SATURDAY’S RESULTS

BOYS

CITY SECTION

East Valley 49, Canoga Park 44

Orthopaedic 51, South East 31

San Fernando 84, Fulton 51

Vaughn 84, Chavez 52

SOUTHERN SECTION

Alemany 73, Los Osos 52

Aquinas 57, Sonora 44

Arcadia 73, Rancho Mirage 59

Banning 55, Rim of the World 32

Beverly Hills 57, Vista Murrieta 47

Bishop Amat 87, Brea Olinda 47

Buena 54, Foothill Tech 53

California 66, Yorba Linda 59

Capistrano Valley Christian 68, Jurupa Hills 42

Cathedral 62, Fontana 60

Channel Islands 41, Carpinteria 36

Claremont 60, Hacienda Heights Wilson 41

Colony 64, Quartz Hill 45

Corona Centennial 71, Mater Dei 57

Crean Lutheran 60, Crespi 57

Cypress 86, Norte Vista 66

Dana Hills 47, Marina 39

Desert Hot Springs 80, Santa Rosa Academy 53

Edison 66, Riverside King 48

El Modena 71, Avalon 34

Elsinore 82, San Bernardino 63

Esperanza 67, Lakewood 51

Eitwanda 59, Murrieta Mesa 52

Hesperia 62, Fairmont Prep 58

Holy Martyrs Armenian 58, Pasadena Poly 43

La Canada 47, Charter Oak 44

Loma Linda Academy 43, Escondido Adventist 29

Los Alamitos 57, Rolling Hills Prep 50

Los Amigos 61, Ocean View 37

Malibu 47, Shalhevet 43

Mira Costa 61, Camarillo 46

Montclair 73, Sierra Vista 72

Newport Harbor 64, Servite 63

North Torrance 57, Flintridge Prep 42

Ontario Christian 64, Glendora 61

Orange Lutheran 58, La Serna 53

Oxnard Pacifica 44, Agoura 33

Saddleback 74, El Toro 62

San Gabriel Academy 52, Windward 59

San Marcos 74, Righetti 33

Santa Margarita 82, Millikan 77

St. Bernard 76, Loyola 72

St. Francis 55, Maranatha 46

St. Genevieve 59, Schurr 56

St. John Bosco 62, La Mirada 51

Sunny Hills 37, Troy 35

Tesoro 51, Shadow Hills 38

Trabuco Hills 55, Placentia Valencia 45

West Torrance 68, Verbum Dei 50

Whittier 65, Montebello 63

Woodbridge 49, Beckman 47

INTERSECTIONAL

Alhambra 55, Sotomayor 26

Burroughs 47, Carson 45

Calabasas 79, Sylmar 43

Corona del Mar 59. Carlsbad 48

Crescenta Valley 69, Verdugo Hills 48

Damien 54, Millville (Utah) Ridgeline 38

El Camino Real 78, Newbury Park 59

Gabrielino 84, Fremont 57

Gahr 57, Marquez 51

LA Hamilton 73, Fillmore 64

Lawndale 76, Bernstein 72

Moorpark 80, Van Nuys 34

Rancho Christian 55, San Diego 48

Redondo Union 65, Frederick (Md.) 44

Sierra Canyon 82, Bishop O’Dowd 37

St. Bonaventure 71, Animo Robinson 20

Village Christian 98, Chatsworth 56

GIRLS

SOUTHERN SECTION

Aquinas 68, Ramona Convent 19

Arrowhead Christian 47, Santa Monica Pacifica Christian 49

Arroyo Grande 52, Westlake 48

Baldwin Park 46, Excelsior Charter 32

Bishop Diego 63, Santa Clara 6

Buena Park 53, Camarillo 46

Chino Hills 63, Temescal Canyon 20

Claremont 43, Walnut 33

Corona del Mar 49, Covina 17

Downey 36, Upland 35

El Modena 65, Avalon 24

El Segundo 36, Savanna 34

El Toro 50, Godinez 42

Fullerton 44, Oxford Academy 36

Gabrielino 35, West Covina 24

Garden Grove 63, Estancia 42

Harvard-Westlake 53, Santa Monica 27

Hesperia 71, Irvine University 12

Laguna Beach 45, Capistrano Valley 39

La Salle 61, Marlborough 42

La Serna 55, Tustin 28

Loma Linda Academy 58, Escondido Academy 50

Los Alamitos 66, Cypress 53

Los Altos 53, Rio Hondo Prep 34

Los Osos 79, Chino 59

Marina 49, Anaheim Canyon 42

Marymount 45, Faith Baptist 13

Mira Costa 46, Rosary Academy 42

Oxnard 58, Moorpark 15

Palos Verdes 72, Murrieta Mesa 31

Pilibos 40, Warren 35

Portola 54, Oak Hills 45

Redondo Union 68, Esperanza 50

Sage Hill 68, Santa Margarita 39

San Dimas 56, Calvary Baptist 43

Santa Ana Foothill 51, Huntington Beach 36

Segerstrom 54, Wiseburn Da VInci 35

Sherman Oaks Notre Dame 61, Keppel 54

Silverado 48, Northview 41

South Hills 35, Rancho Verde 25

St. Bonaventure 53, Newbury Park 40

St. Genevieve 48, Agoura 41

Summit 62, San Bernardino 31

Thousand Oaks 52, Orcutt Academy 47

Torrance 65, Placentia Valencia 35

Troy 66, Rancho Cucamonga 49

Valencia 59, Palm Desert 30

Ventura 58, Chaminade 36

Villa Park 62, Santa Fe 31

Yorba Linda 41, Long Beach Jordan 35

Yucaipa 74, La Canada 47

INTERSECTIONAL

Bernstein 40, Beverly Hills 20

Clovis West 68, Rialto 40

Granada Hills 66, Canyon Country Canyon 58

King/Drew 66, Cresenta Valley 64

La Jolla Country Day 43, Windward 39

Las Vegas (Nev.) Democracy Prep Agassi Campus 66, Etiwanda 61

St. Margaret’s 56, Centennial (Colo.) Eaglecrest 54

West Torrance 65, Birmingham 51

Dec. 15 (UPI) — Prime Minister Anthony Albanese said Monday that his government will seek to strengthen Australia’s already stringent gun laws after a father-and-son duo killed 15 people and injured 40 others on Sunday in one of the country’s worst-ever shootings.

“People’s circumstances change. People can be radicalized over a period of time. Licenses should not be in perpetuity,” he told reporters during a Monday press conference.

The shooters have not been identified, although authorities have said the father was 50 years old and the son 24.

They are alleged to have opened fire late Sunday afternoon into crowds of people at the iconic Australian tourist destination. The 50-year-old father was shot and killed by police at the scene. The 24-year-old son has been hospitalized in serious but stable condition.

Authorities are investigating the shooting as a terrorist attack targeting Australia’s Jewish community during Hanukkah celebrations.

Six firearms have been confiscated by the New South Wales Joint Counter Terrorism Team, which is investigating the shooting.

The NSW Police Force said in a statement Monday that three firearms and two improvised explosive devices were located at the scene following the shooting and are undergoing forensic examination.

Search warrants executed Sunday night at two homes, one in Bonnyrigg and another in Campsie, uncovered two additional firearms.

A sixth firearm and a third improvised explosive device were discovered Monday at the Bondi crime scene, NSW Police Force said.

Authorities said earlier Monday that the 50-year-old alleged shooter is a licensed firearms holder and that they are investigating to confirm that the six firearms confiscated are the six he is licensed to have.

Albanese said Monday that he will take to the National Cabinet later that afternoon a proposal to empower agencies to examine what can be done to strengthen Australia’s gun laws.

“If we need to toughen these up, if there’s anything we can do, I’m certainly up for it,” he said.

The identities of the alleged shooters have not been made public. Home Affairs Minister Tony Burke told reporters that the 24-year-old son is an Australian-born citizen, and that the father had arrived in the country in 1998 on a student visa, which was then transferred to a partner visa in 2001. He has been on resident return visas since.

Asked what country the father was a native of, Burke declined to answer, saying he has not been cleared by police to make that information public.

Albanese said the son was known to police, and first came to their attention in October 2019.

“He was examined on the basis of being associated with others and the assessment was made that there was no indication of any ongoing threat or threat of him engaging in violence,” he said.

The probing of the son was the product of those he was associated with rather than anything he had done, he said, adding that the investigation was conducted over a six-month period.

NSW Police Commissioner Mal Lanyon earlier Monday told reporters that “there was very little knowledge of either of these men by the authorities.”

“The person had a firearms license for a number of years for which there were no incidents,” he said.

James steered the Los Angeles Lakers to a narrow victory over the Phoenix Suns after blowing a 20-point lead.

LeBron James gave Los Angeles the lead on two free throws with three seconds left, then blocked Grayson Allen’s potential game-winning three-pointer at the other end, and the Lakers survived a wild finish to defeat the hosts Phoenix Suns 116-114 on Sunday night.

Luka Doncic finished with 29 points, James 26 and Deandre Ayton 20 as part of a double-double with a game-high 13 rebounds for the Lakers, who trailed 77-71 before holding Phoenix scoreless for 8:05 bridging the third and fourth periods, using a 24-0 flurry to vault into a 95-77 lead.

The Suns regained the lead at 114-113 when Dillon Brooks buried the third of his fourth-quarter three-pointers with 12.2 seconds left. But Brooks, who had drawn an earlier technical foul for jawing with James, was nailed with a second “T” while celebrating his success and was ejected.

James missed the subsequent free throw, but then pulled up from beyond the arc with three seconds left and drew a three-shot foul on Devin Booker. He made the last two of the attempts to retake the lead.

Down one, the Suns got one final shot, but James blocked Allen’s potential game-winning three-point attempt and Marcus Smart, fouled after snatching the rebound, added a free throw to make it a two-point margin of victory.

The Suns led 77-71 after two free throws by Booker with 5:28 remaining in the third period before not scoring again until the third minute of the final period, falling behind 95-77 in the process. Phoenix missed 14 straight shots and mixed in seven turnovers during its scoreless spell.

Doncic was the game’s leading scorer despite missing 12 of his 14 attempts from behind the three-point line. The Lakers shot just 7 for 37 from deep.

Jaxson Hayes added 12 points for Los Angeles, which avenged an earlier 125-108 home loss to the Suns.

Booker had 27 points, Mark Williams 20 and Brooks 18 for Phoenix, which lost despite outshooting the Lakers 48.8 percent to 43.2 percent overall and 35.1 percent to 18.9 percent on three-pointers.

Allen, who shared game-high assist honours with Booker with seven, chipped in with 13 points for the Suns, while Royce O’Neale went for 12 and Collin Gillespie 10.

MOLLY-MAE Hague and Tommy Fury looked all loved up as they cuddled up on a festive day out with daughter Bambi.

The influencer and businesswoman, 26, hailed the moment “everything” as they posed for a selection of snaps.

They headed to a winter themed event where their two-year-old daughter looked delighted as she pulled on a helmet and some chunky winter snow boots.

Doting dad Tommy, 26, wearing a black puffer jacket held Bambi tight as she hovered above the snow while Molly-Mae beamed at his other side.

She donned a long-line black coat and matching scarf as she wrapped up against the elements.

The Maebe brand founder styled her hair in a chic bun and opted for natural make-up.

MOL’S OUT

Molly-Mae Hague flashes her bra in see-through top on night out without Tommy

BUILDERS BEWARE

Watch Molly-Mae’s sister Zoe confront builders who wolf-whistled as she ran

The bunch then posed for a super sweet selfie before following up with another playful snap which Molly-Mae captioned with a series of white love heart Emoji icons.

She then captured a glimpse of Bambi on a roundabout with the star’s pal Tayla-Blue Watts and Tommy, as well as Tayla’s daughter Storie.

The little girls were then treated to a visit from Santa.

Molly-Mae uploaded a snap of their very special visit and wrote: “Went and found Santa going around the houses.

“Pjs and dressing gowns.”

Tommy also captured Santa’s visit on his Instagram Stories with the words: “Ending the day with finding Santa and making sure he knows we’ve been good this year.”

He also shared snaps of the family playing in the snow and put: “Another special weekend with my family.

“All that matters. Always.”

It came just days after Molly-Mae enjoyed a night out in Manchester with her pals while Tommy and Bambi spent the evening at home.

Molly-Mae Hague – Five Ways She Spends Her Wealth

MOLLY-MAE Hague has raked in a whopping £48K a week. Yet what five things has the mum of one spent out on?

NIGHT OUT

Molly-Mae joined a group of pals to celebrate the 30th birthday of Erin Jones, her close friend and assistant.

The celebrations took place at upmarket restaurant Sexy Fish, where the group had booked out a private dining area.

Molly-Mae shared a series of snaps from the night out, including one of Erin’s giant birthday cake, which read “not me turning 30”.

The evening is a rare sight for Molly-Mae, who has previously detailed how she doesn’t enjoy going out and very rarely goes near alcohol.

Meanwhile, her partner Tommy was on duty as he enjoyed a “daddy and daughter date night” with their daughter Bambi.

The pair headed to Bambi’s “favourite” restaurant, Pizza Express, before enjoying dessert at a nearby ice cream shop.

Sharing a picture of the toddler to his Instagram Stories, the boxer admitted that Bambi has him “completely wrapped around her little finger”.

Molly-Mae and Tommy rekindled their relationship at the beginning of the year after splitting in 2024 due to Tommy’s relationship with alcohol.

They have since gotten back on track and are in the process of renovating their new family home and preparing to have their first Christmas together since reuniting.

However, things haven’t been smooth sailing when it comes to parenting Bambi, as the couple admit she’s a handful.

The first-time mum, who previously confessed parenting so far has been an “emotional rollercoaster”, said last week that Bambi is like having a “teenager”.

Taking to social media, Molly-Mae asked fans if there was anything they wanted to know, when one asked how life had been with Bambi.

She replied: “She definitely keeps me on my toes.

“The way Bambi acts it’s like she’s a teenager in a two year old’s body. She knows exactly how to work both me and Tommy.”

Marian La Follette, who spent 10 years as a Republican Assemblywoman from Northridge before retiring in 1990, plans to enter the state Senate race in the new district that stretches from Oxnard to the San Fernando Valley, Republican sources said Tuesday.

“I just spoke to her a little while ago, and she has made up her mind that she will be running,” said Charles H. Jelloian, a Republican from Northridge. Jelloian said he has decided to withdraw from the state Senate race, partly to make way for La Follette’s return to politics.

“Marian’s jumping into the race is a very big factor,” said Jelloian, who became acquainted with La Follette when he was an aide to state Sen. Newton R. Russell (R-Glendale). “I worked very, very well with her for a long time,” he said. “I have a lot of respect for her.”

La Follette has lived in Orange County since her retirement. She could not be reached for comment Tuesday.

If she enters the race, she could pose a formidable challenge to Assemblywoman Cathie Wright (R-Simi Valley) in the new 19th state Senate District. So far, Wright is the leading candidate in the district that encompasses Oxnard, Camarillo, Thousand Oaks, Moorpark, Fillmore, Simi Valley and Northridge.

“Both are new to this district,” said one Republican source. “I think they would start out about equal.”

Roger Campbell, a Republican city councilman in Fillmore, also has declared his candidacy in the heavily Republican district. No Democratic candidate has come forward in the district that has roughly 28,000 more registered Republican voters than Democrats.

La Follette, a conservative legislator, was best known for her persistent efforts to divide the massive Los Angeles Unified School District into smaller districts.

She decided to retire two years ago when her late husband, Jack, a Los Angeles lawyer, fell seriously ill with cancer.

When she was in the Legislature, she aligned herself with Sen. Ed Davis (R-Santa Clarita), who is vacating the Senate seat. Republican sources said they anticipate that Davis will support her candidacy against Wright, a longtime political foe.

La Follette’s candidacy is another indication that Assemblyman Tom McClintock (R-Thousand Oaks) will run for Congress. She and McClintock are strong political allies.

McClintock has toyed with the notion of running for state Senate, GOP sources said. The long-anticipated announcement of his plans has been postponed until later this week.

Former England captain Michael Vaughan has described hearing gunshots during Sunday’s terrorist attack at Bondi Beach as “terrifying”.

Vaughan, who is in Australia commentating on the Ashes, was locked inside a restaurant “a few hundred yards from Bondi” for several hours alongside his wife, sister-in-law, two daughters, and a friend.

The 51-year-old, who is staying in nearby Coogee and had spent the day with his family watching his son’s cricket match, was on his phone outside the restaurant when he heard what he thought was “fireworks” coming from the beach before being told to get inside by a bouncer.

Authorities have confirmed that at least 15 civilians, including one child, have been killed in the attack, which targeted a Hanukkah celebration on the beach held by Sydney’s Jewish community.

Speaking to BBC Radio 5 Live, Vaughan said: “Yesterday was a surreal day that I don’t really want to go through again.

“I’m deeply saddened by everything that has gone on.

“To be 300 yards away, in a pub locked away, scary times.

“I look at Bondi and Sydney in particular – it’s like my second home. Australia is an amazing country, and it’s probably one of the countries in the whole world where I always say it’s the safest. It’s the safest place.”

Police have confirmed a father and son were the alleged shooters, with the older man killed at the scene and the other in hospital in a critical condition.

Writing in The Telegraph, external, Vaughan added: “Like most people, I have been at home watching terrorist attacks unfold in London, or Manchester, near where I live.

“That all feels very close to home, and is scary. But to be so close that you can hear it happening is terrifying.”

Hong Kong’s highest court has found former media mogul Jimmy Lai guilty of sedition and conspiring to collude with foreign powers. The 78-year-old is known as the territory’s most outspoken critic of Beijing and could face life in prison.

Alang, India – Standing on the windswept coastline of the Arabian Sea in the western Indian state of Gujarat, Ramakant Singh looks towards the empty, endless horizon.

“In the olden days, ships lined up at this yard like buffaloes before a storm,” says the 47-year-old. “Now, we count the arrivals on our fingers.”

Ramakant works at Alang — the world’s largest ship-breaking yard, located in Bhavnagar district of Gujarat, Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s home state. For two decades, Ramakant has cut apart vessels as large as oil tankers and cargo carriers that sailed in from Europe and other Asian countries for his livelihood.

With its unique tidal pattern and gently sloping beach, Alang in the 1980s became the backbone of India’s ship recycling industry, where ships could be beached and dismantled at a minimal cost.

Over the decades, more than 8,600 vessels — collectively weighing roughly 68 million tonnes of light displacement tonnage (LDT), which is the actual weight of a ship without fuel, crew and cargo — have been taken apart here, accounting for nearly 98 percent of India’s total and about a third of the global ship recycling volume.

Across the world’s oceans, an ageing fleet of cargo ships, cruise liners, and oil tankers is nearing the end of its life. Of the roughly 109,000 vessels still in service, nearly half are more than 15 years old — rusting giants that will soon be retired.

Each year, close to 1,800 ships are declared unfit to sail and sold for recycling. Their owners pass them on to international middlemen, known as cash buyers — operating out of global shipping hubs such as Dubai, Singapore, and Hong Kong. These brokers, in turn, resell the vessels to dismantling yards in South Asia, where the final act of a ship’s life unfolds.

In Alang, ships are driven ashore at high tide — a process called beaching. Once grounded, hundreds of workers cut them apart piece by piece, salvaging steel, pipes, and machinery. Almost everything — from cables to cupboards — is resold for use by construction and manufacturing industries.

However, over the past decade, the number of ships arriving on Alang’s coast has dwindled. Once a skyline of giant hulls that looked like high-rise buildings against the town’s asbestos roofs, only a few cruise ships and cargo carriers dot the horizon today.

“Earlier, there was plenty of work for everyone,” Chintan Kalthia, who runs one of the few yards still open, tells Al Jazeera. “Now, most of the workers have left. Only when a new ship beaches do a few come back to Alang. My own business is down to barely 30-40 percent of what it used to be.”

According to data from India’s Ship Recycling Industries Association, 2011-12 marked Alang’s busiest financial year since it began operations in 1983, with a record 415 ships dismantled. Since then, the yard has faced a steep decline — of the 153 plots developed along the 10km (6-mile) coastline, only about 20 remain functional, and even they are operating at barely 25 percent capacity.

“But what’s going wrong in Alang has multiple reasons,” says Haresh Parmar, secretary of the Ship Recycling Industries Association (India). “The biggest is that globally, shipowners are not retiring their old vessels. Post-COVID, a surge in demand led to record profits in shipping. With freight rates soaring, owners are pushing ships beyond their usual operational life instead of sending them for dismantling.”

A key factor behind the surge in freight rates is global disruptions. Israel’s genocidal war in Gaza has had a ripple effect on global trade routes, with Yemen’s Houthi rebels repeatedly attacking commercial vessels in the Red Sea in solidarity with the Palestinians. The resulting security crisis has forced ships to bypass the Suez Canal and instead take the longer Cape of Good Hope route, sending freight rates soaring and delaying cargo worldwide.

Similarly, an analysis by the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD) conducted in June 2022 found that the Russia-Ukraine war and other Middle East tensions had pushed up marine fuel costs by more than 60 percent, adding to operational expenses and shipping delays.

Together, these factors have sharply reduced the supply of end-of-life ships heading to Alang. “When owners are earning well, they don’t scrap their vessels,” says Parmar. “That’s why our yards are standing empty.”

Compliance raising costs

But that is not the only reason why Alang is struggling.

India’s ship recycling industry has undergone a significant transformation since the country acceded to the Hong Kong International Convention for the Safe and Environmentally Sound Recycling of Ships (HKC) in November 2019, becoming one of the first top ship-breaking nations to do so. Under the HKC and the 2019 Recycling of Ships Act, yards at Alang upgraded their infrastructure, installed pollution control systems, lined hazardous waste storage pits, trained workers, and maintained detailed inventories of toxic materials used in vessels.

These measures made Alang-Sosiya Ship Recycling Yards (ASSRY) one of the most compliant ship-recycling clusters in the developing world, with 106 of ASSRY yards having received HKC Statements of Compliance (SoC). Sosiya is a village located right next to Alang on the Gulf of Khambhat coast in Gujarat. Together, Alang and Sosiya form the entire stretch of beach where ship-breaking plots operate.

But achieving these standards came at a high cost: each yard had to invest between $0.56m and $1.2m to meet compliance norms, raising operational costs at a time when competition from neighbouring countries remains fierce.

“Think of it like a roadside eatery versus a global burger chain — the chain has shinier rules, cleaner kitchens, and safer gear, but you pay extra for the sparkle. The Hong Kong Convention works the same way,” said Kalthia, whose company, RL Kalthia Ship Breaking Private Limited, became the first ship recycling facility in India to receive HKC compliance certification from ClassNK in 2015, as their website shows. ClassNK is a leading Japanese ship classification society that audits and certifies international maritime safety and environmental standards.

“Compliance makes things safer and brings us up to international standards — it gives us an edge only on paper,” says Chetan Patel, a yard owner at Alang. “But it has also raised costs significantly.”

That, in turn, has made it hard for Alang’s ship-breakers to offer prices comparable to those of competitors.

“When neighbouring markets can pay more, shipowners go there,” Patel said.

Competing ship-recycling yards are thriving. In Bangladesh’s Chattogram port and Pakistan’s Gadani yard, shipowners are being offered $540-550 per LDT and $525-530 per LDT, respectively, compared with $500-510 per LDT at Alang.

“We can’t match the rates offered by Bangladesh and Pakistan,” says Parmar. “If we tried, we’d be running at a loss.”

This is reflected clearly in the data: the number of ships decommissioned in India dropped from 166 in 2023 to 124 in 2024. In contrast, Turkiye’s figures nearly doubled to 94 from 50, and Pakistan’s rose from 15 to 24 during the same period.

Supporting industries struggle

Alang is not just a ship-breaking yard, but a vast recycling ecosystem that sustains the surrounding region’s economy.

From the coastal town of Trapaj — the last big settlement before Alang — an 11km (7-mile) stretch of road is lined with sprawling, makeshift shops selling remnants of decommissioned ships. Everything that used to be part of life at sea eventually finds its way here: rusted chains, rescue boats, refrigerators, ceramic crockery, martini glasses, treadmills from shipboard gyms, air conditioners from cabins, and chandeliers from officers’ quarters.

“Whatever is there on the ship, we own it,” says Parmar. “Before the cutting begins, all valuable items are auctioned and reach these stores.”

Ram Vilas, who runs a ceramic shop selling salvaged crockery by the kilo, says most of his customers used to come from commercial establishments across Gujarat. “Now, business has gone dead,” he tells Al Jazeera. “This stretch you see doesn’t even have one-tenth of the crowd it used to. With fewer ships coming in, we don’t have enough stock to fill our shops.”

The ripple effects of Alang’s decline extend to other industries as well. Waste is handled by specialised facilities, while reusable steel is supplied to more than 60 induction furnaces and 80 rerolling mills, some 50km (30 miles) away in Bhavnagar, converting it into TMT bars – reinforced steel rods – and other construction materials.

But with fewer ships arriving, the supply of scrap steel has dropped sharply, disrupting operations of furnaces, mills, and hundreds of small businesses that depend on ship-derived goods. More than 200 retail and wholesale shops that once bustled with activity now face dwindling sales.

“Gas plants, rolling mills, furnace units, transporters, drivers — everyone connected to this chain has lost their livelihood,” says Parmar.

In Bhavnagar, 29-year-old Jigar Patel, who runs a flange manufacturing unit, says his business has suffered.

“I opened my unit in 2017, seeing the opportunity with steel sheets easily available from Alang,” he says. “But in the past two years, the slowdown has hit hard. Now, I have to buy sheets from Jharkhand. It’s not just expensive, but the raw steel is harder to cut and process. The Alang sheets were more malleable and ductile — they were made for work and of international standard.”

Workers at Alang, most of them migrants from poorer Indian states in the north and east, including Jharkhand, Bihar, Odisha and Uttar Pradesh, have also begun to leave. “They only show up when ships arrive at the docks,” Vidyadhar Rane, president of the Alang-Sosiya Ship Recycling and General Workers’ Association, tells Al Jazeera.

“Yard owners call them when there is work. The rest of the time, they find other jobs in nearby towns,” he says.

At its peak, Alang employed more than 60,000 workers. Today, that number has shrunk to fewer than 15,000, according to the union.

Ramakant, who first arrived in Alang at the age of 35, recalls working for seven straight years before the slowdown began. “Now, I only return when my employer calls,” he says, adding that he spends the rest of his time working in the industrial town of Surat.

The work at the yard, he admits, has become far safer than it once was. “This was once the deadliest job — we would see workers dying every other day. Now there’s training, safety gear, and order,” Ramakant says, looking towards the silent coast.

“But what’s the point of safety when there’s no work? Everything now depends on whether the next [ship] arrives at the yard or not.”

Rob Reiner, a writer, director, producer, actor and political activist whose career in Hollywood spanned more than six decades and included some of the most iconic titles in movie history, was found dead Sunday with his wife, Michele Singer Reiner, at the home they shared in Brentwood. He was 78.

“It is with profound sorrow that we announce the tragic passing of Michele and Rob Reiner,” a spokesperson for the family said in a statement Sunday. “We are heartbroken by this sudden loss, and we ask for privacy during this unbelievably difficult time.”

Reiner will be remembered as the director of the seminal 1980s rom-com “When Harry Met Sally,” the actor whose character “Meathead” faced off regularly against Archie Bunker, and the political activist who backed early childhood programs in California and railed loudly for years against President Trump.

The oldest child of comedian Carl Reiner and singer Estelle Reiner, Robert Reiner was born March 6, 1947, in the Bronx, N.Y. Raised by a father who won 11 Primetime Emmys and a Grammy in addition to the Mark Twain Prize for American Humor, Rob Reiner attended Beverly Hills High School and studied film at UCLA. He then went to work in Hollywood as an actor and writer before moving on to directing and producing.

Reiner’s writing credits in the 1960s included “The Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour,” “The Glen Campbell Goodtime Hour” and the TV movie “Where the Girls Are.” In the 1970s, he wrote several episodes of “All in the Family” as well as the Primetime Emmy Awards telecast in 1978 and episodes of “The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson.”

Reiner married Penny Marshall, star of TV’s “Laverne & Shirley,” in 1971 and adopted Tracy, the daughter Marshall had from a previous marriage. Reiner and Marshall divorced in 1981.

He wrote for the first “Comic Relief,” hosted by Robin Williams, Billy Crystal and Whoopi Goldberg. That and the dozen “Comic Relief” telethons that followed raised awareness and money to fight poverty in the U.S. and elsewhere.

“This Is Spinal Tap” in 1984 further established Reiner’s comedic sensibilities in the American milieu. His work took a dramatic turn when he directed the 1986 adaptation of Stephen King’s novella “Stand by Me,” which starred Wil Wheaton, River Phoenix, Corey Feldman and Jerry O’Connell, but he returned to comedy with 1987’s “The Princess Bride” starring Cary Elwes, Robin Wright and Mandy Patinkin. Also in 1987, he co-founded production company Castle Rock Entertainment.

Then he directed what would emerge as one of the most beloved rom-coms ever — “When Harry Met Sally,” starring Crystal and Meg Ryan.

On the set of the movie he met photographer Michele Singer and the two married in 1989, the year the film came out. They went on to have three children, Jake, Nick and Romy, born in 1991, 1993 and 1997, respectively.

Reiner was finally nominated for a best picture Academy Award in 1994 for “A Few Good Men,” starring Jack Nicholson and Tom Cruise, though the movie lost out that year to Clint Eastwood’s Western “Unforgiven.”

Reiner’s work had sweeping cultural impacts. Three of his movies, “When Harry Met Sally,” “The Princess Bride” and “This is Spinal Tap,” are on the National Film Registry. The phrase “up to eleven,” coined in “This Is Spinal Tap” during an improvised sequence between Reiner and Christopher Guest, is in the Oxford English Dictionary.

“It’s weird that something that we just threw off like that suddenly becomes part of the lexicon of our lives,” Reiner said on NPR’s “Fresh Air” in September. “It’s very strange how these things have taken root.”

In 2015, Reiner was the producer on “Being Charlie,” a drama based on his family’s struggles while son Nick was addicted to hard drugs and rotating in and out of rehabs and homelessness.

“It was very, very hard going through it the first time, with these painful and difficult highs and lows,” Reiner told The Times in 2015. “And then making the movie dredged it all up again.”

Growing up, Reiner balanced conflicting feelings about his relationship with his own father, who was someone he strongly admired. But he also felt as though his father didn’t fully know him. That dichotomy inspired a scene in “Stand by Me” when Gordie declares his father hates him.

“Loving your father and looking up to your father doesn’t necessarily mean you’re feeling that back,” Reiner said on “Fresh Air” in September, recalling how writing that scene made him cry. Reiner, added, however, that he had two “great guides” in his life, his father, who died in 2020, and “All in the Family” creator Norman Lear.

Reiner was a writer on “The 40th Kennedy Center Honors” in 2017, capping a career that included myriad variety show writing credits. “Spinal Tap II: The End Continues,” which he directed, was his final project as a scribe. “Spinal Tap at Stonehenge: The Final Finale,” due out in 2026, was his final directing credit.

Reiner was nominated five times for supporting actor Emmys for his “All in the Family” work, winning in 1974 and 1978. He was up for two Emmys in 2024 for the documentary “Albert Brooks: Defending My Life.”

A staunch liberal, Reiner also emerged as a force in California politics and child welfare and education issues, and campaigned for presidential candidates including former Vice President Al Gore, endorsed former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton for president and spoke up for President Biden’s reelection. Reiner was also an unapologetic critic of President Trump.

He campaigned in California against tobacco use and in 1998 saw the passage of Proposition 10, which called for a tax on tobacco products to be spent on early childhood programs. Reiner became chairman of the First 5 California Children and Families Commission in January 1999. He resigned in March 2006 amid accusations that the commission had used tax money to boost his campaign for the ultimately unsuccessful Proposition 82, which would have raised income taxes on wealthy Californians to pay for preschool for 4-year-olds. An audit later concluded that he and the commission had not violated state law.

“Rob Reiner has always put California’s kids first, and I thank him for the great work he has done over the last seven years,” then-Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger said in a statement at the time. “Because of Rob’s efforts, California has become a national leader in providing early childhood health and education services for our youngest children and their families.”

Times editor Brittany Levine Beckman contributed to this report.

Geraldine A. Ferraro, the savvy New York Democrat who was embraced as a symbol of women’s equality in 1984 when she became the first woman nominated for vice president by a major party, died Saturday at Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston. She was 75.

The cause was complications from multiple myeloma, her family said.

Ferraro was diagnosed with multiple myeloma, an incurable form of blood cancer, in 1998. She did not disclose her illness publicly until 2001, when she went on NBC’s “Today” show and said she had beaten the cancer into remission with thalidomide, the once-banned drug that had proven effective with some end-stage cancers. The cancer recurred, but she again went into remission after therapy with a new drug.

Initially told that she had three to five years to live, she survived for more than 12 years, long enough to witness the historic candidacies of two other women in 2008: Hillary Rodham Clinton, the former first lady and current secretary of State who ran against Barack Obama for the Democratic presidential nomination, and Sarah Palin, the former Alaska governor who was Republican Sen. John McCain’s running mate.

Ferraro was “a pioneer in our country for justice and a more open society,” former Vice President Walter Mondale told the Associated Press of his former running mate. “She broke a lot of molds, and it’s a better country for what she did.”

Palin also praised Ferraro, writing in a Facebook message that she “broke one huge barrier and then went on to break many more.”

Ferraro’s 1984 candidacy was seen as a potentially powerful weapon to turn the emerging “gender gap” of the 1980s to the advantage of the Democratic Party, which sought to regain the White House after Ronald Reagan’s first term.

But her four-month campaign almost immediately hit rough waters. She was bashed by critics who questioned the finances of her husband, John Zaccaro, a Manhattan real estate developer. A devout Roman Catholic, she was repeatedly assailed by New York’s archbishop, the late John J. O’Connor, for her views supporting abortion rights. She also endured insinuations of mob connections as the first Italian American on a national ticket.

“I was constantly being asked, ‘Was it worth it?’ Of course it was worth it!” she wrote in “Framing a Life, A Family Memoir,” published in 1998. “My candidacy was a benchmark moment for women. No matter what anyone thought of me personally, or of the Mondale-Ferraro ticket, my candidacy had flung open the last door barring equality — and that door led straight to the Oval Office.”

Her nomination astonished some of the most stalwart feminists. Among them was Ms. magazine founder Gloria Steinem, who had predicted that 1984 would be the year that politicians talked seriously about putting a woman on the national ticket, not “the year they actually did it.”

Over the next two decades, other women achieved milestones in national politics. Janet Reno became U.S. attorney general, Madeleine Albright was named secretary of State, and Nancy Pelosi became speaker of the House.

Their path was eased by Ferraro, who believed that a childhood tragedy set up her moment in history.

“I’ve often said that if my father hadn’t died, I might not have done anything,” Ferraro once told Steinem in an interview. “I saw my mother left suddenly with kids and no money…. I wanted to be able to take care of myself and not miss a beat.”

Born Aug. 26, 1935, in Newburgh, N.Y., she was the pampered daughter of Antonetta and Dominick Ferraro, Italian immigrants who had lost a son, Gerard, in a car crash and were so overjoyed at her birth a few years later that they named her Geraldine, in memory of him.

Dominick Ferraro ran a successful restaurant in Newburgh. When business fell on hard times, he turned to running a numbers game and was arrested. On the morning he was to appear in court, he died of an apparent heart attack. Ferraro was 8.

She became seriously anemic — doctors told her she had internalized her grief — and was unable to attend school for months. Strapped for money, her mother moved the family to a cramped Bronx apartment and took a job as a crochet beader. By scrimping on meat and other luxuries, she managed to send Ferraro to Marymount, an exclusive parochial school in Tarrytown, N.Y., and later to Marymount Manhattan College.

Ferraro graduated and became an elementary school teacher in Queens. At night she put herself through Fordham Law School, one of two women in a class of 179 whose professors resented her for “taking a man’s rightful place.”

Years later, when she was raising three children of her own and finally had begun to practice law, Ferraro split her legal fees with her mother and kept her maiden name in tribute.

She took the bar exam two days before her wedding in 1961 and passed, but Zaccaro did not want his wife to work, so she spent the next 13 years as a homemaker in upper-middle-class Forest Hills, N.Y. Their first child, Donna, was born in 1961, followed by John Jr. in 1964 and Laura in 1966.

She balanced her domestic responsibilities with pro bono work for women in family court and became the first woman on the board of the Forest Hills Gardens Corp. She also was elected president of a women’s bar association.

In 1974, when her youngest child was in second grade, she went to see her cousin, Queens Dist. Atty. Nicholas Ferraro, who hired her as a prosecutor. Within three years she was promoted to chief of the special victims bureau, in charge of sex crimes, child abuse, rape and domestic violence cases. It was emotionally draining work, but she won six jury trials, aided, according to a review by American Lawyer magazine, by her “straightforward eloquent approach” and “meticulous courtroom preparation.”

Her years as a prosecutor transformed her from a “small-c conservative to a liberal,” she later said. And it would lead her to adopt a supportive view of abortion that would put her in conflict with her church.

“You can force a person to have a child, but you can’t make the person love that child,” Ferraro wrote, reflecting on the child abuse cases she prosecuted. “I don’t know what pain a fetus experiences, but I can well imagine the suffering of a four-year-old girl being dipped in boiling water until her skin came off and then lying in bed unattended for two days until she died. And that was only one of the cases seared in my memory.”

In 1978, Ferraro formally entered politics. Running for Congress on the slogan “Finally, a tough Democrat,” she won by a 10% margin despite being snubbed by local party leaders.

She was reelected twice by even larger margins — 58% in 1980 and 73% in 1982.

She studiously strove to avoid the pitfalls of being a rookie and one of the few women in Congress. After overhearing a male colleague’s putdown of a new female member who “couldn’t find her way to the ladies’ room,” Ferraro mentally mapped out her exact route whenever she headed out the door. “Silly, right? And totally inconsequential,” she said. “But nothing is worse than looking as if you don’t know where you’re going.”

A quick learner, she soon caught the attention of House Speaker Tip O’Neill, who called her “a regular since the day she arrived.” She was in many ways an old-fashioned politician who could schmooze and glad-hand with the most wizened colleagues. O’Neill rewarded her with seats on the Democratic Steering and Policy Committee and the House Budget Committee, as well as the position of secretary to the House Democratic Caucus. Male colleagues found her effective but, as then-Rep. Leon E. Panetta described her, “not a Bella Abzug type,” a reference to the late New York congresswoman and feminist leader known for her confrontational style.

Ferraro supported a nuclear freeze, opposed Reagan’s tax-cut proposal, upheld support for social programs for the poor, elderly and children, and was a strong supporter of Israel. She was passionate about abortion rights and championed the Equal Rights Amendment. She also voted against mandatory busing for integration and for tuition tax credits for parochial schools, positions that won favor in her conservative, largely blue-collar district. Her record earned a description in Time as “a New Deal Democrat with a good seasoning of traditional family values,” an appealing balance that eventually would help her leap onto the national stage.

While she was building her career in Washington, interest in the gender gap began to intensify. Proportionally more men than women had voted Reagan into office in 1980. Many partisans began to take note of the fact that he had won by 8.4 million votes, a margin that they hoped could be overturned the next time by some 30 million unregistered women of voting age.

In late 1983, the drumbeat for a female vice president began at a conference of the National Organization for Women, the nation’s largest feminist group. Polls began to ask whether a woman on the ticket would make a difference, and the answer was coming back as yes.

In Washington, a group of politically connected Democratic women began a stealth campaign. Calling themselves Team A, they prodded prominent Democrats to publicly endorse the concept of a female vice president. Eventually, Mondale, Gary Hart and Edward M. Kennedy spoke favorably of the idea. The ad-hoc group floated names of potential candidates, including women then in Congress such as Barbara Mikulski of Maryland and Pat Schroeder of Colorado, and then-San Francisco Mayor Dianne Feinstein. They encouraged women in the national media to write about putting a woman on the ticket.

Early in 1984, after vetting the possibilities, the group decided that the woman with the most voter appeal was Ferraro. Over a Chinese takeout dinner, Team A broached the subject with her. Would she “stay open to the idea of becoming the actual nominee” if the concept caught on? Ferraro recalled her reaction: “I was flabbergasted and flattered.” The possibility of her nomination struck her as extremely remote, but she agreed to become the focus of the team’s efforts.

To raise her national profile, she went after a prominent role in the upcoming Democratic National Convention and became the first woman to be platform chair. She earned high marks for averting a potential convention revolt by delegates pledged to Hart and Jesse Jackson, who ultimately were satisfied that the platform reflected their views.

While she labored over the platform, prominent figures, including House Speaker O’Neill, began to drop her name as a contender for the No. 2 spot on the ticket.

By early July, she was regularly mentioned as a finalist on Mondale’s list, along with San Antonio Mayor Henry Cisneros, Los Angeles Mayor Tom Bradley, Philadelphia Mayor Wilson Goode, Kentucky Gov. Martha Layne Collins, Texas Sen. Lloyd Bentsen, and Feinstein. The party front-runner summoned her to Minnesota for an interview, but she nearly pulled herself out of contention after leaks from a high-ranking Mondale staffer resulted in stories deriding her prospects.

The waiting ended July 11 when Mondale popped the question: Would she be his running mate?

“I didn’t pause for a minute,” Ferraro wrote in “Ferraro: My Story,” published in 1985.

At a news conference that day, an unusually effervescent Mondale said — twice — “This is an exciting choice.”

Among the pundits who agreed was New Yorker political analyst Elizabeth Drew. Ferraro’s selection, she wrote, was “a lightning bolt across the political landscape.” It not only would help Mondale energize female voters, Hart supporters and independents, but would bolster the staid image of the Minnesota Democrat who, in a stroke, had “reduced ? the assumption that he is incapable of bold action.” Dragging by double digits in the polls, Mondale had grasped his “best, and perhaps only, hope” for victory in November.

On July 19, Ferraro strode onto the stage at San Francisco’s Moscone Center to accept her party’s nomination. She was greeted by roars of “Gerr-reee! Gerr-reee!” from what looked like a sea of jubilant women, many of them non-delegates who had finagled floor passes to witness this stirring moment in the nation’s history.

“My name is Geraldine Ferraro,” the then-48-year-old declared, for once slowing her usual staccato style of speech. “I stand before you to proclaim tonight, America is the land where dreams can come true for all of us.”

The mood “was so electric that just being female felt terrific,” Maureen Dowd wrote in the New York Times.

But none of Ferraro’s years in Congress prepared her for the hurricane that was coming.

The media clamored for interviews, amassing in such numbers that Capitol Hill police roped off her office to keep them at bay. More than 50,000 letters and gifts — ranging from books to a boxing glove — poured in by election day.

Within two weeks of her nomination, the flak began to hit.

Critics blasted her for taking the statutory exemption to withhold information about her husband’s finances on disclosure statements required of members of Congress. And John Zaccaro was attacked for improperly borrowing money from the estate of an 84-year-old widow. He later was removed as conservator. In subsequent weeks the public would learn that Ferraro had improperly loaned money to her first House campaign in 1978, and that Zaccaro and Ferraro had underpaid their taxes that year.

In the blur of campaigning, Ferraro approved a news release that mistakenly said she would release her husband’s tax returns. When she subsequently refused to release the returns, the candidate with a dangerous tendency toward flippancy told a reporter: “You people who are married to Italian men, you know what it’s like.”

Immediately she knew she had made a terrible gaffe. She had meant that Italian men tended to be private about their personal affairs, but her remark was interpreted as an ethnic slur. It also fueled debate about Ferraro’s toughness, with critics contending if she wasn’t strong enough to oppose her husband, she couldn’t stand up to the Soviets.

Media scrutiny of her husband was so intense that reporters even began to investigate allegations that his father had once rented space to a member of the Gambino crime family.

(Washington Post editor Benjamin Bradlee later observed that the charges, which never amounted to much, would not have been made if she had been “somebody named Jenkins. You’d have to be from another planet not to think that,” he told The Times in a post-election analysis.)

In late August, she released a detailed financial disclosure statement and faced the national media. She earned favorable reviews for her responses to 90 minutes of often hostile questioning (“Ferraro passes a vital test,” went a cover line in Time) but her candidacy never recovered.

In September, Ferraro began fending off attacks on a new front. New York’s Archbishop O’Connor lashed out at her stand on abortion rights and said she had misrepresented church teachings on abortion. He even held open the possibility of excommunication. Anti-abortion and abortion-rights groups clashed at her rallies.

The Italian American community did not rise to her defense, even when other critics attempted to smear her with allegations of underworld dealings. Some commentators decried the sexism they said was fueling the attacks. Noting the silence of the Italian American community, syndicated columnist Richard Reeves observed: “The stoning of Geraldine Ferraro in the public square goes on and on, and no one steps forward to help or protest — not even one of her kind?. The sons of Italy and fathers of the Roman Catholic Church are silent or are too busy reaching for bigger rocks?. Heresy! Mafia! Men are putting women in their place.”

Ferraro did well when she faced then-Vice President George H.W. Bush in debate. He ignored her request that she be addressed as “Congresswoman,” however, and called her “Mrs. Ferraro” instead. Shortly before the debate, she was insulted by Barbara Bush who called her “that four-million-dollar — I can’t say it, but it rhymes with ‘rich.’ ” (Ferraro and Zaccaro’s net worth had been reported at $3.8 million.)

She was discouraged by news coverage that she felt rarely reflected the enthusiasm and massive crowds she encountered on the campaign trail. “They were far less interested in what I had to say about the life-and-death issues facing the nation than they were about what I was wearing, how I looked that day, whether or not I cried, and what was happening in my marriage,” she recalled in her memoir.

Reagan, one of the most popular presidents in history, wound up with an 18-point victory, aided in part by women, who supported him in greater numbers than they had the Mondale-Ferraro ticket. Post-election analyses found that Ferraro had neither greatly helped nor hindered the Democrats’ chances.

What later became clear to Ferraro was how ambivalent the electorate — particularly women — had been about her candidacy.

Those attitudes led Ferraro to make a controversial appearance in a 1991 commercial for Pepsi-Cola, in which she endorsed being a mother over being in politics. Feminists shouted betrayal.

The commercial apparently did little to bolster her chances the following year when she ran for the Democratic nomination for Senate. She lost the 1992 Democratic primary and again in the 1998 primary, her last bid for elected office.

Fatigued after the primary, she went for a medical checkup and was diagnosed with multiple myeloma.

She was determined to remain active despite the ups and down of her health. At President Clinton’s request, she served as U.S. ambassador to the United Nations Human Rights Commission. She found a forum for her views on television as the liberal co-host of CNN’s “Crossfire” and as a Fox political analyst. In 2004, she helped found grannyvoter.org with other female activists in their 60s to encourage grandparents to become politically involved. She also worked for a number of lobbying firms.

Later, Ferraro was a feisty advocate for Hillary Clinton’s bid for the Democratic presidential nomination, garnering criticism for remarking during the heated 2008 primary season that Obama had an advantage because he is black. The remark was perceived as racist, and in the ensuing controversy, Ferraro resigned from her voluntary position on Clinton’s campaign finance committee, but she did not back away from her view of how race and gender were playing out in the campaign.

“Sexism is a bigger problem” than racism in the United States, Ferraro told the Daily Breeze in the March 2008 story that made her a liability for the Clinton campaign. “It’s OK to be sexist in some people’s minds. It’s not OK to be racist.”

She harbored no regrets at having tried to become the first female vice president, despite how grueling the struggle was. What women needed to remember, she told an interviewer in 2004, was a simple fact of politics: “If you don’t run, you can’t win.”

In addition to her husband and three children, Ferraro, who lived in New York City, is survived by eight grandchildren. Funeral arrangements are pending.

elaine.woo@latimes.com

A look at The Times’ top 25 boys’ basketball rankings for the Southland after Week 4.

Rk. School (Rec.); Comment; ranking last week

1. SIERRA CANYON (7-1): Face Crean Lutheran on Saturday; 1

2. SANTA MARGARITA (11-1): Headed to Las Vegas for Tarkanian Classic; 2

3. ST. JOHN BOSCO (8-0): Champions of their own tournament behind Christian Collins; 3

4. HARVARD-WESTLAKE (9-1): Next up is a trip to Hawaii; 4

5. REDONDO UNION (6-2): Went 1-1 on East Coast trip; 5

6. SAN GABRIEL ACADEMY (1-3): Another team headed to Las Vegas; 6

7. SHERMAN OAKS NOTRE DAME (6-2): Face Riviera Prep from Miami on Friday; 7

8. CREAN LUTHERAN (9-2): Hunter Caplan has been making major contributions; 8

9. CORONA CENTENNIAL (10-1): Isaiah Rogers is MVP of San Juan Hills tourney;11

10 VILLAGE CHRISTIAN (7-3): Freshman Will Conroy leading team in scoring; 9

11. ETIWANDA (13-0): North Orange County tournament champions; 15

12. CORONA DEL MAR (11-0): 11 straight wins to start season is impressive; 16

13. CRESPI (6-4): Waiting for cavalry to arrive on Dec. 26 ; 10

14. DAMIEN (12-2): Went 2-1 on trip to Idaho; 14

15. FAIRMONT PREP (6-4): Suffering close losses to good teams; 12

16. JSERRA (6-4): Jaden Bailes continues to lead Lions; 13

17. LA MIRADA (4-4): Strong schedule will pay off; 18

18. CHAMINADE (11-0): Close win over El Camino Real keeps Eagles unbeaten; 19

19. ARCADIA (7-1): Good win over Pasadena in Pacific League opener; 20

20. PASADENA (3-2): Bulldogs waiting for players to become eligible; 21

21. CROSSROADS (7-1): Winning without Evan Willis (flu); 22

22. EASTVALE ROOSEVELT (5-3): Face Hesperia on Tuesday 23

23. BRENTWOOD (10-0): Headed to Hawaii; 24

24. RANCHO VERDE (9-2): Semaj Carter has been on scoring run; NR

25. ROLLING HILLS PREP (10-1): Suffered first loss to Los Alamitos; 17

Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese has pledged a review of his country’s gun laws and added support for Jewish Australians, as his government faces scrutiny following a deadly shooting at Sydney’s Bondi Beach.

On Monday afternoon, Albanese faced reporters to answer questions about the shooting, which took place a day earlier, during a local Hanukkah celebration. At least 15 people have died, including a 10-year-old girl, and dozens are reported injured.

“What we saw yesterday was an act of pure evil, an act of terror, an act of anti-Semitism: an attack on the first day of Hanukkah, targeted at the Jewish community,” Albanese said in prepared remarks, after visiting the crime scene.

“A dark day in Australia’s history, on what should have been a day of light.”

The Australian government has yet to name the suspected attackers, identifying them only as a 50-year-old man and his 24-year-old son. The father died in a shootout with police, while the son is currently being treated at a local hospital.

Hanukkah is sometimes called the Festival of Lights, and in Monday’s news conference, Albanese encouraged Australians to participate in a show of solidarity with the country’s Jewish community.

“I would urge and join with others who have urged Australians across the country to light a candle, put it in their front window tonight at 6:47pm [19:47 GMT] to show that light will indeed defeat darkness – part of what Hanukkah celebrates, of course,” he said. “We are stronger than the cowards who did this.”

But while Albanese and other officials urged calm, critics questioned whether the government had done enough to curtail both anti-Semitism and gun violence.

Netanyahu spurs scrutiny

One of Albanese’s highest-profile critics in the wake of the attack was Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

The right-wing Israeli leader blamed Albanese’s centre-left government for failing to protect Australia’s Jewish community. He also linked the shooting to Australia’s recent decision to recognise Palestinian statehood.

“Your call for a Palestinian state pours fuel on the anti-Semitic fire,” Netanyahu said in remarks directed at Albanese, voicing sentiments he later repeated in a social media post.

“It emboldens those who menace Australian Jews and encourages the Jew hatred now stalking your streets.”

Those remarks fuelled outrage and accusations that Netanyahu was leveraging the tragedy for political aims.

In a post on social media, UN special rapporteur Ben Saul also criticised Netanyahu for linking Australia’s recognition of Palestinian statehood to Sunday’s shootings.

“I am disgusted that the Israeli PM links Australia’s principled support for a Palestinian State with yesterday’s terrorist attack in Bondi,” said Saul, who also serves as an international law chair at the University of Sydney.

“Australia has taken extensive measures to prevent anti-semitism,” Saul added.

When asked on Monday morning about Netanyahu’s remarks, Albanese said his focus was on bringing people together.

“This is a moment for national unity,” the Australian prime minister told reporters in Sydney. “This is a moment for Australians to come together. That’s precisely what we’ll be doing.”

He also said his government would beef up funding and support to protect Jewish community members, including covering the costs of guard services.

“We’re extending the funding for the National Council for Jewish Community Security and its state-based community security groups, to provide overall security cover to the Jewish community,” Albanese said.

“We’re also working with Jewish community organisations to see how we can best support charity efforts, including through tax-deductible status for donations.”

Australia’s gun reforms under scrutiny

Albanese also told reporters on Monday afternoon that he would be convening a meeting of state premiers to discuss “tougher gun laws, including limits on the number of guns that can be used or licensed by individuals”.

“People’s circumstances change. People can be radicalised over a period of time. Licences should not be in perpetuity,” said Albanese.

His remarks follow questions about the six guns recovered from the scene of the shooting and the revelation that the 24-year-old suspect had previously come under police scrutiny.

Officials have repeatedly said the 50-year-old suspect had “met the eligibility criteria for a firearms licence”, and that the 24-year-old was previously not deemed to be a threat.

Australia introduced some of the world’s strictest gun laws, including bans on automatic and semiautomatic rifles and shotguns, after a shooter killed 35 people in the Tasmanian town of Port Arthur in 1996.

The 1996 reforms, introduced under former Prime Minister John Howard, were hailed as a success after Australia saw no mass shootings occur for close to two decades.

However, according to a recent report from the Australia Institute, the implementation of the laws has lapsed in recent years, with more guns now in the country than before 1996.

On Monday, Albanese said the reforms had “made an enormous difference” and were a “proud moment” of bipartisan action, but that reviews were now needed to ensure better coordination between states.

Chris Minns, the premier of New South Wales, where the shooting took place, also told reporters on Monday he would be reviewing gun laws.

“We want to make sure that prospective reform and change in New South Wales has a lasting impact,” Minns said. “It’s not the last time I’ll be mentioning it, and you can expect action soon.”

Sunday’s shooting at Bondi Beach follows several other mass shootings in recent years, including a 2022 attack in Wieambilla, Queensland, linked to Christian fundamentalist ideology that left six people dead.

An Australian man was also responsible for the attack in 2019 that killed 51 people at a mosque in Christchurch, New Zealand, where semiautomatic weapons are still sold.

This year’s edition of a famous Christmas market has been the target of criticism, mainly for overlooking one important thing.

Forget London or Manchester — according to expert testing platform Which?, the best Christmas market in Britain is the one in Bath.

The historic city was voted Which? Readers’ favourite medium-sized city, and is renowned for hosting one of the UK’s biggest and most established Christmas markets every year, with over 200 stalls.

Which? praised the Bath Christmas Market for its reputation for offering good food, drink, and festive activities.

Visitors can browse everything from handmade wooden furniture and garden sculptures to knitwear, fragrances, and gifts for pets, while also sampling regional delicacies such as foraged jams and seasonal baked treats.

However, despite its accolades and picturesque setting, the market does not appear to please everyone. In a recent Mail on Sunday feature analysing UK Christmas markets, Bath was rated only “OK” for a weekday visit.

According to Jane Fryer’s feature, although the market was not as overcrowded as previous visitors had complained, it fell short of expectations in one key area: the lack of Christmas spirit. This included music, limited lighting, or the absence of traditional seasonal touches, such as Santa or entertainers.

She noted that many stalls sold everyday market items, such as bags, coats, and T-shirts, rather than the expected festive goods and crafts. While the occasional stall offering local arts and foods was “charming,” the overall impression was that the place felt much less Christmas-ready than it should.

She also highlighted a broader trend among visitors nationwide, noting complaints about high prices, repetitive stalls, and overcrowding at many festive markets.

Fryer reported a mix of reactions from Bath’s visitors. Some had travelled specifically to see the market and were delighted by the traditional mulled wine, local foods, and the town’s scenic backdrop. Others, however, expressed disappointment, describing the experience as “not very Christmassy” due to the lack of music or entertainment.

Across social media and travel review platforms, Bath has been widely labelled underwhelming this year — not only because of logistical or layout issues but, primarily, due to a perceived lack of festive atmosphere.

Elsewhere in her piece, Fryer praised other seasonal markets she visited, particularly those with strong visual theming, live entertainment, and an overall more festive ambience, highlighting how these elements can significantly enhance the visitor experience.

I have made a point of escaping Christmas for as long as I can remember. Not escaping for Christmas, but avoiding it altogether – the stressful buildup, consumer chaos, panic buying, the enforced jollity and parties. When the first festive gifts start appearing in the shops in September, it’s time to confirm my travel plans, ideally to include New Year’s Eve as well.

Sometimes I travel independently, but more often in a group, and while it’s not always possible to avoid the tinsel and baubles – even in non-Christian countries thousands of miles away – I just relish not being at home at this time of year.

It’s not that I crave a week in the sun, although the Canaries or Madeira always appeal. My favourite Spanish city of Granada is a regular escape for Christmas, for despite the surprisingly cold temperatures compared with the Costa del Sol, the skies are always a dazzling blue, so I never tire of a stroll up to the Alhambra. I always stay high up in the Albaicín, the old Moorish quarter, where a walk along the winding, narrow, cobbled streets feels as it might have during the middle ages. I like the fact that even on Christmas Eve the squares are full of locals eating and drinking, wrapped up well in blankets and coats. The Spanish do love eating outside in all weathers.

Nor is it a case of bah humbug! I still send 80-plus Christmas cards by post and enjoy buying gifts for family and friends. When my parents were alive, I would always travel over to see them in Northern Ireland just before or just after the festivities. But everything changed in 1990 when my brother Brian, whose birthday was on Christmas Day, tragically died aged 45 the month before. Getting away appealed more than ever.

Over the years I’ve had some very memorable times. Travelling with a group of friends in Myanmar, after Aung San Suu Kyi had been released and encouraged tourism, I came down for breakfast on Christmas Day to find the receptionists wearing Santa hats, a fake tree in the lobby, and cotton wool for snow on greenery in the garden. The temperature was 30C.

That was the start of three days sailing down the Irrawaddy River, before exploring the Buddhist temples at Bagan, many held together by thick jungle vines. These cover 67 sq km (26 sq miles) and were built over a period of 230 years, until the city was overrun by Kublai Khan and the Mongols in 1287 and many were destroyed. For a bird’s-eye view, I went up in a hot-air balloon at sunrise on New Year’s Day and descended to a champagne breakfast.

As a vegetarian, turkey and all the trimmings are not for me, and while I’m very happy with the local diet wherever I am, somehow it’s assumed that, being far away from home, I long for a traditional British meal. After travelling by boat through the Sundarbans of Bangladesh, watching boatmen send otters on a leash into the water to corral fish into nets, we arrived at our next port of call to find the table laid for Christmas dinner – in my case, cauliflower cheese with yorkshire pudding, followed by tinned fruit salad and custard.

Other unusual festive dinners have included a packed lunch of pakora with cold chips, a cheese sandwich and a boiled egg (India); “warthog on spit” in Eswatini (I opted for rice and beans); and soggy pizza in Cuba – but then you don’t go there for the food; Cubans have to queue for basics such as rice, oil, sugar and eggs. Hunger pangs were forgotten when we scrambled up the hills to explore Fidel Castro’s hideout.

In Europe, many countries celebrate on the 24th, so Christmas Day is thankfully quiet and relatively normal. In Prague one year, under communism, the family I stayed with followed the Czech tradition of buying a live carp from a barrel in the street and keeping it in the bath until Christmas Eve, when they prepared breaded fillets, served with potato salad, for their meat-free dish in reverence to Christ. (I don’t remember how the bathtub fish was dispatched.) New Year’s Day required lentils for prosperity, and pig’s knuckles. I ate a lot of lentils on that visit in the 1980s, before the Velvet Revolution, when the only other vegetarian food I could find was Olomouc cheese (aroma of sweaty socks) and knedlíky (dumplings) with sauerkraut, when not doused in goose fat.

During a walking week on the Greek island of Evia on a group tour, it was a joy to find all the tavernas in the town of Karystos open over Christmas, despite it being the low season. We dined in a different one each day with “real people” then returned to a family-run hotel, our base for the duration. Our guide went the second (or seventh) mile after our day’s hike on the 25th by showering us with gifts, which were local and thoughtful; definitely worth taking home.

I like small group tours – fewer than 12 or you never remember their names – and I always pay for a single room. I’ll join the group dinners, but often head off alone to dine and discover something new (there is always one annoying person in the group – if you think there isn’t, it’s probably you). I like the fact I am only responsible for myself and don’t have to worry if my friend is having a good time. You can dip in and out of company but also have time to yourself, and privacy. The organised trips are usually a mix of couples, friends and solos like me.

The nearest I have experienced to a firework-free New Year was in 1999 in the mountain kingdom of Bhutan, a Buddhist country with a Buddhist calendar – there it was already 2542. The turn of the millennium was another reason to get away that year. I spent 31 December hiking up to Tiger’s Nest Monastery, one of the holiest sites in the Himalaya, on a cliff above the Paro Valley at an altitude of about 3,000 metres. This was followed by a restorative stone bath, with large stones heated for four hours and rolled into a wooden tub fragranced with lavender and herbs. It’s a ritual that beats any expensive spa treatment back home.

So this year, on 18 December, I’ll be hanging my age-old recycled wreath on the front door and heading off to Gran Canaria, hoping for like-minded escapers with walking boots and definitely no Santa hats. Merry Christmas!

Australia’s PM said gun laws would be discussed by the national cabinet today after deadly shooting in Sydney.

Netflix viewers have just uncovered a surprising link between the Knives Out thriller series and Daniel Craig’s famous James Bond franchise.

Netflix viewers have just spotted a surprising link between the beloved Knives Out trilogy and Daniel Craig’s iconic 007 films.

The streaming giant has just released Wake Up Dead Man, which marks the third thriller in the Rian Johnson whodunit franchise.

Craig reprises his role as eccentric detective Benoit Blanc and takes on a seemingly impossible murder case.

Wake Up Dead Man has bagged a stellar 92% Rotten Tomatoes score, with many viewers already crowning it as the best thriller in the series.

This comes as no surprise considering its talented cast, which includes Josh O’Connor, Glenn Close, Josh Brolin, Kerry Washington, and Mila Kunis.

But the ensemble cast has caught moviegoers’ attention with more than just their acting chops. Many have pointed out that each instalment in the franchise has featured at least one actor that Craig worked with during his James Bond days.

Taking to Reddit, one fan posted a series of images of Bond actors who have also appeared in the Knives Out trilogy.

They shared their discovery, writing: “Something interesting I noticed after watching the movies back to back. With Wake Up Dead Man featuring Andrew Scott and Jeffrey Wright , Daniel Craig has worked again with at least one other actor from his James Bond movies on all 3 Knives Out films.”

Fans of the series will remember that the first film featured Oscar nominee Ana de Armas as nurse Marta Cabrera.

Craig and de Armas also collaborated in No Time to Die, in which the actress played CIA agent Paloma.

However, as some fans on Reddit pointed out “Ana de Armas was a Knives Out actor in a Bond movie, not the other way around,” since she joined the Bond universe two years after starring in the mystery film.

Craig later reunited with fellow Bond star Dave Bautista in Glass Onion, the Knives Out sequel.

Spectre fans will remember Bautista as terrifying henchman Hinx, a character worlds away from his light-hearted Glass Onion role as gamer Duke Cody.

Irish actor Andrew Scott also featured in the same 2015 Bond film as intelligence agent Max Denbigh.

Scott plays misguided writer Lee Ross in Wake Up Dead Man, though he sparingly shares scenes with Craig.

Another No Time to Die star, Oscar nominee Jeffrey Wright also reunites with Craig in the new Knives Out film.

Wright plays Bishop Langstrom, who serves as something of a mentor for main character Father Jud Duplenticy (O’Connor).

Fans were especially thrilled to see this duo collaborating again, four years after Wright played Bond’s ally Felix Leiter.

Responding to the Reddit thread, one fan penned: “God I love Jeffery Wright,” with someone else agreeing: “Was the best surprise seeing him!”

And a third added: “The Jeffrey wright one really made me happy. Didn’t know he was in it!”

Wake Up Dead Man: A Knives Out Mystery is streaming now on Netflix

Rob Reiner was known to millions as a TV actor and film director.

But the Brentwood resident, known for the classic films “Stand by Me” and “When Harry Met Sally,” was also a political force, an outspoken supporter of progressive causes and a Democratic Party activist who went beyond the typical role of celebrities who host glitzy fundraisers.

Reiner was deeply involved in issues that he cared about, such as early childhood education and the legalization of gay marriage.

Reiner, 78, and his wife, Michelle Singer Reiner, were found dead inside his home Sunday, sparking an outpouring of grief from those who worked with him on a variety of causes.

Ace Smith — a veteran Democratic strategist to former Vice President Kamala Harris, Gov. Gavin Newsom, former Gov. Jerry Brown and presidential candidate Hillary Clinton — had known Reiner for decades. Reiner, he said, approached politics differently than most celebrities.

“Here’s this unique human being who really did make the leap between entertainment and politics,” Smith said. “And he really spent the time to understand policy, really, in its true depth, and to make a huge impact in California.”

Reiner was a co-founder of the American Foundation for Equal Rights, the organization that successfully led the fight to overturn Proposition 8, the 2008 ballot measure that banned same-sex marriage. He was active in children’s issues through the years, having led the campaign to pass Proposition 10, the California Children and Families Initiative, which created an ambitious program of early childhood development services.

Proposition 10 was considered landmark policy. Reiner enlisted help in that effort from Steven Spielberg, Robin Williams, and his own father, comedy legend Carl Reiner.

“He wanted to make a difference. And he did, and he did profoundly,” Smith said.

Reiner was also a leading backer of Proposition 82, an unsuccessful measure that would have taxed the wealthy to create universal preschool in California.

Former Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa, who had known Reiner since he was a state lawmaker in the 1990s, worked with him on Proposition 10 and was impressed with how Reiner embraced the cause.

“He was a man with a good answer. It wasn’t politics as much as he was always focused on the humanity among us,” Villaraigosa said. ‘When he got behind an issue, he knew everything about it.”

“Just a really special man. A terrible day,” the former mayor said.

Mayor Karen Bass said in a statement that she was “heartbroken” by the day’s events, saying Reiner “always used his gifts in service of others.”

“Rob Reiner’s contributions reverberate throughout American culture and society, and he has improved countless lives through his creative work and advocacy fighting for social and economic justice,” the mayor said.

“I’m holding all who loved Rob and Michele in my heart,” Bass said.

Newsom added, “Rob was a passionate advocate for children and for civil rights — from taking on Big Tobacco, fighting for marriage equality, to serving as a powerful voice in early education. He made California a better place through his good works.”

“Rob will be remembered for his remarkable filmography and for his extraordinary contribution to humanity,” the governor said.

While both Cardiff and Ospreys won, the off-the-politics are never far away with rumours of a link-up in the future between the two teams. However unpopular that scenario is.

Ospreys owners, Y11 Sport & Media, have been linked with taking over Welsh Rugby Union-owned Cardiff, with the move creating dismay among both sets of supporters on social media.

The Welsh Rugby Union are looking for a way to cut the number of men’s professional side from four to three. Ospreys owners buying Cardiff might provide a neat solution for them.

Discussions are expected to continue between the WRU and other interested parties about the Cardiff takeover.

In April, the WRU stepped in after Cardiff temporarily went into administration.

The Blue and Blacks might be owned by the WRU but that does not stop the club providing a platform for criticism of Welsh rugby’s governing body in the match programme, external for the Ulster game.

The CF10 Rugby Trust, an independent Cardiff supporters group, produced an article welcoming back Leigh Halfpenny but also reflecting on what they perceive as recent WRU failures.

An extract read: “He [Halfpenny] was part of a Cardiff side that had been allowed to develop over time with steady, reliable funding, and youngsters coming into that environment felt the benefit.

“The past 10 years in Welsh rugby have sadly offered a less ideal stage for young talents.

“So often our professional teams have been unable to know what their budgets are until too late in the day to recruit properly. So often, jobs on and off the field have been put under threat.”

The programme article continued: “Over these past 17 years, Welsh pro rugby has lost its way. We have been badly let down by the Welsh Rugby Union (WRU).

“By creating a situation of chronic instability, the game’s leaders have let down every young player dreaming of professional rugby and following in Halfpenny’s footsteps. Welsh rugby continues to go through a period of chronic uncertainty.”

Dec. 15 (Asia Today) — Japan’s shipbuilding industry is moving to rebuild after a prolonged slump, with the government establishing a 1 trillion yen ($6.42 billion) support fund and preparing a mid- to long-term industrial strategy dubbed the “Shipbuilding Revitalization Roadmap,” according to the report.

Tokyo is also promoting an “All Japan” framework that links the shipping and shipbuilding sectors, redefining shipbuilding as a national strategic industry. The shift is being closely watched by South Korea’s shipbuilders as Japan seeks a policy-driven pivot after its presence weakened amid aggressive competition from China and South Korea.

Japan was a global shipbuilding powerhouse in the early 1970s, accounting for about half of worldwide shipbuilding volume. After the oil crisis, however, large-scale facility investment largely stalled for more than 50 years due to volatility in shipping markets and uncertainty in ship demand. During that period, South Korea and China rose to the center of global shipbuilding through government-led investment and support, the report said.

Japan’s share of global merchant-ship orders remains in the single digits, the report added. The rebuilding drive stems from a growing view in government and industry that shipbuilding is not only a competitiveness issue but also a matter of national infrastructure.

The initiative goes beyond financial injections for individual companies, the report said. The government has set a goal of doubling annual shipbuilding volume over the next decade, while prioritizing a stronger production base and the recovery of technological and design capabilities.

A key feature is an effort to tighten coordination between shipbuilders and shipping lines. The report pointed to agreements between major shipping groups and shipbuilding and design firms to standardize designs for next-generation fuel vessels, aiming to link domestic industries from the ordering stage through operations and improve competitiveness.

The approach differs from South Korea’s export-driven shipbuilding model,which competes globally for orders from shipowners, the report said. Japan, bycontrast, is positioning its alliance with domestic shipping as a core pillarof its industrial strategy.

While South Korea already holds top-tier competitiveness and leads globalorders in high-value-added vessel types, Japan’s current move reflects a changein national-level perceptions of shipbuilding, the report argued.

Japan is framing shipbuilding not simply as an export industry but as afoundational sector supporting maritime logistics, citizens’ livelihoods,economic activity and national security. The policy push raises questions abouthow the state can ensure the industry’s sustainability despite its cyclicalvolatility, the report said.

It remains too early to judge whether Japan’s reconstruction drive will deliver tangible results. But the report said the Japanese government and industry have returned shipbuilding to the center of national strategy – a signal that the East Asian shipbuilding landscape may be shifting again.

-Reported by Asia Today; translated by UPI

© Asia Today. Unauthorized reproduction or redistribution prohibited.

We are getting some new information about America’s long-range Dark Eagle hypersonic boost-glide vehicle weapon system from Secretary Hegseth’s recent tour of Redstone Arsenal in Alabama. During his visit, Hegseth designated the installation as U.S. Space Command’s (SPACECOM) new headquarters.

The Army’s Dark Eagle, also known as the Long Range Hypersonic Weapon (LRHW), is a trailer-launched hypersonic boost-glide vehicle system that can travel long distances at hypersonic speeds (velocities in excess of Mach 5) while maneuvering erratically through Earth’s atmosphere. This makes it an ideal weapon for striking high-priority and time-sensitive targets that are extremely well defended. This includes critical air defenses, command and control nodes, and enemy sensor systems, among other targets. It is the first true hypersonic weapon slated for frontline U.S. service. The same missile architecture is being adopted by the Navy for sea-launch under the Intermediate Range Conventional Prompt Strike (IRCPS) weapon system.

During a show-and-tell of Army missile systems, Lt. Gen. Francisco Lozano, Director of Hypersonic, Directed Energy, Space and Rapid Acquisition, told Hegseth that Dark Eagle has a 3,500-kilometer range. Members of the media were also present at the event, which was captured on video by C-SPAN and other outlets.

Lt. Gen. Francisco Lozano further noted that he can hit “mainland China from Guam” with Dark Eagle. He also said it could hit Moscow from London and Tehran from Qatar. This isn’t the first official statement of range for Dark Eagle from the Pentagon. The weapon was previously said to have at least a 1,725-mile (2,775-kilometer) range. Based on Lozano’s comments today, its actual range is at least 2,175 miles. It isn’t clear if the Army’s own figures have changed based on the evolution of the weapon and its testing, or if the previous figure was ‘watered down’ intentionally, which is common when it comes to official metrics for missile systems.

Another Army officer at the event, who is not immediately identifiable, told Hegseth that Dark Eagle has a warhead “under 30 pounds,” which is relatively tiny for a long-range weapon — smaller in size than what’s found on an AIM-120 air-to-air missile, for instance. The officer stated the warhead is just to get its “projectiles out” and that it can deliver effects over an area about the same size as the parking lot they were standing on.

As we have repeatedly said, the kinetic punch this weapon provides would contribute more to its destructive power than a conventional warhead mounted in the tight confines of the conical boost-glide vehicle. Still, a blast fragmentation warhead, which was alluded to by the officer, would help with putting softer targets out of commission, like air defense batteries and radar arrays.

The officer also said Dark Eagle can cover its range in less than 20 minutes.

War Sec. Pete Hegseth Visits The New Site For U.S. Space Command Headquarters In Huntsville, Alabama

The mention of the warhead is of special interest as there had been concerns by Pentagon testers of Dark Eagle’s lethality as recently as last year.

We wrote about the Pentagon’s test assessment back in February, stating:

“In the meantime, the Navy has tested the warhead for the AUR, but independent of the missile. An arena test for the warhead was carried out in the first quarter of FY24, followed by a sled test in the second quarter of FY24. The Pentagon says that this sled test “included some threat-representative targets,” but also notes that results are still being processed.

Earlier sled and flight tests “did not include operationally representative targets and consequently provided no direct validation of the weapon’s lethal effects,” the Pentagon adds.

…

Ultimately, the Army “needs to incorporate representative targets and environments into flight tests and other live lethality and survivability tests,” this portion of the report concludes.”

Dark Eagle has had more than its share of development delays, but as of June of this year, the Army intended the weapon system to become operational by the end of Fiscal Year 2025. Where that schedule stands now isn’t clear. There is one battery already stationed at Fort Lewis, and another is supposed to arrive this year.

The importance of getting Dark Eagle up and running goes beyond tactical and strategic considerations, as the U.S. has lagged behind its peers in areas of hypersonic development, most notably when it comes to China.

It’s also worth mentioning that Hegseth asked about how many they are producing and how fast. The Army officer said one per month, but the goal is to increase that number to two per month, or 24 a year. Clearly, the ability to produce weapons in large quantities quickly is top of the mind for Hegseth as the U.S. struggles with its supply of combat mass. Some have argued Dark Eagle is a class of ‘silver bullet’ weapon that will be built in too few numbers and at too high a cost to have a major impact in a sustained conflict.

Regardless, now that we know more about the technical specifications of the weapon system, the Pentagon could be on the cusp of finally declaring it operational.

Author’s note: A big thanks to @lfx160219 on X for bringing this to our attention.

Contact the author: tyler@twz.com

AFTER nearly two decades of filling Saturday lunchtimes with her wit and warm charm, Zoe Ball is stepping away from her BBC Radio 2 show.

The beloved presenter will air her final programme on December 20, bringing an end to a chapter that has made her a fixture of British radio.

Her announcement comes after she was included in the BBC’s “Golden Ten” shortlist of presenters tested for the perfect on-screen partnership to replace Claudia Winkleman and Tess Daly.

The Sun revealed that Zoe Ball was one of the ten stars put through their paces in order to find the perfect on screen partnership in a top-secret chemistry test.

The news has sparked excitement that Ball could be in the running to replace Tess and Claudia as Strictly Come Dancing host.

Earlier this series, the duo dropped a bombshell, revealing they would be stepping away from the beloved BBC dance show for the final time.

HUGE GOAL

Radio 2’s Sara Cox stunned as her ultra-marathon total nears £2m

BETS ARE OFF

Bookies suspend betting on Strictly replacement after Zoe Ball quits Radio Two

Bookies have now suspended betting on who the replacements could be following Ball’s announcement.

Amid all these changes, there have also been personal developments in her life.

Zoe revealed she has a mystery “lodger” who, she joked, has “won more awards” than her.

The Radio 2 presenter dropped the hint on her “Dig It” podcast, confessing that her multimillion-pound pad now has a very special new resident.

While Zoe has hinted at a mystery man, the status of their relationship remains unclear.

Her last public romance was with construction worker Michael Reed, which ended in 2023.

Zoe was married to DJ Norman Cook (better known as Fatboy Slim) for 18 years, before splitting in 2016.

The couple, who co-parent their children Woody and Nelly, have stayed close since their split, with Norman even calling Zoe his “soulmate.”

It comes after Zoe quit the Radio 2 breakfast show at the end of 2024 following the heartbreaking loss of her mum, Julia Peckham, to cancer in April last year.

She left the coveted slot she’d held for six years to “focus on family,” and took a four-and-a-half month break from the radio following her mother’s death.

At the time, Zoe shared a touching tribute to her late mum on social media, saying: “Sleep tight dear Mama. 

“Thank you for teaching us how to love unconditionally, to always show courage and empathy, and how, even in the darkest of days, laughter is the greatest of gifts.”

Opening up about her grief, Zoe revealed she found the first birthday of her mum, Julia, since her death especially hard.

She said: “It’s a year and a bit since we lost mum, and I found her birthday this year, the toughest, the toughest, you know, a whole year later.

“That was brutal. It was a week of absolute weeping, I still get quite emotional sort of talking about mum, even now.”

Speaking on her podcast, Zoe choked back tears as she admitted suffering an “emotional breakdown” during a this “brutal” period of her life last year.

The presenter bravely told how she was left unable to move on the kitchen floor after being struck down with grief following her mum’s passing.

It’s been a chaotic time for Zoe and her family with her dad, TV legend Johnny Ball, revealing earlier this year he had been secretly fighting prostate cancer.

The 87-year-old broadcaster endured three brutal months of daily radiation treatment back in 2022, but is now “through it” and feeling”fine”.

She has admitted she occasionally questions whether leaving her flagship BBC Radio 2 Breakfast Show was the right move, after stepping down to spend more time with her teenage daughter.

This year brought another blow when a yob smashed Zoe’s car window and stole her handbag while she was appearing on The One Show.

“Someone had smashed the front window of my car, that’s never happened to me before,” she revealed.

Initially frozen from the shock of the attack, she said: “I got in and I had a massive cry.”

Despite leaving her regular radio show, she promises fans she isn’t disappearing completely, with special broadcasts lined up over the festive season and into the new year.

The 55-year-old broadcasting favourite is set to be replaced by presenter Emma Willis.

She said: “I have loved being betwixt my dear friends Romesh (Ranganathan) and Rylan (Clark), and you know, I love you all to bits, but I’m not disappearing completely.

“Obviously, it’ll be Christmas Crooners and I’m doing an eras show in the new year, more on that later.

“But I am thrilled to tell you that you will be in the safest of hands, because there is a superwoman who is no stranger to you all, but this does mean that she will officially become a member of the Radio 2 family.“

The adored host first took to the air as co-host of the Radio 1 Breakfast Show nearly thirty years ago, before becoming the first female DJ to host the primetime slot solo.

Zoe was the BBC’s second-highest paid presenter while she was hosting the coveted morning slot, pocketing £950,000 between April 2023 and 2024, just behind Gary Lineker.

Zoe had been one of the contenders to replace the much-loved pair on Strictly, amongst others including Alan Carr and Rylan Clark.

After quitting her radio show, the mum-of-two is now pipping the rest at the top.

Emma Willis, who is due to replace Ball on her Radio 2 show from next weekend, said:

Willis said: “I’m a huge fan of Radio 2, so I’m absolutely chuffed to be joining the family, and it’s a real honour to follow in the huge footsteps Zoe leaves behind, who’s someone I admire and adore.

“I’m very much looking forward to spending my Saturday lunchtimes with the Radio 2 audience and I’ll happily be the filling to a Romesh and Rylan sandwich!”

PHOENIX — LeBron James missed the first free throw that would have tied it. Then, bailed out by a foul with 3.9 seconds remaining, he missed the second. A long-awaited swish finally quieted a restless Phoenix crowd.

The Lakers squandered a 20-point, fourth-quarter lead and survived only after the Suns’ Devin Booker fouled James on a three-pointer with 3.9 seconds left, pulling out a 116-114 win on Sunday.

Luka Doncic led the Lakers with 29 points, James added 26 and Deandre Ayton had 20 points and 13 rebounds against his old team. Playing without Austin Reaves (calf strain), the Lakers attempted 43 free throws in a testy game that featured five technical fouls and one late ejection.

Dillon Brooks hit the go-ahead three-pointer with 12.2 seconds left to complete the Suns’ comeback, but he was ejected after he bumped chests with James and got his second technical foul. Brooks received a technical in the first quarter and James drew a technical in the third after a perceived slight from Brooks, who slapped a loose ball toward James during a pause in the action.

Brooks had 18 points and missed most of the third quarter after picking up his fifth foul.

The Lakers finished that quarter on a 15-0 run, largely off hustle plays from Jake LaRavia. The forward who has averaged 5.1 points in the last 10 games, including two scoreless outings, played more than eight minutes in the first half and had nothing to show for it besides two missed shots and a foul. He made just one shot in the third quarter and watched an easy layup roll around the rim and pop out. But he made an impact on defense with two steals, a block and four rebounds in the quarter.

His defense led to the offensive highlight of the third as he stole a pass and shoveled the ball to Jaxson Hayes in transition. The 7-foot center cocked the ball behind his head on a violent, two-handed dunk over Oso Ighodaro and finished the three-point play from the free-throw line.

Hayes had 12 points and nine rebounds off the bench. After getting just five bench points from anyone not named Marcus Smart in losing their last game to the San Antonio Spurs, the Lakers (18-7) got a balanced 30-point lift from their reserves, including seven from Jarred Vanderbilt, who played his first significant minutes in a month.

Vanderbilt had been relegated to the bench since the return of James, but brought a much-needed lift Sunday as the team hoped to rediscover its defensive mentality. The forward was active on defense, had seven rebounds in 15 minutes off the bench and even hit a three-pointer.

But the Lakers fell out of their rhythm when that second unit went to the bench in the fourth quarter. With their starting five in for the final three minutes, the Lakers let a 111-97 lead evaporate as they missed shots, gave up threes and committed fouls and turnovers.