities and refocused on cases brought by white plaintiffs alleging so-called “reverse discrimination”.
The Justice Department’s current politicisation may be reversed under a future administration. But even then, the erosion of private rights of action would leave the enforcement of civil and political rights increasingly dependent on a federal agency with limited resources and subject to political direction. For example, as Democracy Docket noted in 2024, of the 216 active voting rights and redistricting cases it was tracking at the time, only five were cases brought by the Justice Department. As Professor Rutherglen noted in his article, to rely primarily on government actors to enforce rights “is to transform the nature of those rights: from private to public, from individuals to groups, from legal control by plaintiffs to political control by administrators.”
Private rights of action are now being eroded, case by case. Politicians, civil liberties advocates and organisations must challenge this trend before more avenues for enforcement are closed off. Otherwise, protections won over decades may become increasingly dependent on the willingness of government authorities to uphold them, leaving those whose rights are violated with fewer ways to seek redress.
The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Al Jazeera’s editorial stance.
THERE were plenty of skeptics when former Love Islander Zara McDermott struck up an unlikely romance with One Direction heartthrob Louis Tomlinson early last year.
But as Zara gives The Sun a rare insight into life with superstar Louis, it appears the couple have proved the naysayers wrong.
Zara and Louis were first spotted together in early March 2025, just two months after she split from partner of five years Sam Thompson.
At the time, the reality star and documentary-maker was subject to cruel trolling over the romance from Louis’ hardcore fanbase.
But sticking it out, not only is Zara seemingly stronger than ever with the musician, she’s ultra close to his famous sisters.
Walking the red carpet at last night’s Pride Of Britain Awards, Zara was arm in arm with Louis’ influencer younger sister Daisy.
“We’re going to have a big family Christmas this year, it’s rare that you get everyone in the same room, so it’ll be nice,” the duo tell me.
After confirming she’s looking forward to spending it with her other half and his clan, Zara admits: “I’ve had to try to figure out how to split my time between my family and Louis’ this year, it’s so difficult!”
As the pair discuss shopping for Louis – which Daisy assures is an easy task – Zara says in a rare gush: “He’s just a very happy person, he’s always happy. And he’s just always grateful.”
Despite being often seen at Louis’ California home, Zara – who noted how Louis’ siblings are her ‘sisters’ now – says the pair’s main residence is his North London home.
“It’s mostly London! I travel all over, but mostly London because that’s where all of my family and friends are.”
Zara and Louis keep their union famously private, with the pair only ever sharing a few snaps together online and rarely discussing one another.
However, she has dubbed the singer her “prince charming” – recently admitting: “I genuinely can’t even say one [irritating habit]. He’s like my Prince Charming. He’s like my fairytale.
“He is genuinely the most amazing person I’ve ever met in my life, he’s an inspiration to me in so many ways.
“He is the most empathetic, considerate, kind person. He will always think about every single other person before himself, and I think that is such a rare quality to find in someone.”
There are even rumours that the loved-up pair could soon announce they are engaged, but the presenter remains stubbornly tight-lipped about wedding bells.
That doesn’t mean the relationship has been without its challenges, with Zara widely trolled by Louis’ fans who, at the beginning of their relationship, accused her of “following” the popstar around.
When Zara posted snaps of herself in Italy, where Louis was performing at a sold-out concert in Milan, earlier this year – she was subjected to vile backlash.
At the time, a source told The Sun: “Zara can’t win with the trolls.
“She’s either accused of ‘following’ Louis around the world or is slated for not being a supportive enough girlfriend.
“It’s like she’s damned if you do, damned if you don’t.”
But keeping a dignified silence appears to have done the trick for Zara, who is proving to his fans that she certainly doesn’t seem to be going anywhere – and the whole Tomlinson clan are behind her.
08:33, 21 Oct 2026Updated 08:34, 21 Oct 2026
Passengers on the P&O Azura fell ill(Image: SWNS)
A group of 12 passengers who fell seriously ill onboard a P&O ship are taking legal action after their dream Mediterranean cruise turned into a “nightmare” holiday from hell. The British passengers were struck down with gastric illness and flu-like symptoms while travelling around the Greek islands on the P&O Azura.
The holidaymakers, who paid up to £3,000 each, claim they encountered an “overpowering sewage smell” on board and raised concerns about hygiene in buffet restaurants where flies could reportedly be seen around uncovered food. Many were confined to their cabins during the eight-night voyage between May 28 and June 4 this year, while others were left hospitalised upon returning to the UK and some say they are still feeling the effects now.
The group, who had been celebrating a 60th birthday, have now instructed international injury lawyers to investigate their illnesses. Julie Stones, 53, from Bolton, was among those who says the cruise left her battling a catalogue of health problems.
She first became ill on June 2 with a sore throat and diarrhoea before her condition spiralled. She suffered vomiting, severe stomach pain, fever, headaches, dizziness, exhaustion, a persistent cough, and pain in her back and legs.
After returning home, she attended A&E, was diagnosed with a chest infection and later required further GP and hospital treatment. Julie, who has several underlying health conditions and uses a powered wheelchair, said she spent weeks largely confined to bed and relied on help from her husband and daughter.
Julie said: “This holiday was supposed to be a special celebration with friends and something I’d been looking forward to for months. Instead, it turned into a complete nightmare. It felt as though one thing after another kept going wrong and, as the holiday went on, I just got worse and worse.
“One thing that really stood out was the overpowering sewage smell near the Manhattan Bar. It was so noticeable that other passengers were commenting on it. I also had concerns about hygiene in the buffet areas. I remember seeing food left uncovered with flies around it and people entering the restaurant without sanitising their hands.
“Even after returning home, the symptoms didn’t go away. I’ve needed hospital treatment, GP appointments, and medication, but I’m still not back to normal. More than two months later, I’m still dealing with fatigue and headaches. I just want to understand what happened.”
Linda Chapman, from Bury, who was celebrating her 60th, also became seriously ill after developing symptoms on the final evening of the cruise. The mum and grandmother suffered chills, vomiting, breathlessness, wheezing, a sore throat, and a persistent cough.
Her condition worsened so badly after landing back in Manchester that she contacted NHS 111 and was taken to A&E, where she was prescribed antibiotics. Linda, who works as a housekeeper on an NHS stroke ward, was forced to take two weeks off work.
Linda said: “I remember being on the plane. The flight was only a few hours, but it felt like forever. People kept asking if I was okay and I must have looked as awful as I felt. I just kept telling myself that I’d be home soon and could finally go to bed.
“What I didn’t realise was that I’d end up spending weeks like that. In my view, hygiene onboard wasn’t up to scratch and the food often didn’t seem fresh at all, despite the cruise being very expensive. What did surprise me was just how ill I became. I was struggling to breathe and, combined with the stomach problems, I just couldn’t work out what was wrong with me. It was a very frightening and disorientating experience.”
Sharon Robinson, 51, from Wigan, was the first member of the group to fall ill. She initially believed she had a chest infection but later suffered stomach pain, nausea, diarrhoea, headaches, fever-like symptoms, and extreme fatigue.
Despite feeling unwell, Sharon tried to continue with the group’s planned celebrations but says she spent the rest of the cruise exhausted. Sharon said: “I’m unbelievably disappointed.
“Even though I felt awful, I kept trying to take part in as much as I could because I’d been looking forward to this cruise for a year. I was the first in our group to become ill, but after the first few days it felt as though everyone was dropping like flies.
“One thing that’s burned into my memory is the strong sewage smell onboard. It still makes me feel sick when I think about it. So many people in our group became unwell that it’s difficult not to have concerns about what caused it. I still feel very sad about the whole experience and I’m still suffering because of it.”
Jatinder Paul, the lawyer at Irwin Mitchell representing the passengers, said: “Cruise holidays should provide passengers with an opportunity to relax and enjoy their time away. However, they also involve large numbers of passengers sharing restaurants, bars and other facilities in confined space so robust hygiene measures are vital in helping to prevent illnesses from spreading.
“What’s particularly concerning for our clients is that so many from the same party became unwell, with several still having their lives affected by symptoms. Our clients understandably have questions about their illnesses and whether more should have been done to protect them.
“Nothing will make up for what they’ve been through, but we’re determined to provide them with the answers they deserve.”
P&O has been approached for comment.
Families may want to take note(Image: Images By Tang Ming Tung via Getty Images)
HM Passport Office (HMPO) has issued an alert to anyone planning to apply for a new or replacement passport for a child.
A valid passport is needed for anyone, including children, to travel abroad. Prior to October 5, 1998, children under 16 years old could be included on a parent or family member’s passport. But since this date, all children – regardless of age – are required to hold their own individual passports to travel internationally. The sole issuer of UK passports, HMRC, shared a message on X, formerly Twitter, on Tuesday.
It reads: “A child’s application must be completed by a person with parental responsibility. You’ll also need to provide documentation to confirm this.”
Parental responsibility is automatically granted if you give birth to the child. If you are a father or second female parent, you may have automatic parental responsibility depending on your personal circumstances.
You will also typically have automatic parental responsibility if you are married to or in a civil partnership with the birth mother at the time of the child’s birth. The child’s biological father will automatically acquire parental responsibility if they marry or enter into a civil partnership with the child’s birth mother after the child is born.
If your child was conceived via fertility treatment, you will automatically have parental responsibility provided you consented to the treatment and are married to or in a civil partnership with the birth mother. Should you not be married to or in a civil partnership with the birth mother, parental responsibility can be obtained by jointly registering the birth alongside the mother.
Separate rules apply when registering a birth for same-sex couples. Should the birth not be registered together, an application for parental responsibility can be made.
At present, a new or replacement passport for a child costs £66.50 when applying online, or £80 when submitting a paper form. This is the price for a standard 34-page document.
Should you require a “frequent traveller” 54-page child’s passport, this will cost £80.50 or £94 when applying online or via the paper form, respectively.
WASHINGTON — It is a heated debate in the struggling Republican Party: whether to broaden its ideology or follow the advice of Dick Cheney, Rush Limbaugh and others who argue against deviating from core conservative principles.
Now, the GOP has a chance to see whether a moderate can become a model for Republican resurgence, with Florida Gov. Charlie Crist announcing Tuesday that he will run for the U.S. Senate in that politically important state.
Crist, who has bucked the GOP’s conservative wing on voting rights, global warming and other issues, enjoys high approval ratings. But with the governor facing a conservative in the primary, Republican leaders across the country have seized on Florida as a battleground in the larger philosophical war over the party’s future.
Crist won instant endorsements from Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky and Texas Sen. John Cornyn, chairman of the GOP Senate campaign committee. The two see him as the best hope for keeping a Senate seat in GOP hands as the party tries to avoid falling below the crucial number of senators needed to block legislation, an outcome that many political analysts see as likely.
Crist’s main primary challenger, former state House Speaker Marco Rubio, went on the attack Tuesday, releasing a video showing the governor with President Obama and criticizing Crist’s support of the Democrats’ “reckless” economic stimulus spending.
“Our primary will offer Republicans a front-row seat to a debate about the future of the Republican Party here in Florida and across the nation,” Rubio said. “My campaign will offer GOP voters a clear alternative to the direction some want to take our party.”
Rubio, 37, is little-known outside of Miami and is given steep odds of taking down Crist.
The Florida announcement comes as GOP infighting has intensified following moderate Pennsylvania Sen. Arlen Specter’s defection to the Democrats and a spate of recent surveys that show only about one-fifth of American voters consider themselves Republicans.
Last year’s elections almost wiped Republicans off the map in the Northeast and Southwest. The party won only a fraction of Latinos and other minorities that once were seen as building blocks of a new, long-lasting majority.
Several GOP leaders — including Virginia Rep. Eric Cantor, former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney and former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush — late last month announced the formation of the National Council for a New America to open a policy-focused discussion designed to help rebuild the party.
But the group has been ridiculed by leading conservatives, who complained that the rollout touched on economic and national security issues but not on social concerns such as abortion, gay marriage and guns.
Former presidential candidate Mike Huckabee wrote a derisive column on the Fox News website poking fun at the GOP leaders for needing a “listening tour” to understand the American psyche. In it, he accused the council of treating “values voters as if they were embarrassing distant cousins who are allowed to come to the family gatherings a couple of times a year, but aren’t expected to be seen beyond that.”
Tony Perkins, head of the Family Research Council, chided the group for kicking off its campaign “devoid of the values that once caused voters to identify with the party.”
In a television interview over the weekend, former Vice President Cheney said he would “go with Rush Limbaugh” as a true Republican over former Secretary of State Colin L. Powell, a moderate who last year endorsed Obama’s candidacy.
Limbaugh, the conservative talk show host, also has been critical of Republicans who do not adhere to core conservatism, saying recently that when Specter left the party he should have taken 2008 presidential nominee John McCain with him.
Complicating the GOP’s challenge in presenting itself as a unified party is the presence of the powerful pro-business Club for Growth, which helped push Specter out of the GOP and has been harshly critical of Crist.
Republican strategists said Tuesday that the party needed to be more concerned about picking candidates who could win than with limiting itself to pure conservatives, particularly with the GOP at risk of losing Senate seats in Ohio, Missouri, Kentucky and New Hampshire.
Already, the Specter defection has put the party’s Senate roster right at the crucial number of 40 — and if Democrat Al Franken is declared the winner of last year’s Minnesota Senate race, then the majority party (with the help of two independents) will have the 60 votes needed to override Republican filibuster attempts.
Grover Norquist, who as head of Americans for Tax Reform is a key leader of the conservative movement, said he had a pragmatic desire to elect “the most Reaganite Republican that can win in any given district or state.” That means, he said, that he supports electing moderates in Maine but not necessarily in Texas — and that in Florida, where Obama won last year, Crist may well be the best candidate.
Cornyn, a conservative, signaled months ago that he would take a pragmatic view on the question of ideological purity versus winning elections. Addressing a conservative conference in February, Cornyn said he would recruit moderate candidates if they matched the politics of their states, and that “a circular firing squad is no solution” to the party’s problems.
The Texas senator described Rubio, a Cuban American, as having a “very bright future,” but added that Crist was the “best candidate in 2010.”
Crist, 52, is expected to present himself as an answer to the Republican Party’s image troubles — a nonideological figure with a can-do, friendly demeanor.
He rose to prominence as a tough-on-crime Florida state lawmaker by supporting chain gangs for prisoners. As attorney general and governor, he aggressively courted Latino and black voters. Early in his term, he pushed a rule to speed the restoration of voting rights for ex-felons — a deeply unpopular move with many Republican politicians.
In February, after Obama’s stimulus plan was rejected by every House Republican and all but three Republican senators, Crist irked conservatives by joining the Democratic president at a campaign-style rally in hard-hit Fort Myers, Fla., to extol the need for the bill.
Tom Slade, a former chairman of the Florida GOP, said popularity always trumps ideology, and he predicted Crist easily would win the Republican nomination.
That, he added, that might be good for the party as a whole.
“There are not enough blue-eyed, white, blond guys and girls who go to church three times on Sunday and once on Wednesday to make up a majority for the Republican Party almost anywhere,” Slade said. “If we don’t broaden the party, there won’t be much of a party left.”
—
LeBron James scored 14 points on his debut for the Philadelphia 76ers as they defeated champions the New York Knicks on the NBA season’s opening night.
The 41-year-old James, entering a record-extending 24th season in the league with his fourth team after his summer move from the LA Lakers, also racked up seven assists as his new side triumphed 106-100.
Tyrese Maxey top-scored with 28 points for the 76ers, while Jaylen Brown, who also made his debut after joining the 76ers from the Boston Celtics in a high profile trade for Paul George, scored 19 points with eight rebounds and six assists.
The Knicks enjoyed title celebrations prior to the match, raising their third title banner to the rafters at Madison Square Garden in the presence of a crowd that included celebrity Knicks fans Ben Stiller and Spike Lee.
The Knicks ended a 53-year title drought with their victory over the San Antonio Spurs in last season’s NBA Finals but were unable to open their season with a win as the 76ers held out after taking the lead in the third quarter.
Jalen Brunson led the scoring for the Knicks with 21 points and Karl-Anthony Towns picked up 19 points with 12 rebounds.
“I could be a lot better,” James told broadcaster NBC. “Still getting my rhythm, obviously just a little bit over two weeks with the new squad.
“But I like the way we played. I think we played exceptionally well, especially defensively.”
In the opening match of the NBA’s 81st season, the Detroit Pistons fought back in the second half to win 121-113 against the Boston Celtics.
Cade Cunningham and Jalen Duren added 22 points each and Duncan Robinson scored 15 of his 21 in the fourth quarter as the home side secured their victory with a 23-0 scoring run.
Celtics debutant Paul George scored 38 points for his new side in a match between last season’s top two regular-season teams.
In the night’s final encounter, back-to-back NBA most valuable player Shai Gilgeous-Alexander scored 32 points for the Oklahoma City Thunder as they completed a 116-104 win over the San Antonio Spurs.
Stephon Castle top-scored for the Spurs with 24 points but his side were unable to match the form that saw them put out defending champions Thunder in last season’s Western Conference finals.
Victor Wembanyama made just one basket in 13 attempts for the Spurs but contributed 13 rebounds and six blocked shots and scored 12 points largely thanks to 10 free throws.
“Obviously, this is the team that eliminated us from achieving our goal,” Gilgeous-Alexander said.
“But for us, I think it was more like we’re just happy to be back. It’s a longer summer when you don’t win and we felt that this summer.”
Bitupan Deka was out shopping for a “gamusa” (traditional scarf) with his mother in India’s northeastern state of Meghalaya when he noticed something unusual.
“Every shop selling the scarf had the same handful of patterns repeated over and over,” he told Al Jazeera over the telephone from Shillong, the capital of Meghalaya.
list of 4 itemsend of list
“When I asked around, I found that weavers in Sualkuchi [district in neighbouring Assam state] are paid a one-time fee of roughly 2,000 rupees [$21] for each design they develop, instead of royalties. Cutting down the number of designs they produce was a cost-saving practice followed by the manufacturers.”
![Bitupan Deka [Courtesy of Bitupan Deka]](https://i0.wp.com/occasionaldigest.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/10/bitupan-deka-1792487445.jpg?w=640&ssl=1)
This discovery prompted Deka, an assistant professor of computer technology at Shillong’s MIT University, to create a system that can produce infinite new designs for such fabrics.
“My work isn’t meant to replace the traditional designers. I hope, instead, that it will become a tool in their hands to create new and modern motifs more easily, so the consumers can have variety,” Deka said.
Once the patent, which is being applied for under the research and development department of his university, comes through, Deka plans to monetise the system by making it a commercial designing service that the textile industry can avail.
In India’s varied textile traditions, patterns and motifs carry the memory of a place and the mythology of its people – sometimes even the history of migrations.
The designs are imagined by weavers from things that exist around them, and then painted with locally available colours, mostly using carved clay and wooden frames. These weavers do not simply reproduce a pattern; they inherit it. Their hands hesitate where their grandmother’s did, and they know why a particular flower must face left.
A computer has no such inheritance or hesitation. It learns by analysing pictures and repeating them in endless variations. And yet, as Deka’s system shows, the computer can now draw and weave the same flower.
The Rekh Sanganeri Dataset is a similar system developed for hand-block printed Sanganeri textiles from the western Indian state of Rajasthan. It includes high-resolution images of printed patterns, annotated down to ink bleed and slight misalignment – the imperfections that are the hallmark of the handmade work.
Its developer, Reddy Sai Nivas C, says it should be used as a resource for research and art, not as a substitute for artisans.
But the disclaimer is the paradox: Tools built to preserve a craft are making its visual language easier to digitally reproduce without involving the craftsperson.
Dinesh Chhipa comes from one of the oldest Chhipa families, an artisan and merchant caste renowned for dyeing and block printing. He is a Bagru designer – a block printing technique from Bagru town in the western state of Rajasthan – and a textile businessman.
“Traditional craft is slow to produce. Even if someone offered us a fortune, we wouldn’t be able to produce these pieces in mass numbers, so I don’t fault those using digital technology and AI to fill the gap,” he told Al Jazeera.
“But don’t borrow craft and regional names like Bagru and Jaipuri [named after the capital city of Rajasthan]. These designs and motifs were born out of a culture and necessities of the communities they come from.”
![Dinesh Chhipa is a Rajasthan-based artisan and merchant [Courtesy of Burgoyne Original Masters]](https://i0.wp.com/occasionaldigest.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/10/Dinesh-Chhipa-1792487454.jpeg?w=640&ssl=1)
India has been digitising its textile memory for years – from the Botanical Survey of India’s historical collections to the Bharatiya Vastra Shilpa Kosh, a national portal built by the state-run National Institute of Fashion Technology and the Centre for Development of Advanced Computing (C-DAC).
Without documentation, the fragile traditions and knowledge could disappear. But digitisation also allows the same archive to be used by an AI system seeking to reproduce these crafts at scale.
At the India AI Impact Summit in New Delhi in February this year, Indian software company Tata Consultancy Services (TCS) showcased Bridgital Loom, an AI system that converts textile designs into loom-ready instructions. LED lights on the loom guide a weaver through the thread sequences of intricate Banarasi and Kanchipuram patterns – named after the cities where these iconic arts grew.
TCS says the technology helps weavers execute complex designs faster and with fewer errors, and is meant to be a bridge between the artisans and technology. A pilot project that uses the loom is already under way at Kanchipuram, a town in southern Tamil Nadu state.
In an interview with the online platform Digit at the New Delhi summit, the head of AI strategy at Bridgital Loom, Muthulakshmi Nellaiappan, pointed out that a new weaver takes more than 15 years to master the art.
“With the technologies we have in hand … the younger weaver who has just entered the skill can become a master much sooner,” she said.
![Several classic Indian motifs used by traditional weavers [Courtesy of Burgoyne Original Masters]](https://i0.wp.com/occasionaldigest.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/10/Courtesy-of-Burgoyne-Original-Masters-1792487874.jpg?w=640&ssl=1)
Technology flattens the master-apprentice hierarchy of traditional knowledge systems. The weaver no longer has to conceptualise or remember patterns, colours and codes; he blindly follows the machine’s instructions, handing creativity and memory to AI.
Nellaiappan said that since a large percentage of India’s looms are non-electronic, TCS has ensured its system works with handlooms as well and that it was essential for scaling up the technology.
But digital looms also raise another question: Who owns culture when it turns into plain data?
For generations, India’s textile knowledge sat outside intellectual property systems. It lived in community memory, passed from master to apprentice with no certificate of ownership. Kanchipuram, Mekhela-Sador, Sanganeri and Banarasi are names for places that these textiles helped shape, not merely emerged from.
Now, this knowledge is entering generative models that owe nothing to these traditions.
For designers and manufacturers, the possibilities are seductive: Motifs combined at will, colours changed with a command, and thousands of designs generated instantly. The machine offers abundance.
The artisan, on the other hand, has always lived with scarcity: Of money, bargaining power, or recognition.
Ananthalakshmi Vadivel, a third-generation weaver and owner of Vadivel Silk Looms in Kanchipuram, says their venture is already competing in the market with cheaper Kanchipuram sarees produced on electronic looms.
“Perhaps, with AI, these sellers can create trending designs faster and cheaper to attract mass consumers. But these imitations can never replace the original,” she told Al Jazeera.
“There will always be a market for authentic Kanchipuram and handcrafted textiles, no matter how much technology makes the imitation cheaper. True Kanchipuram weave, colour, and designs can only be created by hand, and discerning buyers know this.”
Then again, the question is no longer whether AI can recreate a textile. It sure can. The question is: Who gets paid when it does?
In December 2025, the federal government’s Department for Promotion of Industry and Internal Trade floated a statutory “blanket licence” – a system where AI developers could train models on lawfully obtained copyrighted material without seeking permission from each rights holder. Once commercialised, those systems would owe royalties to copyright owners at rates set by the government.
But intellectual property (IP) laws assume a traceable work with a traceable author. A motif, on the other hand, is communal property, its technique passed down through generations with no single originator.
In such cases, who is entitled to royalty and copyright? The artisan who first created the design? The photographer who documented it? The researcher who assembled the dataset? The developer who built the tool? India’s laws offer no clear answers. The artisan whose name never appeared on a label may once again be missing from the paperwork.
Meanwhile, the government is planning a dedicated AI-handloom research department under the Centre of Excellence for Handloom Technology at the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) in the capital, New Delhi. Inaugurated in August, the $1.4m facility aims to modernise India’s handloom sector by combining traditional weaving heritage with contemporary technology.
The government also plans to register thousands of weavers and fit their handlooms with sensors that convert weave patterns into digital data, and issue QR-coded tags to trace provenance. Maharashtra’s Vingatha system does something similar at the state level by authenticating handloom sarees such as Paithani and Karvat Kathi.
The idea is simple: If a saree can tell you where it came from, the person who made it becomes harder to erase.
While these measures cannot stop AI-enabled design and mass production, they may give artisans more visibility and turn each piece into an archive.
In art galleries, the traditional textiles are increasingly shedding the label of craft for the more lucrative category of contemporary art.
Gurjeet Singh, an artist from Chandigarh city, recently hosted a textile-based solo show in New York. His work transforms discarded fabrics, buttons and embroidered scraps into sculptures that explore queer identity and social prejudices surrounding gender and sexuality.
Sayan Chanda, an Indian artist based in London, works with cut and rewoven vintage Bengali quilts to question fixed notions of cultural belonging. Gurugram-based artist Sumakshi Singh uses delicate embroidery and suspended thread structures to reconstruct the architectural fragments of vanished homes, gardens and personal histories. There are many more.
![An art gallery in New Delhi displaying some weaving traditions [Courtesy of Burgoyne Original Masters]](https://i0.wp.com/occasionaldigest.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/10/Masters-in-Making-5-1792487523.jpeg?w=640&ssl=1)
In New Delhi, 20 such artisans and craft-led collectives featured last month at an art show celebrating the traditional textile crafts.
“Our aim is to present these traditional crafts as living practices that continue to evolve through contemporary artisans, rather than as heritage to be archived. Kanmai Payun, one of the artists featured in the show, for example, is the last practitioner of Fulor Saneki, a flower pattern used by Assamese weavers. We encouraged her to teach her 17-year-old son so the craft outlives her,” Aparupa Ray Ganguly, the curator of the show, told Al Jazeera.
But as textiles gain value in art galleries, their makers do not necessarily gain automatic control over their work.
In April, another art exhibition in New Delhi, titled No ‘One’ Maker, saw artisans missing from the show’s preview, exposing how traditional textiles are aestheticised, but the people who carry that knowledge remain unrecognised.
“You cannot separate the names from the community. Call your mass-produced work digital prints and leave the traditional names to the original artisans,” says Chhipa, the artisan and merchant from Rajasthan.
Addressing the issue of US intelligence sharing after Tuesday’s talks, Zelensky said he was “thankful that intelligence works now”.
“Speaking about early warning, which is very important for our people, our children, adults, civilians because we can hear when ballistic[s] is coming – so we are thankful to American side, now it works, it’s great,” the Ukrainian president said.
He said he also hoped for a good result on SpaceX’s Starlink satellite access as well, after Ukraine’s military had reported in recent days speed restrictions on the US platform used by Kyiv to carry out drone strikes against Russia.
Before the Oslo talks, Zelensky said he had had a “constructive discussion” with Rubio about the need for US early warnings, missile interceptors and Starlink.
Last week, a bipartisan group of US senators called for an urgent investigation into speed restrictions to the Starlink network in Ukraine.
And Zelensky also restated that Ukraine was “ready for negotiations” to end the war.
“Of course, we are not losing this war, but we are losing people because Russia attacks,” he said.
The Ukrainian leader added that “strong” security guarantees for Ukraine were also discussed in Oslo, as well as energy ceasefire proposals.
Norwegian Prime Minister Jonas Gahr Støre, who also took part in the talks, stressed that Europe “needs to be at the table” during any discussions about how to end the Russia-Ukraine war.
Unconfirmed reports earlier on Tuesday said the transfer of more US-made Patriot interceptor missiles – the only effective weapon in shooting down Russian ballistic missiles – had not yet been approved.
Rubio, who is currently on a visit to India, admitted to reporters that it may be true that Patriot interceptors had not yet arrived in Ukraine – but he stressed that nothing had been denied to Kyiv intentionally.
European leaders meanwhile have expressed concern about recent US statements from the US towards Russia.
On Monday, German Chancellor Friedrich Merz spoke of “mixed pictures and messages” on the war, adding that he was trying to convince the American government “in total that this is something we have to resolve jointly”.
“It’s really a big effort for our budgets, it’s really a big thing for the European Union, but we are doing that and we are trying to keep on doing that until this terrible war ends,” the German leader told Bloomberg TV.
Asked during an interview on Monday whether or not he saw Ukraine as a US ally, US Vice-President JD Vance said Kyiv was “certainly a partner in some ways, but we have some divergent interests from time to time, like for example… I think they should stop bombing Russian energy”.
“We don’t have a formal alliance as far as I know with Ukraine. They’re not in Nato, I don’t think they should be in Nato… we’re gonna work together on some things, but also we’re going to be opposite on some things too,” he said.
Elizabeth Holmes is the convicted fraudster at the center of Nathan Fielder and Lance Oppenheim’s hit documentary “You Can See Everything,” but for many viewers, it’s her longtime partner, Billy Evans, who has emerged as the film’s marquee villain.
Evans, 34, comes from a wealthy San Diego hotel family and stood by Holmes as her blood-testing startup Theranos collapsed and she was convicted in 2022 of defrauding investors. The couple has two children, 5-year-old son William and 3-year-old daughter Invicta. With Holmes serving an 11-year federal prison sentence in Texas, Evans is raising their children while pursuing a new biotech venture of his own.
In the film — warning: spoilers ahead — Evans comes across as controlling and increasingly volatile, taking over from Holmes as she whisks eggs, interrupting an interview to demand that the cameras be turned off and at one point casually brushing his teeth while standing stark naked in the shower, with Fielder awkwardly looking on. He speaks of Holmes dedicating her life to building “monuments of love” to him, and in one heated confrontation threatens to ruin the lives of people he believes have wronged her. “I’ve got vengeance in my heart,” he declares.
So who is Evans, how did he end up with one of Silicon Valley’s most infamous figures and what is he up to now?
Evans grew up in a wealthy, prominent San Diego family. His grandparents, William and Anne Evans, founded Evans Hotels in 1953, opening what became the Bahia Resort Hotel on Mission Bay. The family business later expanded to include the Catamaran Resort Hotel and Spa and the Lodge at Torrey Pines in La Jolla.
Evans attended Francis Parker School, an exclusive private school in San Diego, before graduating from MIT with a degree in economics in 2015. Despite his family’s wealth, Evans is neither an employee nor a shareholder of Evans Hotels, according to a statement the company issued Oct. 1.
His family reportedly had reservations about his relationship with Holmes at first. But his father, also named William, became a supporter — and even went undercover of sorts at her 2021 fraud trial. According to NPR, the elder Evans showed up for jury selection under the name “Hanson,” introducing himself to reporters as a concerned citizen who fixed up old cars for a living. His expensive loafers and a Starbucks cup bearing a different name eventually raised suspicions.
The two met Oct. 7, 2017, at a Fleet Week party hosted by a venture capitalist in San Francisco, according to Evans. Theranos was already engulfed in scandal, though Holmes had yet to be criminally charged.
In the documentary, Evans recalls that he initially didn’t recognize Holmes because she was wearing a floppy hat, dark sunglasses and a Band-Aid on her face from a scratch by her husky. He says he fell in love with her almost immediately. When Fielder points out that he could barely see her face, Evans replies, “I guess that wasn’t what mattered to me.”
Nathan Fielder observes Elizabeth Holmes with her family in “You Can See Everything.”
(A24)
Holmes says the attraction was mutual. The two became friends and started dating about six months later, just weeks before she was indicted on federal fraud charges.
Fielder asks Evans whether he worried early on that Holmes might be conning him. “100%,” Evans replies, before asking what she would have had to gain from him. “Well, isn’t your family rich?” Fielder asks.
Pressed about the family’s money, Evans grows visibly uncomfortable and cuts the conversation short, saying he needs to get to a cousin’s event.
Since Holmes entered federal prison in May 2023, Evans has been raising their two children in Austin, Texas, bringing them to visit her at the federal prison camp in Bryan. Holmes is expected to transfer to a halfway house outside Austin in August.
In an appearance last week on the tech podcast “All-In,” Evans described the difficulty of the experience. “It’s hard because I’m building a business and I’m trying to free my wife from federal prison and I’m raising two kids,” he said.
Though Evans routinely refers to Holmes as his wife, Holmes said in a 2025 interview from prison with People that they had not legally married: “Maybe we’ll get married someday, but our bond is more than a piece of paper.” The two got engaged in 2018, reportedly at a Taylor Swift concert.
After graduating from MIT, Evans reportedly attempted to launch a medical concierge service before working at companies including LinkedIn and Luminar Technologies, which developed lidar systems for autonomous vehicles.
In 2022, he founded Haemanthus, a biotech startup developing technology to analyze biological samples using lasers. The company hopes to make diagnostic testing cheaper and more accessible — a mission that may sound awfully familiar to anyone who followed the rise and fall of Theranos.
Haemanthus has reportedly raised millions of dollars but has yet to release a commercial product. Eric Potma, a UC Irvine chemistry professor who consults for the company, told Wired this week that its technology is worth exploring despite significant technical challenges. “The engineers at Haemanthus are legit,” he said.
Holmes’ name does not appear in Haemanthus’ incorporation documents, according to Wired. But in the documentary, the couple is shown discussing plans for a new diagnostic venture, with Evans speaking openly about his desire to revive her original ambitions.
“The idea is to put the band back together and do it all again,” Evans tells Fielder.
Evans and Holmes agreed to participate in the documentary in hopes of changing the public perception of her. Early in the film, Evans explains that they wanted to give the filmmakers extraordinary access to their daily lives, embracing what he calls “radical transparency.”
But Evans’ commitment to transparency had its limits. In the film, he repeatedly tries to shut down uncomfortable conversations and, in a meeting reenacted for the cameras, demands a share of the documentary’s profits — an arrangement Fielder fears could compromise the project’s integrity. Evans ultimately agreed to forgo payment.
At the documentary’s surprise premiere at the Telluride Film Festival in September, Fielder acknowledged that his relationship with Evans had deteriorated as the project unfolded.
“We felt Billy was trying to exert a lot of control over the process, and it sort of caused our communication to break down a little bit,” Fielder said during a Q&A after the screening. “The challenging thing is he’s sort of a conduit to her.”
Speaking on the “All-In” podcast before seeing the finished movie, Evans acknowledged that participating might turn out to be a mistake. “I haven’t seen it yet,” he said. “I might think this is like the dumbest thing I’ve ever done.”
Evans attended a private screening of the documentary on Oct. 16, followed by an off-the-record conversation with Bryan Johnson, the tech entrepreneur known for his elaborate efforts to reverse aging.
In a post on X the following day, Johnson called the film “a masterpiece” and described Evans as “magnanimous in conversation.” Though Johnson said he gave Evans every opportunity to defend himself and “strike back because Fielder roughed him up,” Evans declined.
Evans replied publicly, thanking Johnson for treating their conversation with care. “When the world is against you and the pain is so real,” Evans wrote, “it means so much to have people like you show such kindness.”
Earnings Call Insights: Neptune Insurance Holdings Inc. (NP) Q3 2026
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An unruly rabble bursts on to the street: a noisy eruption, bubbling towards us. This isn’t closing time on the Croisette in Cannes. A flock of sheep bustles past our cottage towards the shade of a huge chestnut tree, driven by three generations of herders and their dogs. The waterlike cacophony of their bells slows until only the odd tink tink punctuates the cicadas’ hum. The sheep graze, the shepherds doze off, and the mountain hamlet is still again.
My partner and I had set off by Eurostar less than 24 hours before, yet this place felt a world away from the ad agency where I work.
We’d booked cheap tickets to Paris months ago, intending to plan a trip on from there by train. As our departure approached, Instagram seemed to be full of aspirational, yet similar, holiday photos, and almost every other TikTok post I flicked past offered the promise of a hidden destination … discovered.
I find ratings, reviews and recommendations just as reassuring as the next person, especially when faced with a limited holiday allowance. The safety of the search bar helps to give me the confidence that I’m spending my hard earned money as wisely as possible. I work in a world that runs on data and optimisation and I love it, but I wondered whether I’d optimised the adventure out of my own holidays.
So, we tried a simple experiment. We closed down the tabs and opened a map of western Europe. Embracing a bit of low-tech randomness, we chose to let chance decide our trip.
I shut my eyes and we promised to go wherever my finger landed. I waved my hand like a magic wand and pointed, then took a deep breath, eyes still closed. What if we ended up in some industrial wasteland? But we were in luck. My finger landed upon the commune of Saint-Hilaire-de-Lavit in Cévennes, a place we’d never heard of and almost certainly would never have found by searching “places to go in France”.
After overnighting in Paris, a three-hour fast train zipped us down to Montpellier, where we hired a car. We stopped for provisions in a Lidl on the edge of town, stocking up for the whole trip – we weren’t expecting to find any shops at our journey’s end. A short drive inland, and the roads began to get narrower and more sparsely populated. As they climbed and zigzagged into this south-east corner of the Massif Central, we entered a south of France far removed from the honeypots served up by algorithms.
We pulled into a grassy layby on a high mountain pass where there was one other car parked. Had we arrived? We’d followed the cottage owner’s directions as there was no signal here for Google Maps, so it was hard to tell. Stretching our legs in the fresh, cool air, the first thing we noticed was the quiet. No traffic, no tourists. Just stillness. But the languid buzz of big insects flying by and the whirring chorus of cicadas told us this place was alive.
Squinting into the low sun, we saw someone waving. Our host, Guilaine, had appeared as if by magic and was beckoning us to the cottage a little farther down the road. We had found the hamlet of Les Ayres: a cluster of maybe 10 stone buildings, 800 metres above sea level. The rough-walled dwellings huddled either side of the narrow road, making the most of the tiny strand of level ground before the mountain’s spine fell away into steep forest. A long wooden awning and some outdoor tables suggested a cafe opposite our cottage, but the building was shuttered, and Les Ayres’ only potential customers seemed to be ourselves and Guilaine. She took us to the back of our accommodation, to a veranda that looked out over chestnut and pine-clad mountains rolling into the horizon. It’s a landscape that appears wild but has actually been shaped by farming, forestry and the seasonal movement of livestock for thousands of years.
The next morning, as I watched the sheep and their guardians settle down in the shade, I felt the ancientness of the place. Shepherds must have moved their flocks along the same path and most likely slept under the same chestnut trees for centuries. Traditional farming practices endure here in part because the area is veined with crystal-clear mountain streams, meaning animals traversing the paths are never too far from a drink. So rather than opening the internet, we let these ancient tracks, known as drailles, guide our hikes.
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We took sweaty, daylong expeditions without seeing another human or hearing the sound of cars. The forests protected us from the worst of the sun’s blaze but, on our first trek, the real treat came when we rounded a corner to find that what we thought was the sound of wind in the pines was actually water gushing through a narrow gorge below us. Another couple of switchbacks and we arrived at a deep, clear pool created as the stream carved a corner into the rock. Dappled sunlight filtered down through trees clinging to the steep-sided valley, creating spotlights for damselflies to dart through. We stopped for a picnic and a swim in the freezing mountain water, picking wild strawberries from the bank for dessert.
We discovered that these shady, secluded river pools were waiting for us on all the paths that led down from our cottage. As well as being the ultimate pit stops for mid-hike refreshment, they were teeming with wildlife – tadpoles wriggled in the shallows, fish flickered in the depths and a huge variety of butterflies, dragonflies and other insects skimmed the surface. We even saw a snake swimming across water we’d been submerged in just minutes before.
We spent our last afternoon reading on a rock, summoning the energy to walk back up the mountain (one drawback of staying high up on a pass). We watched the sun swing over the water and the light change as the day wore on. When the air began to cool, we worked our way back towards the cottage. As the path turned into an empty, single-track road, a car approached – a big event after so much seclusion. It was Guilaine – the only person apart from the shepherds we’d encountered.
In the evening, as the light faded, the sound of brass band practice drifted towards our veranda. Later, owls called to each other and a distant wild boar screeched into the quiet night. None of this had appeared in my search results. There was no review promising unexpected trumpeting, no listicle recommending the best pool for swimming among tadpoles, and no algorithm that could have told me where the sheep would pass on that first morning. We hadn’t looked at our phones for days – maybe that was the real discovery.
This runoff election for an open seat features two veteran attorneys with extensive experience as public defenders: Justin Allen Clayton and Anna Slotky Reitano.
Clayton is in charge of the Inglewood branch of the public defenders office and has defended three cases with life sentences.
Reitano represented juvenile and adult clients, many of them accused of felonies, before joining the county counsel’s office.
The Los Angeles County Bar Assn. considers both qualified to serve. Here’s more of what you need to know about the candidates.
Justin Allen Clayton, L.A. County deputy public defender
Bar rating: Qualified
Clayton is a Los Angeles native who attended public schools, earned a bachelor’s degree in criminology and passed the bar in 2012. He joined the public defender’s office two years later and since 2023 has served as deputy in charge of the Inglewood branch.
Clayton describes himself as a “working supervisor” who conducts arraignments and represents clients at preliminary and other hearings. He has completed dozens of trials, including three with life sentences, according to his website.
The position involves overseeing and training attorneys, as well as law clerks and summer interns, on misdemeanor and felony case preparation and trial strategy.
Clayton said a priority is improving court efficiency through pretrial preparation and “firm but fair enforcement of deadlines.”
Time as a candidate, he said, has shown him the importance of effective communication within the court system in bridging language and cultural differences. He called that a guiding principle, particularly for clients who lack counsel.
“Sometimes, one additional question, or one additional statement, can make all the difference in resolving an issue,” he said.
Clayton said running a public defender branch office, which brings him in contact with judges, sheriffs, court clerks, interpreters and others, combined with 14 years as a trial attorney, gives him a “comprehensive understanding” of the courtroom.
“That combination of courtroom experience, leadership and daily interaction with the many people who make our justice system work has uniquely prepared me to serve as a Superior Court judge,” he said.
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Anna Slotky Reitano, L.A. County deputy county counsel
Bar rating: Qualified
Reitano spent the early part of her career in criminal defense, contract law and other sectors. In 2014, she joined the L.A. County public defender’s office. A decade there included three years in juvenile court, where she primarily handled felony cases, and five years at the San Fernando Courthouse, where she represented indigent clients facing felony charges.
Reitano focused on mental health diversion and treatment, aiming to support rehabilitation when possible. Having a brother with schizophrenia and witnessing how families navigate the legal system when dealing with mental illness has informed her approach.
“This has given me a deeper understanding of both the challenges individuals and families face and the ways in which the system can fall short in addressing those needs,” she said.
This is not her first bid for office. She lost a campaign for a judgeship in 2022 and two years later assumed her position in the county counsel’s justice and safety division, where she supervises litigation and advises county departments.
Reitano, a former child actor, volunteers with local schools and, according to her website, mentors “future lawyers” through moot court competitions.
Campaigning, Reitano said, has shown her that constituents, no matter how different, uniformly want “a judge who is experienced, prepared, fair and willing to listen.”
“My experience across criminal, juvenile, civil, administrative and government law has uniquely prepared me to serve wherever the court needs me,” she said.
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Published On 21 Oct 202621 Oct 2026
Both candidates for the Brazilian presidency have called for the disqualification of their rivals over allegations of social media interference, ramping up political drama ahead of the close-fought October 25 runoff election.
Brazil’s right-wing presidential candidate Flavio Bolsonaro has requested the annulment of the candidacy of his rival, President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, over what he called unlawful propaganda.
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Lawyers for Bolsonaro filed a request with the Superior Electoral Court on Tuesday, alleging Lula’s “abuse of power” in the mass dissemination of government postings during the campaign period via WhatsApp.
Bolsonaro’s camp claimed the Brazilian government sent mass messages to millions of Brazilians via the messaging service, promoting social programmes, benefits and government initiatives in the midst of the presidential race, Brazilian media reported.
The request to the electoral court seeks to declare Lula and Social Communications Minister Sidonio Palmeira ineligible to hold public office for a period of eight years.
In the other camp, Lula’s campaign said on Tuesday that it would request the disqualification of Bolsonaro on Wednesday over alleged election interference by WhatsApp parent company, the tech giant Meta.
Lula’s petition, which has yet to be officially filed, alleges “algorithmic manipulation” by Meta aimed at harming Lula’s chances of winning, a campaign source told AFP.
The electoral court had given Meta 24 hours on Monday to prove it was complying with an order to treat both campaigns equally, threatening a daily fine of around $200,000 if it didn’t.
The order came after Lula’s campaign alleged that Meta, which owns Facebook, WhatsApp and Instagram, was suppressing his online content to boost Bolsonaro.
“We have completed the implementation of the measures to comply with the Superior Electoral Court’s decision,” the company said on Tuesday.
Lula and Bolsonaro are locked in a heated presidential race after the right-wing candidate, son of former president Jair Bolsonaro, won the initial round of voting earlier this month with 47 percent of the vote to the incumbent’s 45 percent.
Polls show a very close race ahead of Sunday’s runoff round.
A cockroach effigy was burnt in New Delhi marking the Hindu festival of Dussehra, which celebrates the triumph of good over evil. The ruling BJP party event, attended by Prime Minister Modi, coincides with nationwide protests by the Cockroach Janta Party.
Published On 21 Oct 202621 Oct 2026
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Disney actor Erik von Detten is being sued for allegedly scamming an elderly couple in a bizarre precious-metals scheme.
The “Brink!” and “Princess Diaries” star — alongside Rosland Capital, a Los Angeles-based precious-metals asset management and sales firm where Detten worked as an account representative — is accused of scamming Sheila Greenberg, 85, and her husband, Norman Greenberg, 97. According to the lawsuit, filed in May, Rosland Capital and Von Detten persuaded the couple to invest more than $2 million of their retirement savings in gold coins worth only $1.3 million.
Representatives for Von Detten could not immediately be reached.
According to the court documents, obtained by The Times, the Greenbergs called the firm after seeing several Rosland Capital commercials on TV, which they claim were “designed in large part to appeal to senior citizens.”
“The advertisements warn of dire consequences facing retirees in the United States, coupled with concerns like runaway debt, inflation, political turmoil and the ever-devaluing dollar,” reads the suit. “The commercials tout the security of gold, silver and other precious metals against imminent financial chaos and tell of the benefits of ‘investing’ through Rosland Capital. Viewers are told that ‘investing’ through Rosland Capital is a way to protect hard-earned wealth.”
When the Greenbergs asked the firm for their “top advisor,” they claim they were connected with Von Detten. “They were very clear with Von Detten that they had never invested in gold or other precious metals and really knew very little about these things,” reads the suit. “They told Von Detten they were of advanced age as they thought it important to someone who was going to help them invest in gold bullion as part of their IRA. They told Von Detten that they wanted a trusted and knowledgeable advisor. And after speaking with him they were so sufficiently impressed that they disclosed that their combined Traditional IRA account balances were in excess of $2,000,000.”
According to the filing, the former teen heartthrob earned the couple’s trust, told the couple to leave the decision-making up to him, and that he was “very knowledgeable in precious metals and precious metal IRA accounts and would make very specific recommendations that meet the Greenberg’s needs.”
The Greenbergs allege that they rolled over the entirety of their traditional IRA accounts into the gold IRA, per Von Detten’s insistence. They said they paid $2,146,958.22 for gold coins worth roughly $1,360,925.00, “without any notion that in a matter of just two weeks” their retirement accounts had been sapped of more than $780,000.
After the couple’s retirement accounts were drained, they say Von Detten convinced them to invest another $114,000 through a family trust.
Rosland Capital filed for bankruptcy in July.
The actor, who also starred in the TV series “So Weird” and the 1997 film “Leave It to Beaver,” was a star on the rise through the ’90s and early aughts. His career in Hollywood fizzled out over the last two decades. According to IMDb, he acted in the 2024 thriller “My Acting Coach Nightmare” and in 2010, he voiced Sid in “Toy Story 3,” a role he also played in the 1995 original. In 2018, he joined Rosland Capital.
