ALL flights are being cancelled at two major European airports tomorrow and it affects Brits.

A national strike is currently taking place across Belgium, affecting public transport.

The walk out follows new laws that would change labour laws including benefits and pensions, put forward by Prime Minister Bart De Wever to tackle the country’s growing debt.

Despite starting yesterday, tomorrow will see the most chaos when it comes to flights.

Belgium’s biggest airport in Brussels confirmed all departures would be cancelled tomorrow (November 26).

Brussels Airport said in a statement: “Due to the national industrial action on Wednesday 26 November in which the staff of the security and handling service provider is participating, we unfortunately expect major disruptions to our airport operations on that day.”   

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“To ensure the safety of passengers and staff, we have decided, in consultation with the airlines, not to operate any departing flights on 26 November. In the upcoming days, the airlines will contact passengers directly to inform them of their options.”

Some arrival flights may also be affected as well as any public transport to and from the airport.

This affects around 30 flights to the UK, according to SkyRefund, as airlines including BA, easyJet and Brussels Airlines all operate fights there.

This means hundreds of passengers will find themselves having to make alternative arrangements.

Brussels South Charleroi Airport – primarily used by Ryanair – is also being affected by the cancellations.

They said in a statement that there would be no departures or arrivals tomorrow.

They explained: “Due to the national day of action planned for Wednesday 26 November by a united front of trade unions and the lack of staff available to ensure safe operations, Charleroi Airport will not be able to operate scheduled departures and arrivals.

“Passengers scheduled to fly via Charleroi on November 26 will be contacted in the coming days by their airline for a rebooking or refund.”

SkyRefund CEO Ivalyo Danailov says passengers should contact their airline to look at rebooking and refund options.

However, compensation won’t be available as it is seen as an “extraordinary event”.

Eurostar has also warned of disruption affecting trains between Paris and Brussels.

This will have a knock on effect for Brits travelling from London St Pancras.

A number of trains were cancelled or delayed yesterday, which could also hit more today and tomorrow.

They said in a statement: “Please keep an eye on our live train info page which we’ll update as soon as we know the strike impacts our timetable.

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“Public transport and domestic train traffic could be disrupted. If you have a connecting journey, please check for travel updates with the relevant carrier ahead of your trip.

“You may need to allow extra time for your journey.”

Nov. 25 (UPI) — The United States announced it was ending deportation protection for those from civil war-torn Myanmar, the latest nation to have Temporary Protected Status terminated amid the Trump administration’s crackdown on immigration.

Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem announced the termination of TPS for Myanmar on Monday, saying it will be in effect in 60 days, on Jan. 26.

Some 3,670 Myanmar nationals were in the United States under the TPS program, according to the National Immigration Forum nonprofit based in Washington, D.C.

The previous Biden administration designated Myanmar for TPS in May 2021 in response to civil conflict that erupted in the country following the Feb. 1, 2021, military coup. The designation has been repeatedly renewed until Monday.

According to the Assistance Association for Political Prisoners in Myanmar, the junta has killed at least 7,488 people, with 30,013 others arrested, and nearly 22,700 still detained.

Since the coup began, more than 275,000 Myanmar nationals have sought refuge or asylum in neighboring countries, according to United Nations statistics.

In terminating deportation protections for those from Myanmar, Noem said the situation in the country “has improved enough that it is safe for Burmese citizens to return home” and conditions no longer meet TPS statutory requirements.

“Burma has made notable progress in governance and stability, including the end of its state of emergency, plans for free and fair elections, successful cease-fire agreements and improved local governance contributing to enhanced public service delivery and national reconciliation,” she said in a statement.

The announcement comes less than a week after the United States co-sponsored a resolution on the situation facing minorities in Myanmar, with Michael Heath, U.S. senior adviser for East Asian and Pacific affairs, stating they “remain deeply concerned” by evidence of human rights violations and abuses continuing to be committed by both the military and other armed groups engaged in the civil war.

The Trump administration has sought to end TPS for nine country, affecting more than 675,000 immigrants in the United States, according to Carolyn Tran, executive director of Communities United for Status and Protection.

We have gotten two new images of the Chengdu Aircraft Corporation’s second ‘J-36’ heavy tactical jet airframe, which features significant changes over the first. The aircraft first emerged in late October. Along with new inlets and main landing gear, the addition of what appeared to be two-dimensional thrust vectoring across its bank of three engines was highly intriguing. Now we are seeing a rear aspect of this new exhaust configuration that further confirms our original analysis.

You can read our recent report on the new J-36 configuration here and our original deep dive on the J-36 here.

The new images show the J-36 from behind during landing and from directly below. The rear image is the star of the show here, as we can see what appears to be the jet’s three-pack of 2D thrust vectoring nozzles, similar to those found on the F-22. China has been developing this exhaust capability for some time now, but its addition on the J-36 is very interesting.

Generally speaking, thrust vectoring provides additional maneuverability throughout different areas of the flight envelope for a tactical jet, including, in many cases, in the post-stall regime. It also allows for better overall controllability and stability, the value of which is magnified on a highly unstable tailless fast jet design. It can also play a key role when operating at high altitudes, a performance goal that could be very beneficial to the J-36, as we discuss in our large analysis feature. At the same time, it adds weight and complexity to the aircraft, although this likely isn’t a major concern for a jet as large and complex as the J-36. It is also not as efficient as traditional conical exhausts when it comes to thrust output.

The first J-36, which emerged just 11 months ago, had recessed trough-like exhausts, vaguely similar to what was found on the YF-23. There is likely a low-observable (stealth) penalty from some rear aspects when trading the previous configuration for this new one.

The addition of thrust vectoring is a major design departure and clearly points to its advantages outweighing its costs. It also will raise the question, once again, about the intended role of this aircraft and how to define it. We went over this in great depth in our original analysis, but suffice it to say, keeping a certain level of maneuverability is likely seen as beneficial, but thrust vectoring provides other advantages beyond straight agility, as we discussed earlier.

All that being said, we still don’t know definitively if this second aircraft is purely evolutionary, depicting something that is truly a step closer to a final production configuration, or if it is experimental and we could see some of its features exchanged for those of the first model on future iterations.

It’s worth noting that the J-36’s smaller counterpart, the J-XDS, also features similar 2D thrust-vectoring capabilities. It’s additionally possible that the J-35, China’s medium stealth fighter, could one day ditch its serrated round exhausts and adopt 2D thrust vectoring, as well. We have seen such a configuration mocked up at Chinese arms expos.

With the one-year anniversary of the J-36 emerging from the shadows approaching, it’s remarkable just how much we have seen of it and how two prototype/demonstrator aircraft are now in known existence. It and the J-XDS, along with a flood of advanced uncrewed combat aircraft and naval aviation developments, mark 2025 as a truly remarkable year for Chinese military aviation, one that is clearly drawing concerns of potential adversaries.

Contact the author: Tyler@twz.com

AMERICAN Pie star Tara Reid was taken to hospital after allegedly being drugged in a Chicago bar.

Footage obtained by TMZ showed the actress, 50, slumped in a wheelchair in a hotel lobby before being put onto a stretcher by paramedics and taken to hospital.

Reid called the night a “big blur” but insisted she had only had one drink before being taken ill.

The 90s film pin-up spoke to TMZ Live yesterday and revealed how she left her drink in the hotel bar to go and have a smoke, and when she returned there was a napkin covering it, which wasn’t how she had left it.

She said: “And then I drank my drink, and without even finishing my drink, I just passed out. And before I knew it, I was in the hospital eight hours later.”

The person who filmed the incident told the publication that Reid was yelling, “You don’t know who I am. I am famous. I’m an actress,” before medics arrived.

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Tara was allegedly told by hospital doctors that she had been drugged, though said no tests were undertaken to determine what the drug was or her blood alcohol level.

She continued: “It was all kind of vague. It was all like very blurry, do you know what I mean? I can’t even explain it because I don’t even know what happened.”

When she came around, Tara left hospital with her agent and went straight to a signing before heading home.

A representative for the star said, “Tara Reid has filed a police report after an incident in which she believes her drink was tampered with.

“She is cooperating fully with the investigation. Tara is recovering and asks for privacy during this traumatic time.

“She also urges everyone to be careful, watch your drinks and never leave them unattended, as this can happen to anyone. She will not be making further comments at this stage.”

Tara’s screen career began in the 90s with small roles on the soap opera Days of Our Lives and teen sitcom Saved by the Bell: The New Class.

In 1998 she appeared in slasher flick Urban Legend, teen drama Cruel Intentions and cult hit crime comedy The Big Lebowski.

But it was as sexy virgin Vicky in American Pie and its sequels that really made her famous.

Tara’s career stalled in the mid-2000s with a string of critical and commercial flops including Jose and the Pussycat, Van Wilder and Alone in the Dark, for which she received a Razzie Award nomination for Worst Actress.

To make matters worse, she suffered two botched plastic surgery procedures in 2004, including breast implants and a body contouring procedure meant to give her a six-pack.

She later said she’d asked the surgeon for B cups, but he gave her Cs, and told US Weekly: “My stomach became the most ripply, bulgy thing. I had a hernia, this huge bump next to my belly button.

“As a result, I couldn’t wear a bikini. I lost a lot of work.”

She swapped the big screen for reality TV appearing in travel show Taradise and Celebrity Big Brother in the UK.

In 2023 she appeared in Special Forces: World’s Toughest Test and was cruelly body-shamed over her slim figure.

She hit back in the Los Angeles Inquisitor, “So stop it. Leave me alone. Pick on me again on something else, but not on those two things. It’s not right.”

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I: Is he really saying that?

You don’t usually get congratulated on Tom Leykis’ syndicated radio show unless you’re, say, a caller describing the way you talked your unexpectedly pregnant girlfriend into having an abortion — and then dumped her. Or unless you’re a woman with a lascivious tale to share, like the law clerk who boasts about tripling her pay by engaging in masochistic sex with the partner of another firm. But on this Thursday, in the first seconds of his afternoon program, Leykis sounds so delighted he can scarcely wait for the heavy-metal bumper music to fade.

Praise be, he tells us in a stern, husky voice, for the Washington state Supreme Court, which hours before overturned the conviction of two men who secretly took pictures up women’s skirts in shopping malls. The justices regretfully concluded that the state’s anti-voyeurism law did not apply to acts in public places.

Success in talk radio requires the ability to glean insights from small events, and Leykis immediately offers this pair: First, we don’t need laws like that. Second, ladies, if you’re worried about protecting yourselves from other camera-toting creeps: “Buy some … panties and put them on, you sluts!” And we’re off and running with the commanding general in radio’s war for the male demographic. It is an angry, lurid battle in which social critics of all stripes can find moments of fulfillment or hopelessness. Spend a few days listening to Tom Leykis, heard in L.A. from 3 to 8 p.m. on KLSX-FM (97.1), and you may conclude that society has tilted in a manner resembling “Planet of the Apes”: that women have assumed the upper hand, forcing men to fight back grimly and mercilessly or perish. Or you may conclude that, in the interest of ratings, we are all getting our chains jerked by a host who laughs at us behind our backs.

In the control room of Westwood One’s Culver City studio, Leykis’ screener, Dino De Milio, is interrogating callers with the impatience of an air traffic controller and the lasciviousness of a strip club owner. (“How old are you, sweetie?” he asks a female caller. “That’s my favorite age for sex!”) Through a glass panel, De Milio can see Leykis, a gnomish 46-year-old man, standing in front of his mike, wearing shades despite the near darkness, pounding on his opening theme. “ You know what’s great?” Leykis asks sarcastically. “Women want the right to be exhibitionists, but if anybody looks….” “

Tom Leykis broadcasts from the intersection of Libertarian and Libertine. It’s a simple neighborhood with a simple philosophy that has occurred in the gut of just about every American man and, in some cases, made its way to his brain. The show is based on the premise that too many guys have been raised to be wimps in this feminist culture, that women are taking advantage of these men and that women are secretly wishing guys would reassert themselves. Leykis plays the hard-bitten, gender-wars-scarred uncle, hectoring the besieged male recruits: Don’t get them pregnant! Don’t marry them! Don’t date single mothers! Yet no matter how insistent or cranky he gets, the phone lines remained jammed with confessions of weakness and poor judgment:

“You are my religion, Professor,” comes the call another day, “but I have to tell you I’m one of those guys who knocked a girl up….”

“What kind of birth control were you using?” Leykis demands.

“She said she was on the pill….”

“And you believed her. I hope the boys out there are listening! This is the kind of stuff I warn you about!”

Men who in more reasonable times would have been considered normal single guys employing normal trial-and-error approaches to casual sex become, in the Leykis format, political prisoners, victims of a stacked deck in which calculating women get their way at men’s expense.

Leykis tries to break this momentum by offering more clinical tips: No coffee dates or lunch dates — they lead nowhere. “Successfully getting a woman into the sack involves some sort of chemical inducement,” he is fond of proclaiming on a “Leykis 101” segment he does each Thursday. “Alcohol is the preferred chemical inducement.”

Nor should men waste money on dinner dates, he advises; women will eat and run. Meet them after dinner for a drink. If you are roped into dinner, eat a full meal at home and order a salad in the restaurant (“because what woman would eat more than you?”).

Once Leykis’ listeners have scored, “we do not cuddle, we do not spoon, we do not hug, we do not stay late,” Leykis instructs. “We do not convince women we are in love with them. We do not say I love you — ever, ever, ever. Unless we do.” He pronounces that last word with grave disbelief.

Leykis — married four times, thrice-divorced and separated from wife No. 4 for the last two years — is honest enough to describe the show as an act that evolved into a point of view. And he occasionally makes serious feminist-backlash arguments on issues like parental leave, divorce or alimony that create a social edge. He’ll say proudly, in the name of personal responsibility, that he has no children, and that each of the four unplanned pregnancies he caused was terminated.

Yet the fact that so many of his frustrated male callers take him so literally gives the program a uniquely bitter, even mean, tone that makes it both appealing and appalling. The show has little of the self-deprecating comedic relief of Howard Stern’s equally explicit KLSX morning show, the gold standard of sleaze-talk radio. Stern’s shtick is sexual bantering and the embarrassed giggle; Leykis’ shtick is sexual politics and the evil, got-even-with-her snicker. In the same way Rush Limbaugh demonizes liberals, Leykis lays men’s woes at the feet of “chicks” or “broads” (or, more frequently, another B-word) — and of men’s failure to control them.

Hour No. 2 of today’s show is devoted to mocking the notion of female independence as a feminist invention (which will draw many angry female callers). Leykis is trying to explain that men are simply more driven to succeed than women, driven by the need for … chicks.

“We make money to get chicks,” he says, his sentences almost swallowing each other. “Those of us who are really ambitious want more chicks. Better chicks. Hotter chicks. A larger number of chicks. We work hard to get chicks. When I was 14, I got into radio because when I was in high school, I was a geek. Once I was at the radio station answering the request line, chicks would call in, ask me to play a song, and then they’d ask me to come over after the show. ‘I love your voice. Come on over.’ And I would. And then I realized if I got better radio gigs in bigger cities, I’d get better chicks, hotter chicks. And I did. And the more money I make, the better chicks I get.” (Leykis’ most recent “chick” is a 27-year-old Argentine, recently arrived in the U.S., whom he met at the station; she moved into his Hollywood Hills home two months ago.)

*

II: Am I really listening to this?

Confession: I have listened to this show for years and it bothers me because — well, it’s just not me, a stable, married guy with a teenage daughter. The last time I used the word “chick” was 1973: A female colleague and I wrote essays for our small newspaper on our competing favorites in the nationally televised Billie Jean King-Bobby Riggs battle of the sexes. It was a tennis match — a stunt — that carried a level of gender tension impossible to imagine today. I defiantly used “chick” in my pro-Riggs essay because, as Frank Sinatra-passe as it sounded even then, I knew it infuriated my colleague, and it felt good to strike back at the upstart feminist movement, to grind it under my heel.

But I was young and stupid. If you’d told me that half a lifetime later, I’d be listening to a 40-something guy on the radio using the word “chick” for essentially the same denigrating purpose — and claiming to make a seven-figure income off it — I would have rolled my eyes. It’s so juvenile. Which is why I’m perplexed/fascinated that the grown-up me is helping to make Leykis the Arbitron-certified king of the male listener in L.A.

Why did I laugh so hard the other day when he spent an hour on how men should give women backhanded compliments (“Honey, you’re so pretty I don’t even notice the extra weight”) to keep their self-esteem low and their behavior compliant? Were darker forces drawing me to the show? I decided to confer with experts.

Perhaps, one of them got me thinking, I’m enticed by the sly way Leykis performs the kind of sexual harassment that government and workplace rules no longer allow. “Men say, ‘It’s not OK to [harass women] at work, but thank God I can turn on my radio … while I’m hammering a nail,” suggests Ann Simonton, a former fashion model from Northern California who started a media-literacy program two decades ago after she was raped at knifepoint and began thinking about the way the media portray women. Leykis’ popularity, Simonton says, is sad proof “that we live in a sexually repressed culture where sex is only for sale, talked about only as a taboo, rather than there being a healthy dialogue on sexual intimacy.”

Or maybe I listen because I enjoy reverting to the cartoonishly adolescent state that men are assigned in the popular culture. Janet McMullen, an associate professor in the University of North Alabama’s communications department who specializes in media ethics, notes that Hollywood responded to feminism by constructing legitimate roles for women but in the process made men the targets of ridicule. “You look at TV sitcoms and dramas, you listen to the educational community: It’s as though guys are broken in some way,” she said.

Or maybe, more nobly, I listen because Leykis’ dialogue fills a vacuum in so many men’s lives — the lack of intimate conversation with other men. “There’s no place we can go for support,” says Warren Farrell, a San Diego psychologist whose books include “Women Can’t Hear What Men Don’t Say.”

Or maybe I listen because Leykis touches a powerful nerve when he tells men to stop being “nice” — to stand up and demand what we want (including that 60-inch TV). He “has tapped into something that’s very prominent,” says Robert Glover, a Seattle psychotherapist who wrote “No More Mr. Nice Guy” in an attempt to tell men that women are turned off by guys who are too timid to be candid about their sexual desires. Men who act this way ultimately wind up frustrated and angry, Glover says.

Or maybe I listen simply because I love a spectacle — the guys begging for Leykis’ wisdom, the women calling to alternately scream at him or ask him to autograph their breasts at an upcoming listener party. Maybe there’re no more cultural implications here than on Ricki Lake. Maybe, as screener Di Milio puts it, “some people make the mistake of forgetting the very last word; it’s ‘The Tom Leykis Show.’ ”

*

III: Oh, I get it — I think

Leykis has a restless intellect that makes it hard for him to stay in character. Over lunch (let him pick the wine, he has a 700-bottle cellar in his house), he can make a convincing defense for the cruel way men often talk about women on the show. Why, he demands, should he be forced to sprinkle a phony veneer of politeness on our angry culture? Why shouldn’t he express his gender’s most visceral feelings?

But a half hour later, he can be just as convincing making the case that the economics of radio demand offensive styles and stunts. Government deregulation of radio sent station prices soaring and meant owners had “to get results to-day. The way you get results to-day is [to say on the air]: ‘Hello, my penis is hanging out, and I don’t know what to do about it, and if somebody could come down to the station, if there’s a policeman within the sound of my voice….’ Then you get the cops down there and it becomes a story in the paper ‘cause the papers all fall for it and give you the free advertising — boom; that’s how things are done now.”

The object of talk radio is not to change minds; it is to stay on the air. You invent or copy a format and, if it works, you ride it until you fall off the horse. For all his male listeners’ deference to “The Professor,” Tom Leykis is first and foremost a radio guy obsessed with the art of drawing and holding a crowd, a guy whose success in a turbulent market is a testament to his wits and love of craft, says L.A. radio historian Don Barrett. “Tom knows everything about every radio station in this country…. This guy just bleeds radio.”

His five-year stint on KLSX is his third in L.A. He was first on KFI between 1988 and 1992 as a more conventional liberal talk-show counterpoint to Limbaugh. (After a dispute whose nature he won’t discuss, he was replaced by ex-Los Angeles Police Chief Daryl Gates.) He worked fill-in shifts in several cities before landing an AM syndication deal in ’94 that brought him back to L.A. When KLSX offered him an afternoon show in 1997, he said, it meant creating a style that would be close to Stern’s young-man, breast-obsessed demographic without appearing to copy him.

“So we had to evolve the show in this new direction,” he said matter-of-factly, “which was grinding loud music, grinding production, and we stepped up the rudeness factor.”

He’s now in about 50 markets, including Seattle, San Francisco and Dallas, with a national base several times less than icons like Limbaugh, Laura Schlessinger and Stern. He has the largest afternoon male audience on L.A. radio in every age range except his target demographic — 18 to 44 — where he trails rock and hip-hop stations KPWR and KROQ, according to the latest Arbitron ratings.

Leykis boasts of other survey data that reflect an affluent audience and high-end advertisers. When you point out that his predominantly male callers sound far less successful or confident, he reminds you not to confuse the callers (who are his foils) with his listeners (who make him rich). “Anybody who takes this show really seriously doesn’t get it. The callers are 1% of the audience…. People who make a good living and have high intelligence usually don’t have 45 minutes to stay on hold.”

Ask Leykis if sexual politics is as intellectually satisfying as a show that covers more ground, and he suggests you’ve asked the wrong question. “I never forget I’m in this business to make money. I never had ratings this high. I never made as much money as I do. If I wanna talk politics, I’ll go to a park.” Evil snicker. “I’ll call up Warren Olney one day.”

Ask how he got on the air at 14 and he tells about being a gifted, bored child who was reading the New York Times in the first grade. About being a ninth-grader living in an isolated Long Island suburb, missing the bustling Bronx neighborhood where he’d grown up, sitting on the stoop with a portable radio, wishing he could jump inside. About winning a contest to be a DJ for an hour on the local radio station, then being asked back.

He tells about hosting a cable-TV public-access-station game show at 16, about trying to get on the air as a student at Fordham University but failing and dropping out after a year and half.

About working a series of day jobs, the most pitiful being telemarketing. About getting hired at a variety of low-paying jobs at small radio stations in places like Albany, N.Y., and Stanton, Va., and Miami, spinning records and engaging in chatter and groping for gimmicks to get noticed. About recognizing he’d embarked on a nomadic career that would subvert marriage or stable relationships.

He remembers inventing a male chauvinist character in 1979 who called in, voicing many opinions that riled listeners — opinions that a DJ could voice on the air in that gentler time but that were the first stirrings of Leykis’ KLSX voice.

He remembers discovering how the most audacious opinions could generate buzz. (“I would never serve in the military under any circumstances. I just missed the draft of the Vietnam War, and if we had another war I wouldn’t go. Let somebody else be cannon fodder. Now let’s go to the phones.”)

You had to take that extra step. “It wasn’t enough to have lesbian nuns on the show. You had to have them on Good Friday.”

He says he never thought he’d have this kind of success or longevity in L.A. And it sounds positively heartwarming until he mentions why he won’t be going to his 30th high school reunion, even though he’d figure to be a magnet for all the, uh, chicks who turned him down when he was a geek.

“I said this on the air: ‘I wouldn’t touch any of you women with a 10-foot pole,’ ” he says, “ ‘And you know why? Because I can now afford your daughters.’ ” Evil snicker.

*

(BEGIN TEXT OF INFOBOX)

The role of women in society, according to the freewheeling Tom Leykis

Leykis on gender:

I am tired of being with women trying to prove they’re smarter than I am, telling me to make my own dinner, to do it myself, women so concerned about appearing independent that they have to have careers. I don’t want to be confused anymore when I go home about what my job is.

*

Leykis on when to marry:

Never marry somebody you knocked up unless you know you’re gonna be with them forever and you really love them and you really love that kid and you really want to be there. But if you can’t answer “yes” to all those, don’t marry these broads.

*

Leykis on prolonged adolescence:

I want my childhood to last as long as it can.

*

Leykis on how marriage changes a relationship:

She’ll do whatever you want until she gets you to sign on the dotted line and suddenly it’s like, “I don’t like having sex on any day that ends in ‘y.’ ”

*

Leykis on what he teaches male listeners:

I am the professor who teaches you how to get sex for the least amount of money and without having to listen to women go on and on: “Blah-bla-blah-bla-blah-bla-blah-bla-blah.” Broads never shut up.

*

Leykis on his looks:

If I were really attractive, I would be on TV making real money…. I wouldn’t be doing some dopey radio show.

Davey Harris of Windward finally scored his first points in high school basketball Monday night after waiting two seasons to recover from a knee injury. He scored 21 points in a 66-51 win over Knight at Chaminade.

The 6-foot-4 Harris is no ordinary junior. Coach DJ Gay said Harris picked up 10 scholarship offers just from his summer performances, with recruiters seeing a hint of his potential. He’s the younger brother of former Windward standout JJ Harris, a Loyola Marymount commit.

Harris said he felt well and is looking forward to being 100% later this season. Amare Larane scored 19 points for Knight.

Santa Paula 75, Garden Grove Santiago 35: Andrew Valdovinos made eight three-pointers and finished with 24 points. David Alvarez added 19 points.

Chatsworth 62, Burroughs 32: Aaron Krueger had 24 points for Chatsworth.

Canyon Country Canyon 74, Victor Valley 49: Isaac Yuhico scored 36 points for the Cowboys.

Granada Hills 61, Gardena Serra 52: Jacob Bautista finished with 20 points for Granada Hills.

Rolling Hills Prep 60, West Torrance 48: Kawika Suter had 23 points and 13 rebounds and Nick Welch Jr. added 13 points and 13 rebounds.

Loyola 69, Palisades 58: Mattai Carter led Loyola with 17 points. Freshman Phillip Green had 24 points and 12 rebounds for Palisades.

Girls basketball

Sage Hill 64, Harvard-Westlake 29: Sage Hill showed why it will be an Open Division team, routing the Wolverines in a Redondo Union tournament game. Texas-bound Amalia Holguin was making threes from NBA range. She had 19 points. Kamdyn Klamberg had 21 points.

Etiwanda 98, Santa Maria St. Joseph 31: The Eagles (2-0) received 22 points from Chasity Rice and 21 points from Arynn Finley at Redondo Union.

Beijing carries out emergency launch to relieve space station crew left without working return capsule.

China has rushed to launch an uncrewed spacecraft to relieve three astronauts left on board the Tiangong space station without a passage to Earth.

State broadcaster CCTV showed a Long March-2F rocket carrying the Shenzhou-22 spacecraft lifting off from the Jiuquan Satellite Launch Centre shortly after noon local time (04:00 GMT) on Tuesday.

The Shenzhou-22 mission was originally planned to be crewed and take off in 2026.

However, the launch was brought forward after debris damaged the Shenzhou-20, which is currently attached to the Tiangong station, making it unsafe for carrying humans to Earth.

That disrupted the last crew change on the permanently crewed Chinese space station in November.

Unable to fly home in Shenzhou-20, the three astronauts who had arrived in April for their six-month stay were forced to use Shenzhou-21 to return to Earth.

That left the three astronauts currently on board Tiangong without a flightworthy vessel that could return them home in the event of an emergency.

The uncrewed Shenzhou-22 will fill that gap.

The crew at the space station – Zhang Lu, Wu Fei and Zhang Hongzhang – are “working normally”, Chinese officials emphasised.

The incident marks a rare setback for China’s rapidly growing space programme, which plans to send astronauts to the moon by 2030.

Beijing has poured billions into the sector in recent decades as it seeks to match the capabilities of the United States, Russia and Europe.

China became the third country to send humans into orbit after the US and the former Soviet Union in 2022.

In a time of great shifts, it is of note that the global development financial system is also at a crossroads and in need of reform for reform. From the articles listed below, I observe four developing themes, whether explicitly or implicitly mentioned. I will describe them below and conclude that these are the four main realities that the new development financial system would need to be shaped around.

First, we see the emergence of a new class of “middle class” emerging markets with a greater stake in the multilateral system, greater global economic connections, a greater desire for agency and voice in engaging with the Global North, and a greater ability to navigate the myriad cross-border economic systems that have evolved in the past 60 years. Let’s broadly generalize these as middle-income countries, including ASEAN, countries in Latin America, Central Asia, parts of the Middle East, and perhaps parts of Africa. For these countries, Alldo Januardy aptly comments: “The Global South is no longer waiting to be included. It is building something of its own—shaped by necessity, grounded in local priorities, and driven by the hard lessons of dependency.” Perhaps it is these countries that are most able and well-suited to take advantage of decentralized funding models with greater autonomy and choice. Financial innovations relevant for these groups of countries include multilateral regional development banks (Setser) or programs of public-private financing (Mundy) and require financial liberalization for them to have more access to existing global capital markets. These countries have the foundations of economic activity and are ready to access a more diverse array of funding mechanisms to fund a more diverse array of activities.

Second, we also note a bifurcation in what used to be lumped together as emerging markets. For poor countries vulnerable to debt, especially if they are also vulnerable to climate change and conflict, we observe a slide backwards in their internal economic capacity. These countries have not been able to withstand the pressures of COVID on their own and in some cases have fallen into distress. Further, it seems that the recent shocks may have so stressed their systems that their rates of growth have been dampened in the medium to longer term. These countries need access to immediate financing and fundamental support. IMF President Kristalina Georgieva says that these countries need $440bn in additional financing over 5 years to prevent further crises. Furthermore, these countries face difficulties as funding for the IMF and WB by developed countries retreats. Ms. Georgieva suggests further contribution to the IMF’s PRGT facility, leveraging up the World Bank balance sheet. Personally, I think targeted support of the type described by The Economist in “The Demise of Foreign Aid Offers an Opportunity”—wherein capital is deployed in targeted areas and projects where governments and UN agencies have coordinating power in relation to global crises like climate change and where there exist positive spillover effects—is more relevant. On the other hand, Makhtar Diop described a new securitization model of combining various EM loans and selling them at a higher credit rating. For these assets, I think such an approach is misguided and risks landing existing asset managers with toxic assets in the future. Many of these countries do not have the economic nor governance capacity to participate in financial markets as a normal member.

Third, China has become the largest bilateral creditor to many developing countries with a different model of lending driven by different priorities. Speaking from knowledge derived outside of this class, its early expansion into the Belt and Road Policy more than a decade ago was driven by an opportunity to offload pressure from the accumulation of massive FX reserves and internal spare capacity in primary and infrastructure industries. Now, those priorities have transitioned to a more transactional, targeted approach targeting specific sectors. Furthermore, Chinese creditors often took on projects that would qualify for participation of traditional Paris Club lenders. All that is to say, there is quite a gap between the Chinese and traditional Paris Club lenders that needs to be bridged. Efforts to do this are already underway through the G20 Common Framework for Debt Treatments. The US desires China to become a “responsible creditor” on its own terms (Crebo-Rediker), which China does not desire to do as it has its own model and priorities. A more cohesive global consensus on global lending will require China’s participation and hence the ability of China and the US-led Paris Club to come to some sort of agreement.

Finally, all these realities are underpinned by the backdrop of the globalization, economic development, and innovation of the last 70 years in the Pax Americana. Economic models and industries are now more numerous and diverse than ever before, with many variations of interlinkages, creating a complex and intricate web of economic relationships. Furthermore, within the financial system itself, technologies like electronic trading, online retail participation, new financial products, and blockchain have made capital more transmutable than ever before. It is no surprise that we are at an exciting crossroad and in need of reform. In fact, the Bretton Woods model has done remarkably well to facilitate and accommodate the changes up to this point! I am inspired by the amount of work that has gone into creating this system and hope that the global community will again find its way forward.

German actor Udo Kier, a film veteran whose diverse body of work spanned from Lars von Trier tragedies to “Ace Ventura: Pet Detective” and “Blade,” has died. He was 81.

A ubiquitous avant-garde film star, Kier died Sunday morning, his partner, Delbert McBride, confirmed to Variety. McBride did not provide a cause of death.

By the time of his death, Kier had racked up more than 200 film and television credits, most notably his collaborations with Von Trier. They worked together intermittently over several decades, starting with 1987’s “Epidemic” and last collaborating on Von Trier’s “Nymphomaniac” in 2013. Kier, also in films “Dancer in the Dark” (starring Björk), “Melancholia” and “Breaking the Waves” among others, aided Von Trier in his explorations into the bleakest of human emotions.

In addition to Von Trier, Kier starred in films from a number of other famed European filmmakers including Werner Herzog, Dario Argento and childhood friend Rainer Werner Fassbinder over the course of his career.

Kier, known for his his imposing presence and piercing blue eyes, often played offbeat and menacing characters in art-house films, including a desperate, virgin-seeking Count Dracula in 1974’s “Blood for Dracula” (“Andy Warhol’s Dracula”) directed by Paul Morrissey. A year prior, the artists collaborated on 1973’s “Flesh for Frankenstein.” Kier was often cast as supernatural, appearing in “Blade” and “Shadow of the Vampire” alongside Willem Dafoe and John Malkovich, among other horror movies.

Nearly 30 years after his breakout role in the 1966 short film “Road to Saint Tropez,” the Cologne-born Kier notably starred in Gus Van Sant’s 1991 feature “My Own Private Idaho,” sharing the screen with a young Keanu Reeves and the late River Phoenix. The film has become a cult classic, earning praise for its depiction of sex and queerness. The feature was one of 25 films selected for inclusion in the National Film Registry of the Library of Congress in 2024.

Though best known for his arthouse roles, Kier also appeared in numerous mainstream works including “Ace Ventura: Pet Detective,” “Downsizing” and “Armageddon.” His most recent film credits include “Swan Song,” “Bacurau” and “The Secret Agent,” Brazil’s international feature film entry for the 2026 Academy Awards.

Kier also starred in scores of TV projects including Von Trier’s television film “Medea,” horror miniseries “The Kingdom,” and shows “Scooby-Doo! Mystery Incorporated,” “Pitch Perfect: Bumper in Berlin” and “Hunters.”

Outside television and film, Kier appeared in music videos for Madonna (“Deeper and Deeper,” “Erotica”), the Goo Goo Dolls, Supertramp and Korn, among other artists. He also lent his voice to a handful of video games including “Call of Duty: WWII” and was set to collaborate with Hideo Kojima on his upcoming “OD.”

Kier was born Oct. 14, 1944, in a hospital that was being bombed by Allied forces during World War II, according to Variety. Kier’s father left before his birth and the actor was raised by his mother. In his teenage years, Kier sparked a friendship with Fassbinder.

In the mid-’60s, Kier moved to London to study English but was instead discovered and cast in “Road to Saint Tropez.” He later met Morrissey, who was closely associated with Warhol at the time, laying the foundation for his decades-long film career.

Kier lived in Palm Springs, where he was a regular at the annual Palm Springs International Film Festival.

With the symbolic passing of a golden bear pin, Democratic businessman Stephen Cloobeck announced Monday evening that he was bowing out of the governor’s race and throwing his support behind noted Trump critic and close friend Rep. Eric Swalwell.

Cloobeck shared this news while appearing alongside Swallwell on CNN, saying that the San Francisco Bay Area Democrat will be the “greatest leader of this great state California.”

“I’m happy to say tonight that I’m going to merge my campaign into his and give him all the hard work that I’ve worked on,” said Cloobeck.

The announcement puts an end to the entrepreneur and philanthropist’s first-ever political campaign, which he funded through a fortune amassed in the real estate industry. In a recent UC Berkeley poll co-sponsored by The Times, Cloobeck received less than half of 1% of the support of registered voters polled.

Cloobeck said he had launched his run because he could not find a single qualified candidate — that was until Swalwell tossed his hat into the ring last week, sending an infusion of energy into the relatively sleepy race.

Pin now affixed to the lapel of his navy blue suit, Swalwell thanked his pal for the support and said he was looking forward to drawing on Cloobeck’s expertise as he worked to bring more housing and small business to the Golden State.

Swalwell, a former Republican who unsuccessfully ran for the Democratic presidential nomination in 2020, has said he is seeking the governorship to combat the threats President Trump poses to the state and to increase housing affordability and homeownership for Californians.

During his Monday evening interview, Swalwell doubled down on his proposal to implement a vote-by-phone system, despite the sharp criticism it invoked from the White House and two of his Republican challengers for governor, Riverside County Sheriff Chad Bianco and conservative political commentator Steve Hilton.

Swalwell said the proposal would make democracy more accessible, contending that if phones are secure enough to access finances and healthcare records, then they can be made secure enough to cast a ballot.

The backing of Cloobeck, a major Democratic donor, is good news for the congressman, who seeks to make a splash in an unusually wide open race to lead the world’s fourth-largest economy and the country’s most populous state.

About 44% of registered voters said in late October they did not have a preferred candidate for governor. The recent decisions of former Vice President Kamala Harris and Sen. Alex Padilla to opt out of the running further solidified that the state’s top job is anyone’s to win.

Times staff writer Seema Mehta contributed to this report.

The autumn internationals always have great drama and storylines but, with the Rugby World Cup draw following hot on the heels of this year’s fixtures, there was an added layer of intrigue in 2025 as the best of the northern and southern hemispheres collided.

Reigning world champions South Africa solidified their number one status with a 100% record so far, albeit with a trip to Cardiff still to come, although few would bet against them rounding out their year with another victory.

Meanwhile, England enjoyed the most profitable autumn of the Six Nations sides, winning all four of their matches to extend their winning run to 11 and rise to third in the world rankings.

They were almost pipped to the post in their final outing by a resurgent Argentina however, who came close to spoiling the party and ending their European tour with a perfect record.

For the rest of the Six Nations and Rugby Championship sides, the autumn was a mixed bag, ‘could do better’ being the key note on the report cards for the majority, particularly Australia – who went winless on their European tour for the first time in 67 years.

That hasn’t stopped the Rugby Championship sides taking the bragging rights though, winning eight of their 14 matches against Six Nations teams so far this month.

Throughout those games there were some incredible individual performances and, using the unique Opta Index – which objectively scores each player’s performances in each game, we can identify which players really shone this autumn, making their way into our XV as a result.

We go through each selection and back up their inclusion with some key statistics.

Nov. 25 (UPI) — President Donald Trump has directed his departments of Treasury and State to consider designating chapters of the Muslim Brotherhood as terrorist organizations as he seeks to sanction the transnational Sunni Islamist group.

The executive order, signed by Trump on Monday, gives Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent and Secretary of State Marco Rubio 30 days to submit a joint report evaluating whether any chapter of the Muslim Brotherhood should be designated as a foreign terrorist organization and as a specially designated global terrorist entity.

The chapters in Lebanon, Jordan and Egypt were specifically named in the order.

“The order’s ultimate aim is to eliminate the designated chapters’ capabilities and operatives, deprive them of resources and end any threat such chapters pose to U.S. nationals and the national security of the United States,” the White House said in a fact sheet.

The Muslim Brotherhood was founded in Egypt in the 1920s, renounced violence in the 1970s and now provides a mixture of religious teaching with political activism and social support, such as operating pharmacies, hospitals and schools, according to the Council on Foreign Relations.

The Trump administration has accused the Muslim Brotherhood of fueling terrorism in the Middle East, highlighting actions by alleged members following Hamas‘ Oct. 7, 2023, attack on Israel.

It said members in Lebanon launched rockets at Israel alongside Hezbollah. A leader of the group in Egypt “encouraged violence against U.S. partners and equities in the Middle East.” And the order cites reports that state leaders in Jordan “have long provided material support to the military wing of Hamas.”

If designated as both a foreign terrorist organization and specially designated global terrorists, the Muslim Brotherhood would be subjected to significant financial penalties, including sanctions, blocking them from the U.S. financial system and barring U.S. persons from doing business with them.

The Trump administration has used repeatedly taken action against individuals and organizations, both foreign and domestic, that have criticized Israel over its war in Gaza, including revoking visas from students studying in the United States and fining universities over alleged failures to protect Jewish students during pro-Palestine protests that erupted on their campuses.

Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, said he supported Trump’s executive order, saying “this battle has been over a decade in the making.”

“The Muslim Brotherhood and its branches encourage, facilitate and provide resources for conducting jihadist terrorism across the world,” he said in a statement.

Last week, Texas Gov. Greg Abbott, a Republican and a Trump ally, designated the Muslim Brotherhood, along with the Council on American-Islamic Relations, as foreign terrorist organizations and transnational criminal organizations, banning them from purchasing or acquiring land in the Lone Star State.

“HUGE step,” Abbott said in a statement late Monday in response to Trump’s executive order.

“Pres. Trump is right to make this federal designation.”

I’m on a quest in buzzy, beachy Alicante on the Costa Blanca to investigate the rice dishes the Valencian province is famed for, as well as explore the vast palm grove of nearby Elche. I start with a pilgrimage to a restaurant featured in my book on tapas, Andaluz, a mere 25 years ago. Mesón de Labradores in the pedestrianised old town is now engulfed by Italian eateries (so more pizza and pasta than paella) but it remains a comforting outpost of tradition and honest food.

Here I catch up with Timothy Denny, a British chef who relocated to Spain, gained an alicantina girlfriend and became a master of dishes from the region. Over a fideuá de mariscos (seafood noodles, €20), we chew over local gastronomy. “For me, Alicante epitomises the Mediterranean – for rice, seafood and artichokes,” he says. “But there are curiosities, too, like pavo borracho.” Tim explains that so-called “drunken turkeys” are cooked in vast amounts of cognac plus a shot of red wine and eventually emerge as a hefty stew, perfect in winter.

This passion for experimentation has been endorsed by the Catalan master chef, Ferran Adrià, who once stated “[the Costa Blanca] … has a magical elf that takes hold of the products and sneaks into the kitchens to offer diners unique dishes with unique flavours”.

Tim emphasises the preponderance of female chefs in the area, quite a rarity in Spain’s male-dominated world of gastronomy. “Because in this historically poor region, the choice was often between cooking and cleaning,” he says. As proof we greet the exuberant owner of Labradores, Raquel Sabater, among the vintage plates, tiles and furniture that have barely changed after all these years.

But I soon discover another reason when I meet the much-garlanded María José San Román at Monastrell, her high-end restaurant beside the marina. Here, as we embark on a refined six-course tasting menu (€79), she tells me about the association Mujeres en Gastronomía (MEG) that she founded in 2018 to unite Alicante’s many talented female chefs. Nicknamed the Queen of Alicante gastronomy, this tornado of energy now heads four restaurants, including the heaving Taberna del Gourmet, with another in the pipeline.

Next day, I lunch at another member of MEG, La Sastrería, whose owner, María Luisa Rivera, changed tack 20 years ago from landscape gardener to chef. Her restaurant, a small modernista beauty, overlooks a lush square of towering centennial ficus trees, their tangled trunks echoed inside by a curvaceous staircase. Here I opt for an arroz del senyoret (€19) named for the little lord (or in my case lady) who doesn’t like handling shellfish, so it all comes peeled. The sénia rice from Valencia’s Albufera (a freshwater lagoon) is perfect, each tiny grain separate despite 20 minutes or so cooking in María Luisa’s complex broth.

Now the island of Tabarca, south of Alicante, beckons. An elongated sandstone slab washed by transparent waters teeming with fish, it is a marine reserve and its coves are a snorkeller’s heaven. After a 25-minute ferry crossing from Santa Pola, I disembark with my guide, Felipe, who fills me in on Tabarca’s rich history.

Despite being the smallest inhabited island in Spain, it has seen Greeks, Romans, Berber pirates, smugglers and shipwrecked Genoese sailors who settled there when a military garrison was created in 1760. Quite a history for an islet. Although the garrison later decamped, stone gateways remain leading to quaint streets, a striking church and leafy squares. It’s a dreamy place if you get there before the lunchtime crowds.

I am in search of a unique fisherman’s stew combined with rice. This caldero is, like paella, named after its cooking dish – in this case a cast iron hotpot. At La Almadraba, the owner, a woman called Nines, explains the technique: two courses (€30) start with a succulent dish of potatoes and fish simmered in a broth of alioli, garlic, saffron and parsley so good that I spoon out the remains; it is followed by the rice cooked in the same concoction. The upshot is a fabulous feed overlooking bobbing boats in the harbour and a glittering Med beyond.

Another day, another quest, this time in Elche, inland from Santa Pola and 15 miles from Alicante. The city is famed not only for the exquisite Dama de Elche (a fourth-century BC sculpture of a bejewelled Iberian woman) but also for its vast palm grove. About 200,000 date palms in the largest palmeral in Europe and the northernmost in the world have earned the city Unesco world heritage status. Most of the palms are divided into a grid of rectangular huertos (orchards) fed by irrigation channels that also nourish fruit trees such as pomegranate, citrus and olives.

Miguel Ángel Sánchez, owner of Elche’s largest date company, TodoPalmera, leads me around the Museo del Palmeral, where an enlightening display covers every aspect of the palm tree, whether the plant structure, the use of palm wood and fibre and, extraordinarily, intricate “sculptures” made with white palms for Elche’s Easter processions. For Miguel Ángel, “the palm has so much value: cultural, religious, environmental, nutritional, agricultural, ornamental, functional and spiritual”.

He says that Elche’s date production of about 80 tonnes restricts availability in Spain, so it remains a gourmet product. Five varieties include the widely known Medjoul as well as the local Confitera, which I sample at Miguel Ángel’s farm – freshly harvested, yellow, velvety and utterly delicious. Despite my addiction to Palestinian Medjoul dates, this is an epiphany. When I later spot them at Alicante’s cornucopian Mercado Central, into my bag they go.

My last arroz lunch looms. Instead of indulging at highly rated Mesón el Granaíno, we head south of town to 90-year-old El Cachito, an unpretentious family restaurant. Here I watch another woman, Noelia, orchestrate the flames of grapevine branches in a cavernous, blackened fireplace. The result? A perfect paella of rabbit and wild snails (€18), its glistening grains as flawless as the artichokes grown in her vegetable garden, and as luscious as Elche’s dates.

The trip was provided by spain.info, costablanca.org and visitelche.com. Fiona stayed at Hotel Serawa Alicante, which has doubles from £97, room only

Russian forces have launched a drone and missile attack on the Ukrainian capital, killing at least one person, as officials from Ukraine and the United States sought to rework a plan proposed by Washington to end the war.

In a statement on Tuesday, Ukraine’s State Emergency Service said the overnight attack on Kyiv damaged residential buildings in the Pecherskyi and Dniprovskyi districts.

“In Kyiv, as a result of a night attack, two people were killed, six were injured, and 18 people were rescued, including three children,” the service said.

Another attack on Brovarsky, Bila Tserkva and Vyshgorod districts, hours later, wounded a 14-year-old child, it added.

There was no immediate comment from Russia.

The attack followed talks between US and Ukrainian representatives in Switzerland’s Geneva to thrash out Washington’s so-called 28-point plan, which Kyiv and its European allies saw as a Kremlin wish list.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy, in his nightly address late on Monday, said the talks in Geneva mean the “list of the necessary steps to end the war can become doable”.

But he said there remained “sensitive issues” that he will discuss with US President Donald Trump

“After Geneva, there are fewer points – no longer 28 – and many of the right elements have been taken into account in this framework. There is still work for all of us to do together – it is very challenging – to finalise the document, and we must do everything with dignity,” he said.

“Ukraine will never be an obstacle to peace – this is our principle, a shared principle, and millions of Ukrainians are counting on, and deserve, a dignified peace,” he added.

No Trump-Zelenskyy meeting scheduled

Trump, too, hinted at new progress.

“Is it really possible that big progress is being made in Peace Talks between Russia and Ukraine??? Don’t believe it until you see it, but something good just may be happening,” the US president wrote earlier on Monday on his Truth Social platform.

At the White House, spokeswoman Karoline Leavitt said there were a couple of points of disagreement remaining, but “we’re confident that we’ll be able to work through those.”

She said Trump wanted a deal as quickly as possible, but there was no meeting currently scheduled between the US president and Zelenskyy.

Trump, who returned to office this year pledging to end the war quickly, has reoriented US policy from staunch support for Kyiv towards accepting some of Russia’s justifications for its 2022 invasion.

US policy towards the war has been inconsistent. Trump’s hastily arranged Alaska summit with Russian President Vladimir Putin in August led to worries that Washington was prepared to accept many Russian demands, but ultimately resulted in more US pressure on Russia.

The latest, 28-point peace proposal again caught many in the US government, Kyiv and Europe off-guard and prompted new concerns that the Trump administration might be willing to push Ukraine to sign a peace deal heavily tilted towards Moscow.

The plan would require Kyiv to cede more territory, accept curbs on its military and bar it from ever joining NATO, conditions Kyiv has long rejected as tantamount to surrender.

It would also do nothing to allay broader European fears of further Russian aggression.

Ukraine’s European allies drew up a counter-proposal which, according to the Reuters news agency, would halt fighting at the present front lines, leaving discussions of territory for later, and include a NATO-style US security guarantee for Ukraine.

A new version of a draft worked on in Geneva has not been published.

Kremlin slams EU proposal

An adviser to Zelenskyy who attended the talks in Geneva told The Associated Press news agency they managed to discuss almost all the plan’s points, and one unresolved issue is that of territory, which can only be decided at the head-of-state level.

Oleksandr Bevz also said the US showed “great openness and understanding” that security guarantees are the cornerstone of any agreement for Ukraine.

He said the US would continue working on the plan, and then the leaders of Ukraine and the US would meet. After that, the plan would be presented to Russia.

German Chancellor Friedrich Merz, speaking to reporters, welcomed the “interim result” of the Geneva talks, saying the US proposal “has now been modified in significant parts”, without details.

Merz added that Moscow must now become engaged in the process.

“The next step must be that Russia must come to the table,” he said in Angola, where he was attending a summit between African and European Union countries. “This is a laborious process. It will move forward at most in smaller steps this week. I do not expect there to be a breakthrough this week.”

The Kremlin said it had yet to see the revised peace plan.

Spokesperson Dmitry Peskov added there was no plan for US and Russian delegations to meet this week, but the Russian side remained “open for such contacts”.

Yuri Ushakov, Putin’s foreign affairs adviser, said the plan the Kremlin had received before the Geneva talks had many provisions that “seem quite acceptable” to Moscow. But he described European proposals “floating around” as “completely unconstructive”.

Countries supporting Kyiv – part of the “coalition of the willing” – are meanwhile due to hold a video call on Tuesday following the Geneva talks.

Turkiye also said it hopes to build bridges between Russia and Ukraine.

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s office said he spoke to Putin by telephone and told him Ankara will contribute to any diplomatic effort to facilitate direct contact between Russia and Ukraine.

Erdogan “stated that Turkiye will continue its efforts for the termination of the Russia-Ukraine war with a fair and lasting peace”, his office said.

Coronation Street’s Lisa Swain actress Vicky Myers has shared her thoughts on Carla Connor’s future with her character, and whether a comeuppance is on the way for Becky Swain

After the heartbreaking news that Coronation Street‘s Carla Connor would end things with Lisa Swain, Swarla fans are no doubt desperate to find out if they’ll reconcile.

Now, Lisa actress Vicky Myers has teased where her character’s thoughts are in terms of her future with Carla. She also hinted that Lisa’s ex Becky Swain, who has deliberately tried to tear Lisa and Carla apart, could finally face a comeuppance.

With Lisa and colleague Kit Green’s trust growing, might Kit be the one to make her see Becky isn’t telling the full truth? Vicky’s hopeful that Lisa will wise up to Becky’s lies, while she made it clear that as far as Lisa is concerned, Carla is the one for her.

She shared: “At this point she’s numb, there’s just so much going on. She obviously still has a love for Becky, but where Carla’s concerned she’s never known anything like it. The relationship that she’s experienced, the family dynamic, the maturity that’s been brought out in Betsy since Carla has been in her life.

“Her family was complete as far as Lisa was concerned and then this bomb went off and shattered everything. At this point, I don’t think Lisa has any idea how she’s feeling, she’s so confused, her heart’s broken.

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“There’s hope there, but what does she do about Becky? What does she do about Betsy? At this moment in time, Lisa feels she can’t do anything right.” On whether Lisa could reunite with Becky, Vicky hinted it won’t happen.

She said: “I think the love for Carla is too deep at this stage. But Lisa has been so manipulated by Costello, with him saying you don’t know how hard Becky tried to get hold of you and he put the block on it.

“So we’ve got to remember that as far as Lisa is concerned, yes there might be holes in Becky’s story, but there’s the potential here that if she picks this scab, that a whole 20 years of her life may have been a lie. I think her judgement is also blurred by the heartbreak she’s going through with Carla and the fact that she’s being told by her superior that this was all the above board, it was an order from above.”

Lisa could soon have doubts about Becky though. Vicky explained: “There are definitely some doubts creeping in because Becky’s story doesn’t add up with how freely she’s walking around. I think we saw that on Halloween when she said, ‘aren’t you supposed to be undercover. Aren’t you supposed to be keeping a low profile?’

“So obviously those things are a definite question mark for Lisa, because she’s a detective and she used to be a very good one. But again, with that, she knows that the order’s come from above and she’s aware of this gang and how notorious they are.”

She went on: “Credit to Amy [Cudden, who plays Becky], she’s playing a fantastic villain with such subtlety and nuances and she’s a brilliant wind up merchant. She’s a great character to play but everyone loves it when the villain gets their comeuppance so let’s hope that is the case.”

It seems there’s more to come from Lisa and Kit too, and they could rumble Becky together. Vicky shared: “I think there’s a lot that’s unsaid and unspoken between the two of them. Despite the way that they talk to each other, and even though Lisa is his superior, I think Lisa sees a lot of herself in him and she knows he’s a more than competent detective, she believes in him.

“I think she actually likes his cheekiness, his directness, his slight tinge of arrogance. He’s actually somebody that she can work with even though they often disagree. It’s also somebody that lives in her community and I think she absolutely cares for him.

“It’s great to see them working together, but I also love it when they’re at each other’s throats like siblings, their little one liners and the way they can wind each other up. But also she absolutely has his back and she’s loyal to him and I think he feels the same.”

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Reporting from Tampa, Fla. — Mitt Romney won the Florida presidential primary Tuesday, taking a long stride toward capturing the GOP nomination and dealing a potentially mortal blow to the hopes of the once-resurgent Newt Gingrich.

The television networks called the race for the former Massachusetts governor soon after polls in the westernmost part of the state closed; by that time Romney already held a big lead in the votes already tabulated. The result ended what had become a suspenseless campaign over the last few days, as multiple opinion surveys showed Romney opening a commanding lead.

FOR THE RECORD:
An earlier version of this article incorrectly described Mitt Romney the governor of Massachusetts. He is a former governor of that state.

His victory handed Romney Florida’s 50 delegates, the biggest cache yet, but more than that the win shows his ability to capture support in a big, costly and diverse state that will be a major battleground in the fall contest against President Obama.

Speaking to reporters before the polls closed, Romney said he learned a lesson from the double-digit loss he suffered at Gingrich’s hands 10 days ago in South Carolina.

“If we’re successful here, it’ll be pretty clear that when attacked you have to respond and you can’t let charges go unanswered,” Romney said after visiting campaign volunteers at a Tampa phone bank. “I needed to make sure that instead of being outgunned in terms of attacks that I responded aggressively. I think I have and hopefully that will serve me well here.”

For his part, Gingrich showed no signs of backing down, or leaving the race any time soon.

“This is a long way from being over,” the former House speaker said while shaking hands Tuesday morning at a church polling place in Orlando. “I’d say June or July, unless Romney drops out earlier.”

“The same people who said I was dead in June, or the people who said I was dead in Iowa, those people?” Gingrich said. “They’re about as accurate as they have been the last time they were wrong.”

Romney’s victory, while expected, marked a sharp turnabout in fortunes and could be a pivot point in the race for the Republican nomination.

From here, the contest heads Saturday to Nevada, a caucus state that will probably play to his organizational strength, then enters a relative lull. Just a few contests, all of them caucuses, are scheduled before the next big primaries Feb. 28 in Michigan — a Romney state, where his father served three terms as governor — and Arizona.

Gingrich came soaring into Florida after his landslide win in South Carolina and quickly surged to the top of some polls. But his momentum dwindled just as quickly after a pair of lackluster debate performances.

Romney, by contrast, revamped his approach in Florida to demonstrate a new, more pugnacious side onstage and undercut one of the major props of Gingrich’s candidacy: that he alone has the stuff to take it to Obama. Two-thirds of Florida voters said the debates were important in making up their minds, and Romney apparently helped himself with his well-received showings in Tampa and Jacksonville.

He also benefited from the diluted power of religious conservatives, a group that has been, at best, lukewarm to his candidacy. Fewer than 4 in 10 Florida voters described themselves as evangelicals or born-again Christians; in South Carolina, they made up nearly two-thirds of electorate.

The issues Romney raised in Florida were not new. For weeks, he has assailed Gingrich over his conduct in Congress, which resulted in a bipartisan reprimand and record $300,000 ethics fine, and his inside-the-Beltway consulting work after leaving office.

Romney focused in particular on the $1.6 million that Gingrich’s firm received from Freddie Mac, the federal mortgage guarantor, which many Republicans blame for the housing crisis that ravaged the nation’s economy and imposed outsized pain on Florida. He accused Gingrich of “selling influence in Washington at a time when we need people who will stand up for the truth.”

With the help of a new speaking coach, Romney pressed his assault without letup, something he had not done since Gingrich’s fifth-place finish in Iowa — a performance that many thought was the end of the former speaker’s campaign.

Romney’s attacks also took on an unusually personal tone. At one point, he scoffed that Gingrich should “look in the mirror” to understand why his campaign was struggling.

The former congressman responded in kind, calling Romney “totally dishonest” and saying it was impossible to debate someone with his casual relationship with the truth.

But Romney was able to pack far more punch in his attacks. While the two candidates were at rough parity on TV in South Carolina, Romney and his allies outspent Gingrich on the Florida race by nearly 5-to-1, or more than $15 million for Romney to Gingrich’s roughly $3 million.

For all of that, Gingrich may end up sticking around longer than Romney and many party leaders would prefer. Because most of the delegates over the next two months will be awarded on a proportional basis, Gingrich can keep adding to his total even if he loses to Romney. Contests in big states like Ohio, New York, Texas and California are weeks or even months away.

Also lurking in the presidential contest are Texas Rep. Ron Paul and former Pennsylvania Sen. Rick Santorum. Both gave up on Florida, showing up for the debates but not mounting a serious effort.

Paul, who has a small but devout band of followers, is targeting organizationally intensive caucus states in an effort to win delegates to influence the party platform at the Tampa convention.

Santorum, the victor in Iowa by a small margin, has already proved his ability to wage a subsistence campaign and signaled his intention to compete in Colorado and Minnesota, two of this month’s caucus states.

mark.barabak@latimes.com.

Times staff writers Seema Mehta in Orlando and Maeve Reston in Tampa contributed to this report.

Brandt Clarke scored a power-play goal with 6:10 to play to lift the Kings to a 2-1 win over the Ottawa Senators on Monday night at Crypto.com Arena.

Clarke’s slap shot from just inside the blue line came with just two seconds left on the man advantage and ended the Kings’ losing streak at three games.

Warren Foegele also scored for the Kings and Joel Edmundson assisted on both of the team’s goals. Darcy Kuemper made 27 saves.

Foegele opened the scoring 5:31 into the third period when he tapped in a pass from Joel Armia, who skated the puck down the right wing. Armia has points in three straight games.

Fabian Zetterlund tied it at 1-1 with 9:11 to play in the third with his third goal of the season and second in two games, but the Senators went scoreless on three power-play opportunities.

Leevi Merilainen made 20 saves for Ottawa, which was coming off wins over Anaheim and San José, the first two games of a seven-game road trip.

Up next for the Kings: vs. the Ducks at Honda Center on Friday night.

Trump signs order to integrate supercomputers and data assets in order to create ‘AI experimentation platform”.

United States President Donald Trump has unveiled a national initiative to mobilise artificial intelligence (AI) for accelerating scientific breakthroughs.

Trump signed an executive order on Monday to establish “The Genesis Mission”, the latest iteration of his administration’s aggressive strategy for spurring AI development through deregulation, infrastructure investment and public-private collaboration.

Trump’s order directs US Energy Secretary Chris Wright to unite scientists and technologies at the country’s 17 national laboratories into “one cooperative system for research”.

Under the initiative, US supercomputers and data resources will be integrated to create a “closed-loop AI experimentation platform”, according to the order.

The White House, which likened the initiative to the Apollo programme that put the first man on the moon, said priority areas of focus would include the “greatest scientific challenges of our time,” such as nuclear fusion, semiconductors, critical materials and space exploration.

Michael Kratsios, the White House’s top science adviser, said the initiative took a “revolutionary approach” to scientific research.

“The Genesis Mission connects world-class scientific data with the most advanced American AI to unlock breakthroughs in medicine, energy, materials science, and beyond,” Kratsios said.

Chipmaker Nvidia and AI startup Anthropic said on Monday that they were partnering with the Trump administration on the initiative.

“Uniting the National Labs, USG, industry, and academia, this effort will connect America’s leading supercomputers, AI systems, and next-generation quantum machines into the most complex scientific instrument ever built – accelerating breakthroughs in energy, discovery, and national security,” Nvidia said in a social media post, referring to the US government (USG).

Since re-entering the White House, Trump has made cutting red tape to fast-track the development of AI a key plank of his economic agenda.

Last week, Trump called on the US Congress to pass legislation to create a national standard for AI, while criticising state governments over their laws regulating the emerging technology.

“Overregulation by the States is threatening to undermine this Growth Engine,” Trump said on his platform, Truth Social.

“We MUST have one Federal Standard instead of a patchwork of 50 State Regulatory Regimes.”

Benjamin H Bratton, an AI expert at the University of California, San Diego, welcomed the initiative as a move towards the “diffusion” of the technology.

“It is less important ‘whose’ AI people have access to than they have universal access at all,” Bratton told Al Jazeera.

“Most attempts to throttle AI in the USA and EU [European Union] come from cultural, economic and political incumbents protecting their turf.”

“Those locked out of positions of artificially scarce social agency have the most to gain,” Bratton added. “I support diffusion, not any particular administration.”

Reports say doctors diagnosed the woman with critically low blood sugar, likely leading to her weakened condition.

A woman in Thailand has shocked staff at a Buddhist temple when she started moving in her coffin after being brought in for cremation.

Wat Rat Prakhong Tham, a temple in the province of Nonthaburi on the outskirts of the capital, Bangkok, posted a video on its Facebook page, showing a woman lying in a white coffin in the back of a pick-up truck, slightly moving her arms and head, leaving temple staff bewildered.

Pairat Soodthoop, the temple’s general and financial affairs manager, told The Associated Press news agency on Monday that the 65-year-old woman’s brother drove her from the province of Phitsanulok to be cremated.

He said they heard a faint knock coming from the coffin.

“I was a bit surprised, so I asked them to open the coffin, and everyone was startled,” he said.

“I saw her opening her eyes slightly and knocking on the side of the coffin. She must have been knocking for quite some time.”

According to Pairat, the brother said his sister had been bedridden for about two years, when her health deteriorated and she became unresponsive, appearing to stop breathing two days ago.

The brother then placed her in a coffin and made the 500km (300-mile) journey to a hospital in Bangkok, to which the woman had previously expressed a wish to donate her organs.

The hospital refused to accept the brother’s offer as he didn’t have an official death certificate, Pairat said. His temple offers a free cremation service, which is why the brother approached them on Sunday, but was also refused due to the missing document.

The temple manager said that he was explaining to the brother how he could get a death certificate when they heard the knocking. They then assessed her and sent her to a nearby hospital.

The abbot said the temple would cover her medical expenses, according to Pairat.

According to the Thailand News website, doctors later diagnosed the woman with severe hypoglycaemia, or critically low blood sugar, and confirmed she had not experienced cardiac or respiratory failure.

A MAJOR music legend just opened up about a life-changing health battle that left him unable to speak.

He couldn’t believe at one point he had to accept there was a chance of losing his voice forever, so he would never be able to sing again.

The 68-year-old from Essex found fame in 1983, after the huge success of his single ‘Mama Used To Say’.

From then on his career only continued to thrive on a global scale, making him into a household name.

Junior Giscombe was rushed over to St George’s Hospital in Tooting after he began struggling with speech in 2023.

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He noticed his voice had changed after a performance, realising that by the end of his set he had no voice.

Upon being examined at the hospital, Junior learned that his left vocal cord had suddenly collapsed.

Without speech therapy and vocal rest, there wouldn’t have been a chance for the singer to take to the stage again.

Speaking about his recovery, Junior expressed unending thanks to the staff at St George’s who he fully credits for being the reason he’s still able to do what he loves.

“I’m extremely grateful to the team at George’s – without them, I would have no voice and would have to give up the job I’ve loved for almost 50 years.

“They have been amazing, and all the care I’ve had every step of the way has been second to none.

“I can’t stop singing their praises.”

Junior continued to urge fans – singers and non-singers out there – to make sure they look after their voices and to never take them for granted like he did in the past.

“Not being able to use my voice was incredibly frightening.

“Over the years, I would do shows and didn’t warm up my voice beforehand.

“As I never had any issues with my voice, I took for granted that it would always be there.

“Please don’t take your voice for granted like I did.

“Look after it.”

There are many factors aside from the strain of frequent singing that can lead to vocal cord damage, such as ageing or certain health conditions.

If you notice a change to your speech or a consistent soreness when speaking, it’s recommended to see a doctor.

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When 32-year-old theoretical physicist Ron Unz decided to run for governor, even some friends tried to talk him out of it.

“Politics is not the kind of thing you expect geniuses to go into,” said Eric Reyburn, who attended Harvard University with Unz.

Rivko Knox, Unz’s aunt, worried that the race would be brutal. “I said: ‘Can you take criticism? What if you speak and people laugh at you?’ ”

David Horowitz, the conservative activist, was more blunt. Instead of a politician, Unz “looks like a person who reads science fiction novels at night and spends all the rest of his time on a computer talking to other people about science fiction,” said Horowitz, who has spent hours discussing politics with Unz. “I told him: ‘You’re an intellectual. . . . Your passion is ideas. You’ll be murdered.’ ”

But Unz, the soft-spoken owner of a small computer software company in Silicon Valley, calculated the odds and made up his mind. A month ago he formally challenged Gov. Pete Wilson for the Republican nomination, launching a statewide media blitz financed with more than $1 million of his own money.

Ever since, Unz has blistered Wilson, calling him a hypocrite, an opportunist–even a closet Democrat. The ultraconservative long shot has attacked the more moderate incumbent for raising taxes, bashing immigrants and supporting “the pathology of the social welfare state.” Although he has been short on specific solutions, Unz’s relentless debating style and his willingness to spend freely have won over some skeptics.

“I was afraid he would embarrass himself. But he hasn’t. I’m glad he’s out there pushing,” said Horowitz, who has dubbed Unz’s campaign “The Revenge of the Nerds.”

Arnold Steinberg, a Republican strategist, said his reservations have been replaced by enthusiasm. He tried to talk Unz out of running, he said–but ended up signing on as an adviser.

*

Few people believe Unz can beat Wilson–Unz admits that his campaign is an “uphill battle.” Still, some Republicans worry that the young challenger will wound Wilson, making it easier for a Democrat to replace him.

The Wilson campaign, which at first attempted to ignore Unz, recently began responding to him, labeling one TV ad in which he accused Wilson of letting Los Angeles burn during the 1992 riots “a new low” in the campaign. Though their recent tracking polls show only about 8% of Republicans would vote for Unz, Wilson’s camp has begun to take him more seriously, poking into his background–and informing reporters of the results.

Dan Schnur, Wilson’s spokesman, said one call to First Boston Bank, one of Unz’s former employers, yielded this tidbit: Unz is remembered as the only job applicant ever to list his IQ on his resume.

In fact, Unz may have one of the few IQs worth noting on a resume. It has been estimated at 214, a statistic that one intelligence expert describes as “one in a million.” Educated at Harvard, Cambridge and Stanford universities, he has mastered not only theoretical physics and computer programming, but also ancient Greek history. The author of several scholarly papers on the Spartan naval empire, he is probably the only gubernatorial candidate who warms to the subject of Plutarch.

“The history of the Greek city states really gives you a sense of how nations or states can decline,” said Unz, who claims that his many areas of expertise have each helped prepare him for executive office. “People told me that politics can be frustrating. But when you have sat month after month working on the same computer program, you get used to . . . incremental change.”

Braininess does not necessarily yield political savvy. Unz used the mathematical concept of “expected return” to assess whether he should enter the race. Multiplying the probability by the possible payoff, he concluded that if he had at least a one-in-five chance, running would be worth it. But most political experts say he drastically misjudged the odds.

If Unz’s intellect is unique among political candidates, Unz says that is not the reason to vote for him. Instead, he wants people to respond to his ideas–among them, smaller government, fewer regulations and traditional values. He claims he, not Wilson, is in the Republican mainstream.

He rails against bilingual education and affirmative action (policies that he says amount to “ethnic separatism”) and bad-mouths welfare programs that he says foster “irresponsibility, illegitimacy and a total sense of disconnection from the work ethic in American society.”

To hear Unz’s current ideology, one might never guess at his background.

Unz’s ads describe him as “the Republican for governor,” but he grew up a Democrat. He was born in the San Fernando Valley in 1961 and had his first involvement with politics at age 11 when he donned a McGovern T-shirt and accompanied his mother door to door, stumping for the Democratic presidential candidate.

The candidate who vows to “roll back” public assistance programs once relied on those programs for survival–when growing up in North Hollywood, he and his mother were on welfare. Unz, who today describes the culture of illegitimacy as a root cause of crime, was born out of wedlock–a fact that made the young Unz feel “very ashamed,” he said.

Some politicians might use such personal details to bolster their arguments. Unz, by contrast, prefers to keep them at a distance, discussing his childhood only at a reporter’s request.

“I really don’t think my personal background has had much of an impact on my views,” Unz said recently, moments after comparing his mother, Esther–a former high school teacher who he says “made some stupid mistakes”–to TV’s “Murphy Brown.” “The ‘Murphy Brown’ case works great on TV, but it’s not clear to me that it works in practice.”

In his case, Unz says, “the system worked.” Enrolled in public schools, he proved a top student–a math and debating whiz who as a senior in high school became the third Californian ever to win first place in the national Westinghouse talent search competition. Despite his own success story, he firmly believes that welfare does more harm than good.

“The truth is that the cost of living in America, if you’re talking about living relatively simply, is pretty low. The marginal cost of eating simple foods and not starving is minimal. And there . . . would be more charitable organizations in society if these (welfare) programs didn’t exist,” he said, adding that he does not believe that the assistance he and his mother received “was that much of a help.”

Esther Unz recalls things differently. To cut costs, she said, she and her young son lived with her parents. But when she fell ill and was unable to work, she applied for aid. The money she received from the government was essential, she said.

“Ron’s father was out of the picture very soon. . . . But my parents’ home was paid for. What saved us financially completely was there were no rent payments,” she said, adding that her son’s conservative views are something of a mystery to her. “For some reason he turned to the other side. I never tried to structure him as far as (political) party. He just kind of came out this way.”

Despite their differences, she is immensely proud of her son and believes his sincerity and industriousness would make him an effective governor. She has long worried, however, that his penchant for hard work has left him without a fully rounded life.

“Now all I can hope for is he will have time for some extracurricular life,” she said. “And get a girl. Because he has had very few in his life.”

Unz says he wants to marry and have children, eventually. But when he puts his mind to something, he says, he focuses completely. For several years his financial software company, which devises specialized “code” to help Wall Street firms manage their investments efficiently, has been his primary fascination. So far he has not given his personal life the same kind of attention.

A visit to Unz’s large Spanish-style home in Palo Alto reveals a life completely built around work. Three of the five bedrooms–which house his company, Wall Street Analytics Inc.–are filled with files and computer equipment. The rest of the house appears largely unoccupied. He sleeps on a mattress and box spring set on the floor. His spacious living room not only lacks furniture–it is utterly empty.

“I’ve only lived here a year,” he says, nodding toward a well-appointed kitchen he has never used. “Monomaniacal” is the word one friend says Unz uses to describe himself. Asked what he does for fun, he answers: “I’ve been very busy.”

When asked the same question, Unz’s best friends from Harvard do not hesitate. For fun, they said, Unz has always loved to talk politics. “Ron’s idea of a good time at a party is to have five or six people stand around and talk about the issues of the day,” said Reyburn, who fondly remembers a nightly college ritual: dinner, spiced with spirited political debate.

“He’s an intellectual, not a party animal,” recalled Robert Dujarric, another friend who remembers those dinners warmly. “He likes to talk to people. Even though he’s very much at home in the realm of computer software and numbers, he likes to socialize.”

Unz graduated in 1983 with a double major in theoretical physics and ancient history and headed to England. There on a Churchill Science Fellowship, he studied quantum gravitation under Stephen Hawking.

*

While continuing his studies at Stanford in 1986, Unz and two of his former junior high school teachers developed a plan to create a public academy for Los Angeles County’s high-ability students. Despite winning the support of some educators, the proposal was rejected by officials who worried that if an elite school drained off the best students, ordinary schools would become less challenging.

Unz describes this incident, his first deep involvement on a public policy issue, as an eye-opener. He came to believe that if he wanted to improve society, he would have to get rich enough to champion the causes important to him.

He took a summer job on Wall Street in 1987, working in mortgage finance at First Boston Bank. He taught himself computer programming and soon wrote “The Solver,” a program that used the computer to carve up mortgage loans into securities–a series of calculations that until then had been done by hand.

Unz’s work was outstanding, his colleagues recall, and he accepted a full-time job. But some who worked with him said he could be inflexible when he believed he was right. It was that single-mindedness that ultimately led to his departure, they said.

David Warren, a managing director at First Boston who was hired the same day as Unz, recalled: “He came from an academic background where if your professor told you to do x, and you did y because it was better than x, and then you explained your reasoning–your professor shook hands with you and said: ‘Congratulations, you were right.’ He felt that was the way he was going to behave.”

Unz’s bosses did not share this approach. A few months after taking the job, Unz left to start his own company. For the next six years, Unz worked seven days a week, up to 20 hours a day, writing computer code in his modest apartment in Queens.

New York City appalled him. The crime and the poverty proved to Unz that welfare programs not only were not working but were the cause of society’s decline. He began reading Commentary magazine, and was so impressed that he ordered 15 years of back issues. When his long hours started to pay off (his first sale, to a Wall Street investment firm, netted nearly $200,000), he used the money to fund conservative projects.

*

Unz will not say what he is worth, but says he gave hundreds of thousands of dollars to think tanks such as the Manhattan Institute in New York City and to Linda Chavez’s Center for the New American Community in Washington, D.C. Even before moving back to California two years ago, Unz sought out the Los Angeles-based Horowitz to see if he needed funding.

“I wanted to do this book ‘Surviving the PC University,’ ” recalled Horowitz, co-founder of the Center for the Study of Popular Culture. “He said: ‘How much will it cost?’ I said $10,000, and he pulled out his checkbook and wrote me a check.”

“I don’t care much about money,” said Unz, who drives a compact car and has spent more on clothing while preparing to become a candidate than he had during the previous several years. “The whole reason I wanted to make money was to be able to influence policy.”

Late last year, when Unz realized that no other Republican was likely to challenge Wilson, that attitude made it easy for him to volunteer. To others, spending a hard-earned personal fortune to run what in all likelihood will be a losing race might seem crazy. To Unz, it was civic duty.

“The odds are, you lose. But if you don’t try it, you’re sure to lose,” he said, adding that he plans to spend a lot more of his money before the June 7 primary. “A lot of this is patriotism. . . . At some stage, individuals have to decide whether they’re going to make an effort.”

So far, Unz’s rhetoric has been dominated by criticism of Wilson. His lack of specific alternatives has hurt him even among some Republicans who dislike Wilson.

“He’s not for me,” Dieter Holberg, a retired engineer, said after hearing Unz speak at the Riviera Country Club in Pacific Palisades. “You can say, ‘Cut things.’. . . But it would have been long done if it was easy to do.”

But at times he strikes a chord. The California Republican Assembly, a conservative grass-roots organization, has endorsed him. And recently, after hearing Unz blast programs such as prenatal care, drug rehabilitation and “New Age self-esteem counseling,” a few members of UC Berkeley’s College Republicans came away impressed.

“You get a strong sense that here is a fundamentally competent person who is intelligent enough to grasp everything–though that is not the same thing as being able to command or lead. But I don’t particularly think that Wilson leads,” said Gregory Sikorski, 27, a history major. “I will support him now and support the Republican (nominee) later.”