CHARLOTTE, N.C. — Calm down.

Humility, as Sean McVay likes to say, is only a day away. And the Rams lived it Sunday.

McVay, quarterback Matthew Stafford and the Rams defense all were humbled in a 31-28 defeat by the Carolina Panthers before 71,292 at Bank of America Stadium.

Stafford’s stellar MVP-caliber play ended with two interceptions — his first since September — a crucial delay-of-game penalty and a lost fumble.

Panthers quarterback Bryce Young sliced the Rams’ secondary for three touchdown passes, and running backs ran through what had been a mostly impenetrable defense.

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Gary Klein breaks down what went wrong for the Rams in a 31-28 loss to the Carolina Panthers on Sunday.

But this was not a meltdown. It was costly but not disastrous.

Yes, the Rams’ six-game winning streak ended. Their record dropped to 9-3. They no longer hold the No. 1 seed in the NFC.

But it’s the NFL. Great players abound. Parity rules.

It happens.

The defeat tarnished the Rams’ record. But no team, not even the unbeaten 1972 Miami Dolphins, breezes through its schedule.

The Rams lost the opportunity to extend their longest winning streak since 2018, when they won their first eight games and finished 13-3 en route to the first of their two Super Bowl appearances under McVay.

But they remain a Super Bowl contender. And neither McVay nor his players seemed to be sweating the loss.

“There’s never a good story without a little adversity,” McVay said as he ran his fingers through his rain-soaked hair.

McVay said all week that the red-hot Rams would shut out the noise after pundits pronounced them a Super Bowl favorite. He doubled down after the game, saying the Rams did not take the Panthers lightly.

“I don’t believe that for a second,” he said.

Neither did his players.

Edge rusher Byron Young described the loss as a “humbling experience.”

“I don’t look at it like a bad thing,” he said. “I just look at it as motivation.”

That’s how the Rams will use it, receiver Davante Adams said.

Rams wide receiver Puka Nacua makes a spectacular, one-handed catch in front of Carolina Panthers cornerback Mike Jackson in the second half Sunday.

(Nell Redmond / Associated Press)

“I don’t think anybody in here was riding high like we were some invincible team,” said Adams, who caught two touchdown passes to increase his league-leading total to 14. “Obviously, it feels like that when you’re running off wins.

“But we didn’t necessarily need to be humbled or anything like that.”

Since their early losses to the defending Super Bowl-champion Philadelphia Eagles and the San Francisco 49ers, the Rams had been rolling. If the offense was not scoring, the defense picked up the slack. If the defense struggled, Stafford and his flawless play produced victories.

But Stafford’s two touchdown passes, and touchdown runs by Blake Corum and Kyren Williams, were not enough against a Panthers team that improved to 7-6.

“Nobody saved the day today,” Adams said.

Stafford put the mistakes on himself. On a day when he moved past Matt Ryan into eighth place on the NFL’s all-time passing yardage list, Stafford’s streak of eight games without an interception ended.

“We’re not going to win a whole lot of games when I turn it over three times,” he said. “And it hasn’t been an issue and I don’t expect it to be moving forward.”

The first interception came late in the first quarter on a third-down play at the Panthers’ eight-yard line. Lineman Derrick Brown tipped a pass and former Rams safety Nick Scott grabbed the ball in the end zone.

It was the first time since the Week 3 defeat at Philadelphia that a Stafford pass was picked off. He had thrown an NFL-record 28 touchdown passes between interceptions.

“They did a nice job getting their hands up,” Stafford said.

Two passes later Panthers safety Mike Jackson picked one off and returned it 48 yards for a touchdown.

“Can’t leave the ball inside and give them seven on that one,” Stafford said.

Stafford’s biggest and most uncharacteristic miscue came late in the fourth quarter with the Rams trailing, 31-28. On third and five at the Panthers’ 17, officials ruled that the Rams failed to get a snap off before the play clock expired.

“That’s on nobody but me,” Stafford said. “I’ve just got to get that thing off.”

On the next play Brown sacked Stafford and stripped the ball from his grasp. The Panthers recovered the fumble with 2:25 left and ran out the clock.

“It’s been awhile since we felt this way,” McVay said.

Nearly two months to be exact. The Rams rebounded from their Oct. 2 loss to the 49ers and surged to their short-lived spot atop the NFC, now occupied by the Chicago Bears.

“We’ve dealt with adversity before,” McVay said. “We’ll deal with it again.”

Next Sunday, the Rams play the 3-9 Arizona Cardinals in Glendale, Ariz. They finish with a home game against the Detroit Lions, a Thursday night game at Seattle, a road trip to Atlanta and a home game against the Cardinals.

The Rams intend to respond as they did after their last defeat. And humbly roll toward the playoffs.

Dec. 1 (UPI) — President Donald Trump said he has invited the families of two National Guard members who were shot last week to the White House.

Trump, speaking to reporters aboard Air Force One on Sunday, said he has spoken with the Guardsmen’s families and extended them a formal invitation.

“I have spoken to both families,” he said. “They’re devastated.”

U.S. Army Spc. Sarah Beckstrom, 20, and U.S. Air Force Staff Sgt. Andrew Wolfe, 24, both National Guard members from West Virginia, were shot while patrolling Wednesday in support of Trump’s crime and immigration crackdown in Washington, D.C.

Beckstrom died from her injuries Thursday, and Wolfe was in critical condition.

Trump told reporters Wolfe was “fighting for his life.”

He said he extended the invitation to the victims’ families to visit the White House “when you’re ready.”

“We’re going to honor Sarah,” he said. “And likewise with Andrew, recover or not, we’re going to honor him.”

Trump described Wolfe’s parents as “great” and “highly religious people.”

“And they are praying, and they want everyone to pray for Andrew, and he has a chance to make it,” he said.

Rahmanullah Lakanwal, 29, an Afghan national who U.S. officials say worked with the CIA to track down high-value Taliban targets in his native country, is accused of being the shooter.

Trump has referred to Lakanwal as an “animal” and blames the previous Biden administration for allowing him to enter the United States.

Following the shooting, Trump said he would order an indefinite pause on migration from all “third-world countries,” a Cold War-era term that is largely considered outdated to refer to low- and middle-income countries.

On Friday, the U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services told its staff that it will pause all applications for asylum filed by immigrants within the United States.

Padova, Italy – Abdullah, 10, barely lifts his gaze from his tablet as he plays his favourite video game, where he creates a virtual universe that lets him be anything he imagines.

The beeping of the chemotherapy infusion pump delivering drugs into his veins briefly brings his attention back, and he fumbles for the charger of the plug-in device before resuming his game.

His mother, Iman Ismail Mohammad Abu Mazid, says he picked up the gaming habit after leaving Gaza on May 14 for the Italian city of Padova to receive life-saving treatment for leukaemia.

Back in Deir el-Balah, the city in central Gaza that the family called home, he was a “very sociable child” who “would always be in the streets playing football with his brothers and other children his age,” she told Al Jazeera, before looking through her phone to retrieve a picture of the boy she remembers.

In it, three well-groomed children look at the camera. Abdullah has the same calm look, but his hair is now longer and his skin has a tinge of yellow. Standing beside him in the picture is Mohammad, who is now 11, and Mahmoud, who is eight. Towering above them and proudly placing his arms on their shoulders is their father, Ahmad.

The cancer that consumes Abdullah also tore their family apart.

While Abdullah, his mother Iman and one-year-old Qamar were granted seats on a medical evacuation flight that took them to Italy, the rest of the family – Ahmad and the other two children, Mohammad and Mahmoud – stayed behind in Gaza, which Israel continues to bomb despite a ceasefire agreement being in place.

Now the disease could be what brings them back together. In early November, a team of doctors in Gaza took blood samples from Abdullah’s siblings and sent them to Italy to determine their compatibility as donors for the boy’s marrow transplant.

If one is a match, they will all be allowed onto a medical flight to Padova. If the results are negative, they will need to apply to the Italian government for family reunion – a much longer process fraught with logistical challenges.

Iman said the fate of his family hangs on those results. They could save Abdullah from the disease, and the rest of their family from Israel’s genocidal war on Gaza.

“I fear for their safety every day,” she said. “Abdullah misses his siblings, and I miss my children, too.”

Abdullah shyly nodded in confirmation, adding that he misses a nicely done kebab, too. He has no penchant for Italian food and reminisces about the seasoned meat the family’s go-to restaurant in Deir el-Balah served.

Asked whether he would like to bring Gaza to Padova, he said, “Not all of it, just my neighbourhood.”

Escaping war in Gaza

Iman found out she was pregnant with Qamar in March 2024, as the war was raging around her. At first, she thought her period had skipped because she had been barely surviving on water and bread. When it became apparent that a fourth child was on the way, she recalls feeling “terrified”.

“I was constantly worried and anxious that they’d tell me the baby was deformed, abnormal, sick,” because of the lack of food and sanitation, she said. “My body was exhausted, and I couldn’t stand. I spent my entire pregnancy lying on the floor,” she says rapidly in Arabic, before picking up the toddler tugging insistently at her leg and placing her on her lap to feed her.

Her baby girl was delivered in a tented field hospital in Deir el-Balah that lacked basic sanitation and medicines, as victims of Israeli bombardment were rushed in.

“You could see someone injured at any moment – an amputated limb, an amputated hand … The scenes were horrific,” she said. “And the doctors were nervous because the area was being targeted.”

Months later, in April this year, Abdullah started feeling sick.

“He was yellow, had abdominal cramps, a headache,” she said.

At the Al-Aqsa Hospital in Deir el-Balah, Abdullah was strapped to an IV and given painkillers and antibiotics. The fluids kept the fever from spiking, but nothing could stop the cancer from spreading.

The family was advised to take him to the European Hospital in Khan Younis, despite the Israeli army having announced a major expansion of military operations in the area.

The 10-kilometre (six-mile) ride southward was “terrifying”.

“There wasn’t a soul on the street,” Iman remembered. Doctors could only offer diluted chemotherapy treatment. Abdullah was flagged to the World Health Organization (WHO) for medical evacuation.

Unexpectedly, medical evacuation was granted shortly afterwards. Iman and her husband, Ahmad, did not need words to take the decision to split the family.

“There was more silence than dialogue,” she said.

Ahmad arrived at the European Hospital on May 13 to bid Iman, Abdullah and Qamar an emotional farewell. As he was leaving the compound, the earth shook and a slab of concrete flew right past his head.

That day, the Israeli military announced they had dropped nine bunker-busting bombs and dozens of other munitions on the hospital’s courtyard and surrounding area. They claimed to have killed Hamas leader Mohammed Sinwar and more than 20 other members of the group. International law prohibits attacks on hospitals, which constitute a war crime. Hamas confirmed Sinwar’s death in August, but did not provide details on how he died.

“I was convinced that [my husband] had been killed,” Iman recalled.

“I kept calling him and screaming, saying, ‘I swear, he’s gone’,” she said. “I called 10 times or more, but he didn’t answer. I was certain he had been martyred. But I didn’t give up, I didn’t give up! After so many attempts, finally, he answered.”

A new life away from home

Abdullah is among more than 5,500 children who have been evacuated from Gaza through medical evacuations coordinated by the WHO.

A total of 8,000 people have so far been able to leave for life-saving treatment, but 16,500 people are still waiting, according to United Nations figures. Of those, 3,800 are children.

Since July 2024, more than 900 patients have died while awaiting medical evacuations, according to the WHO.

Abdullah was taken to Padova thanks to the doggedness of lawyer Rebecca Fedetto, who in February founded an organisation to facilitate and support medical evacuations.

“I knew I wanted to do something and be active,” she told Al Jazeera. “I couldn’t live normally, my conscience didn’t allow it.”

Fedetto worked the phone in search of anyone who could help her navigate the process of paperwork, approvals, and coordination required to provide a referral for a patient to be moved to a medical facility abroad.

“At one point, I thought I wouldn’t make it, it was all so complex,” she said. “When it started to work out, I couldn’t believe it.”

Her self-made NGO, Padova Abbraccia i Bambini (Padova Hugs Children), has facilitated six medical evacuations, welcoming 25 people. Among them are six-year-old Ahmad, who is recovering from third-degree burns on nearly half of his body, and eight-year-old Seela, who lost both legs.

A team of volunteers caters to the families’ every need, offering transport, babysitting, homeschooling and emotional support.

Fedetto said the city’s response has been overwhelmingly welcoming.

“Many people have emailed us asking if they could help, because this war is something that touches our conscience” she said. “Often people want to help, they just don’t know how.”

WHO has appealed for countries to offer more medical evacuations, as Gaza’s healthcare remains limited. Only 18 hospitals out of 36 are partially functional.

More than 30 countries have so far heeded the call, including European Union member states, Qatar, Jordan, Egypt and the United Arab Emirates.

“We are thankful for their solidarity,” Rik Peeperkorn, WHO’s representative for the occupied Palestinian territory, told Al Jazeera.

Peeperkorn said that under the terms of the ceasefire, WHO should be able to evacuate 50 patients per day, in addition to their caregivers.

“To make this possible, more countries must step forward with generosity and accept patients in need,” he said.

“Leopoldstadt,” Tom Stoppard’s stunning new play on Broadway about a highly cultivated extended family in Vienna that was decimated in the Holocaust, isn’t autobiographical. But the work springs from the Czech-born English playwright’s long-deferred examination of his Jewish roots.

In 1999, Stoppard published “On Turning Out to Be Jewish” in the inaugural issue of Tina Brown’s Talk magazine. The death of his mother in 1996 prompted him to search deeper into his heritage. He knew bits and pieces about his background but not the extent of the tragedy that befell his relations after Hitler rampaged through Europe.

In his late works, Stoppard has been more willing to confront his personal history. But his method is to imagine alternative versions, as in his play “Rock ’n’ Roll,” which considers the life he might have led had he gone back to Czechoslovakia instead of moving permanently to England after his father died during the war and his mother married a British army major.

“Leopoldstadt,” which is at Broadway’s Longacre Theatre in a production directed by Patrick Marber, unfolds as a series of oil paintings magicked into life. The play, which features a cast of 38 actors, moves from turn-of-the-century Vienna, where Freud, Mahler and Schnitzler are the talk of the town, to 1924, when the scars of World War I are clearly visible.

Performed without intermission, the action ominously leaps to 1938, as the Nazis are ransacking the homes of Jewish citizens. The play concludes in 1955, when three family survivors reunite to piece together the fates of their murdered relatives.

The Broadway company of Tom Stoppard’s “Leopoldstadt” at the Longacre Theatre.

(Joan Marcus)

Author of such modern classics as “Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead,” “The Real Thing” and “Arcadia,” Stoppard is revered for his clever wordplay, inventive wit and breathtaking comic adventurousness. A quick study able to assimilate libraries of material on philosophy, science, history and mathematics, he has an uncanny knack for making the esoteric entertaining. The Oscar-winning screenplay he co-wrote for “Shakespeare in Love” translates to the screen this gift for turning erudition into high jinks.

“Leopoldstadt” is a play that only Tom Stoppard could have written. It’s not just that the work mirrors aspects of his personal history. It’s also the virtuosic way that he conjures the shifting cultural zeitgeist of Vienna in the first half of the 20th century through stylized conversation alone.

Carey Perloff, the former artistic director of San Francisco’s American Conservatory Theater who has directed 11 productions of Stoppard plays, including several West Coast premieres, has written an invaluable book, “Pinter and Stoppard: A Director’s View” (Bloomsbury Methuen), which considers the Jewish identities of these English playwrights. Infusing her personal knowledge of the artists with her practical experience of staging their work, Perloff sheds light on what makes “Leopoldstadt” distinctive yet wholly integrated into Stoppard’s oeuvre.

In your book you argue that though “Stoppard often says that he has no idea what it means to ‘be’ Jewish since he does not practice the religion and does not feel part of any coherent group, there is something in his delight in pedagogy, dialectic, argument, and finding the perfect word that connects him clearly to a long line of Jewish thought and intellectual behavior.” You quote a character in “Leopoldstadt” who proclaims, “We literally worship culture” — a sentiment clearly shared by his author. How else do you see the complicated story of Stoppard’s identity playing out in his body of work?

The more I’ve dug into Stoppard’s biography, the clearer it has become that, in spite of appearing to be a quintessential Englishman, he’s always been an outsider. (He once said he occasionally feels like he’s in England “on a press pass.”) So many of his plays feature doubles or characters with divided selves (Housman/AEH in “The Invention of Love,” the two Hapgoods in “Hapgood,” etc.), which harkens back to Stoppard’s own fascinatingly bifurcated identity. His work is about the longing to know coupled with the impossibility of ever really knowing, again echoing the story of his own life and his own hidden Jewish past. Knowledge is everything to Stoppard. I think that’s why he and I have always gotten along so well — we’re both happiest when we’re learning something new, particularly something obscure and irrelevant but thrilling like ancient Greek verb forms or chaos theory. He also writes endlessly about memory and loss — how the past disappears, how culture must be fought for and held on to in the wake of relentless philistinism and misunderstanding — somehow, the burning of the books is never that far away, even in plays like “Arcadia.”

Your mother, distinguished literary critic Marjorie Perloff, who fled Vienna with her family in 1938, was a resource for Stoppard. How did her story influence his writing?

Stoppard has always admired my mother’s work so much — and when he read her memoir “The Vienna Paradox,” about escaping Vienna in 1938, he was captivated. He asked a million questions — about her family, her apartment, the lifestyle, the intellectual circle she grew up in, the lead-up to the Anschluss and the atmosphere in Vienna in the 1930s. In April 2018, Stoppard headlined my farewell gala at A.C.T. and then he and his wife, Sabrina, drove to L.A. and he spent a day with my mother talking about Vienna between the wars. She came from an assimilated Jewish family (called Mintz) who, like the Merz family in “Leopoldstadt,” “literally worshiped culture.” Like the Merz family, my mother’s family was quite secular — they were distinctly Jewish and certainly never tried to “pass” but had a Christmas tree, that kind of thing. Just as Stoppard shows in his play. My mother tried to explain certain strange contradictions to Tom — it wasn’t a world he knew that well, and it’s very hard for outsiders to fathom how it worked.

Joshua Satine as Young Jacob in Tom Stoppard’s play “Leopoldstadt” at Broadway’s Longacre Theatre.

(Joan Marcus)

Stoppard doesn’t tell his own family’s saga, thrillingly recapped in Hermione Lee’s recent biography. But he does have a surrogate in the play, a character named Leo, who, like him, had the good luck to find refuge in England. They also have in common the ambiguous luxury of maintaining a selective historical memory. How do you see the connection between Stoppard and Leo?

After years and years of saying he’d lived a “charmed life,” I think Stoppard began to feel culpable for not knowing about, let alone honoring, the huge tragedy that befell the rest of his family — he and [his brother] Peter got out with his parents, but nearly everyone else in his family got gassed by the Nazis. So he’s pretty self-critical — and in Leo he created a truly naive (perhaps too naive) character who is blind to his own family history until forced by his relatives to reckon with it. “No one is born at 8 years old,” Nathan, a fellow family survivor, tells Leo in the final scene. “But you live as if without history, as if you throw no shadow behind you.” This is such a vivid indictment of Stoppard’s own behavior, and a remarkable admission for the playwright to make about his own relationship (or lack thereof) to his Jewish past.

Stoppard is 85 years old. Do you suspect “Leopoldstadt” may be his last major work?

No! Tom is only happy when he’s writing a new play. He always has ideas in his mind — we talk about them all the time — so I suspect he’s going to keep going. He has such appetite and curiosity for life. That’s what makes being with him such a joy.

Given the horrific resurgence of antisemitism in public life, the play seems especially urgent now. But is “Leopoldstadt” too large for most regional theaters to produce? Who in California, now that you’re no longer running A.C.T., would be willing to fight for the play?

Sadly, this is not a moment for nuanced dialectical dramas — and certainly not for ones with such a huge cast. But as you say, it’s a really strong and necessary moment for work that explores Jewish history and identity. And there are always many ways to produce a play. I think it would be possible to do a beautiful version of “Leopoldstadt” with a smaller cast, more intentional doubling and a less massive design, and still get to the beating heart of the play. I’ve already created a potential casting scenario! Given my own family history, it would mean a lot to me to see the play have an American life.

Bed bug infestations are a common problem in the winter months, and it’s important to take steps to avoid bringing these pests home with you

As Christmas approaches and becomes one of the busiest travel periods of the year, it’s hardly shocking that this also marks a prime time for bed bug outbreaks. From heaving hotels and cramped trains to bustling airports and overnight visits with loved ones, some travellers inevitably bring these unwelcome hitchhikers back home.

James Rhoades, pest specialist at ThermoPest, said: “There’s a common misconception that summer is peak season for bed bugs, but Christmas consistently brings one of the biggest spikes in travel, which leads to a noticeable rise in infestations. Any festive period involving large-scale travel across the UK tends to increase the risk.”

Beyond travel, bed bug problems surge during winter months thanks to central heating use, as these creatures flourish in toasty environments.

James said: “During colder months, heating is on for longer, which speeds up their reproduction cycle. That, combined with increased travel, creates a perfect storm for infestations. Even dormant bugs can become active again when warmth returns.”

To prevent bed bugs tagging along home with you, James recommends carrying out a swift check upon arrival at your accommodation, regardless of whether you’re staying at a five-star resort or a modest guesthouse.

He advised: “Pull back the bedding and check the mattress edges, especially seams and corners, for black dots, blood spots, or shed skins.

“Check the headboard, bedside tables, and fabric furniture too. Bed bugs often hide in screw holes, stitching, and joints.”

Offering additional guidance, James suggests keeping your luggage elevated off the floor, utilising a rack where possible, or positioning it on a hard surface such as a table as an alternative. He explained: “Packing clothes in sealed bags adds extra protection, though this can seem like a faff.”

Should you have concerns following your return, washing your clothes at 60°C will eliminate both the bugs and their eggs.

Items that cannot be washed should be sealed in an airtight bag and placed in the freezer for several days, as these freezing temperatures will destroy any eggs or larvae.

James added: “If you return from Christmas travel and spot bites, black specks on bedding, or other signs, act quickly.

“Wash your clothes on a hot cycle, vacuum around beds and skirting boards, and inspect mattress seams. Always empty your vacuum outdoors; eggs can survive inside the chamber.”

WHEN Brits opt for a day trip they usually pick the likes of Paris or Amsterdam – somewhere close and easy to get to.

However, one traveller decided to choose somewhere much further afield but spent less than £100 on the entire trip.

Mickey Squires, 29, was inspired to visit the Balkan country, Bulgaria when return flights with Ryanair were reduced to just £43.

While it’s a further flung destination than other usual day trip destinations, Mickey booked himself onto a flight to the capital in early November.

With the flight time as short as three hours and 10 minutes, Mickey left London Stansted at 5:55am and landed in Sofia at 11:20am with two carry-on bags.

He spent the day exploring the city using a self-guided tour on his phone and picked up local treats like a pastry called a banitsa and stopped for a sit down meal too.

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Like with most day trips, Mickey had a full-on experience exploring the city before heading back to the airport for a 10:30pm flight.

While Mickey has visited tourist-heavy destinations such as Venice, he said he enjoyed a “more understated” city like Sofia.

He said: “I booked the flights about three weeks before – it was a short turnaround.

“On my tour I stopped off at all the main landmarks – cathedrals, synagogues, mosques and a shopping hall. I went to a local bakery for a banitsa because I try and have something local wherever I go.

“The highlight was on the way into the city, seeing the The Alexander Nevsky Cathedral with the gold top.”

Other popular tourist attractions Mickey saw during his day trip were the National Palace of Culture, National Art Gallery, Banya Bashi Mosque, Central Market, the Synagogue, and Saint Sofia Monument.

Talking about his brief trip to the Bulgarian capital, Mickey said: “It was a very long day and very tiring but definitely worth it on a budget.”

All in all, Mickey spent just £90 on his day out to Sofia.

The return flights cost him £43 and he then spent £12 for breakfast at the airport.

In Sofia he spent £10 on a day pass for public transport, a pizza and drink cost him £2.17 at a restaurant.

Mickey then spent £14 on snacks throughout the day – plus an extra £9.70 – spending a total of £90.87.

Bulgaria is known for being cheap – and there’s another getaway spot just two hours from Sofia where pints cost as little as 90p.

It was revealed by experts at hoppa that Bansko in Bulgaria has the cheapest pints in Europe.

The town is two hours away from the capital of Sofia and is known for its ski resorts and a beautiful mountain landscape.

Other affordable aspects include a stay in a 3-star hotel which averages out at £57.

Plus, find out why Brits should swap Spanish holidays for five destinations in stunning European country – with cheap pints & flights.

And if you fancy fleeing Budget chaos? Here are affordable holidays on offer right NOW from £22pppn where you can buy cheap booze & fags.

All of the England squad except for Wood took part in England’s first training session under lights at the Gabba on Monday.

Whereas Australia are experienced in day-night Tests – 14 of the 24 previous floodlit matches worldwide have involved Australia – England have played only seven, losing five.

England’s training session on Tuesday is in the afternoon, with a further stint under lights coming on Wednesday.

Ben Stokes’ side are looking to level the series at a ground where England have an awful record. They have not won here since 1986.

Carse, 30, said England will be ready for a “hostile” atmosphere at the Gabba and will feel no extra pressure because of the 1-0 deficit.

England have not won any of their past 16 Tests in Australia, a run going back to 2011. With thousands of supporters due to travel over the Christmas period, Carse acknowledged the responsibility of keeping the series alive.

“The English support at Perth was fantastic,” said the Durham man. “Someone was mentioning to me the other day the number of fans that are travelling throughout the Ashes series.

“We’re very fortunate with the following and the support we get. Of course, every single player in that dressing room wants to win, as do the fans, as does everyone who follows English cricket. We’ll be looking to put smiles on our faces and theirs.”

Australia have yet to confirm who will open the batting after Usman Khawaja struggled with back spasms in Perth and his replacement in the second innings, Travis Head, crashed a match-winning hundred.

Khawaja went through some fitness exercises and batted in the nets on Monday.

“Usman’s a high-quality player, you look at his record and what he’s done for Australian cricket,” said batter Marnus Labuschagne. “He’s been super consistent and he’s been the rock at the top there.

“I don’t think he needs advice. He’s 38, he’s been around the block a long time. He is an amazing player.”

Hundreds of Israelis protested outside President Isaac Herzog’s house in Tel Aviv after Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu announced he had requested a pardon in his long-running corruption trial. Demonstrators demanded that Herzog rejects the request.

One Strictly Come Dancing star has issued a heartfelt statement as they leave the hit BBC One show

One Strictly Come Dancing star has been flooded with support as they issued a heartfelt statement over leaving the show.

On Sunday night, Alex Kingston become the eighth celebrity to be eliminated from Strictly Come Dancing along with her professional dance partner Johannes Radebe.

The duo found themselves in a dance-off with EastEnders actress Balvinder Sopal and professional Julian Caillon, where they had to perform their routines from Saturday night again.

Following the performances, the judges cast their vote, with Anton Du Beke choosing to save Alex and Johannes while Craig Revel Horwood and Motsi Mabuse saved Balvinder and Julian.

Head judge Shirley Ballas, who had the casting vote this week, decided to also save Balvinder and Julian, securing their place in Strictly’s musicals week.

Taking to Instagram following her exit from the show, Doctor Who star, Alex, 62, penned an emotional and heartfelt statement, where she was supported by fans.

Alongside a series of snaps from her time on the show, Alex penned: “Hello sweeties, Where to even begin… Strictly had been the journey of a lifetime and such a dream come true. If you had told me a year ago while in the midst of radiotherapy that a year later I’d be on strictly come dancing I wouldn’t have believed you!

“I’m so proud of everything Johannes and I have accomplished, and so grateful to my body for getting me this far. It was always my dream to get to dance with Jo Jo and dance we did! To everyone who supported us, Thank you endlessly. To be able to do this at my age is such a privilege, and I feel so lucky. Your belief in us has got me through even the toughest of days.

“If I’ve learned anything from this it’s that it’s never too late to try, and fall in love with something new. Whether taking a local dance class or picking up a new hobby, keep exploring and living life to the full. And most importantly… keep dancing!!!

“To the cast and the professionals, It’s been so wonderful getting to spend time with you all. Thank you for all the words of encouragement and cheers from the sidelines.

“It’s been such a pleasure watching you all grow on your journeys, and I can’t wait to keep watching. And a big thank you to all the crew keeping things running behind the scenes, and making sure we all look fab!!!

“Johannes, Every day I have been blown away by your kindness, your elegance, and your ability to bring calm to every storm. You light up every room you walk into my darling man !I cannot thank you enough for helping me find my steel balls and ‘exquisite’ legs! May your bag always be filled with mints, and your heart filled with joy and happiness. Love you so much.”

Responding in the comments, one fan put: “You and Jojo lit up our screens with your grace and elegance, and your never-ending determination. You will always be the rumba Queen!”, a different account put: “You have been phenomenal, classy and a true professional. Thanks for being on this show- first time I’ve watched it in a decade or so just to see you on screen and it’s been so fun” while another added: “You were brilliant!”

Meanwhile, a different account wrote: “Alex, you are just incredible. I am so unbelievably proud of you and Johannes and for going as far as you did. It has been such a pleasure watching you shine every week, you little star. You will always be my winner!! Lots of love” while another added: “Alex you have been an absolute joy to watch! Absolute dancing queen.”

Strictly Come Dancing continues on BBC One and BBC iPlayer.

SHORT term holiday rentals like Airbnb are to be banned in a popular tourist area in Europe next year.

Budapest has confirmed that the holiday rentals will be axed across the 6th district.

The district, Terézváros, is called Budapest’s Broadway, being home to a number of theatres as well as the Hungarian State Opera.

It is also home to Andrássy Avenue, a huge boulevard visited by tourists that is popular shopping street with restaurants and cafes.

The new rules will be introduced from January 1, 2026.

It could also be eventually rolled out to other districts.

Read more on holiday rules

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WINE-NO

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Some have slammed the new rules, with one telling local media that “no-one will win with this ban” while others expressed fears it will only make hotel prices go up.

Despite opposition, the government ruled that the ban could go ahead.

In a statement, the mayor of Terézváros Tamás Soproni said: “The Supreme Court ruled today that Terézváros’s Airbnb regulation is not illegal.

“The court rejected the Government Office’s motion, meaning that the ban on short-term rentals is lawful and the regulation can come into force on January 1, 2026.”

The mayor of the 6th district added: “There are buildings where 50 per cent of all the apartments are listed as Airbnb.

“Local citizens are being driven out of the downtown area and replaced by tourists – this is not the way forward.

“If we go on like this, all downtown areas will look like a kind of Disneyland, having the same chains, attractions, restaurants – and with no local residents left.”

Tourism rentals have grown by 80 per cent since 2020, meaning there are now more Airbnbs than hotel rooms.

On average, around 40 per cent of tourists stay in a holiday rental in Budapest – higher than the average in Europe of 28 per cent.

While holiday rentals will be banned, hotels and B&Bs will not be affected.

Budapest is one of the more popular cities with Brits, who often visit for its spas and cheap holidays.

The country saw record tourism last year, with 18million visiting Hungary, a third of which visited Budapest.

This was up 24 per cent compared to 2023, meaning a faster growth than places like Barcelona.

Brits are one of the most popular tourist markets, along with Germany, Italy and the US.

And lots of cities struggling with overtourism are introducing similar holiday rental rules.

One of the strictest is Barcelona, which is set to ban all Airbnb rentals across the entire city by 2028.

Back in May, the Spanish government called for more than 65,000 holiday rentals on Airbnb to be removed.

Madrid court found that nearly 5,000 rentals in the city would be withdrawn from being on sale.

In Seville, short term home rentals can’t be more than 10 per cent of all homes in each neighbourhood.

And Majorca is stopping any new applications for holiday rentals.

Here’s a city in Europe that is banning outdoor tables at cafes and restaurants in the popular tourist areas.

Interest in the CIF Open Division state championship football game has diminished during an eight-game Northern California losing streak dominated by Mater Dei and St. John Bosco. Every time De La Salle or San Mateo Serra has shown up via bus or plane, the result has been the same.

Not since 2015 has a Southern California team lost in the top division. Now that Northern California teams know how Southern California teams felt when losing from 2007 through 2012, is it time for Northern California to end its losing streak?

De La Salle (12-0) was chosen Sunday to face Southern Section Division 1 champion Santa Margarita (10-3) in the Open Division final on Dec. 13 at 8 p.m. at Saddleback College. Coach Justin Alumbaugh insists there are signs his program is capable of ending the streak.

“I thought we had a chance last year,” he said, referring to a 37-15 loss to Mater Dei. “Mater Dei was incredible. But if we played a near-perfect game . . . we closed the gap. I liked our team last year and I like our team this year.”

In Southern California, change has happened. Neither Mater Dei nor St. John Bosco will be in the Open Division final for the first time since 2015. But that hardly means a drop in ability for the state championship. Everyone agrees the Southern Section Division 1 playoffs might be the best in the country, and Santa Margarita won the title by getting better each week, ending with a 42-7 rout of Corona Centennial on Friday night.

“Wow,” Alumbaugh said after watching the game at the Rose Bowl. “To hold Corona Centennial to seven points is one of the more impressive things.”

Alumbaugh brought along his 8-year-old son, and while Trent Mosley was catching 10 passes for 292 yards, his son asked, “Why don’t they stop No. 4?”

Now it’s going to be Alumbaugh’s problem.

De La Salle has a 22-day layoff before facing Santa Margarita, and Alumbaugh has “destroyed” plans from last season‘s game against Mater Dei trying to get his team to start better.

“Santa Margarita is really, really good,” Alumbaugh said. “The names might be different since 2015, but it doesn’t mean the caliber of team isn’t good.”

What gives De La Salle hope is its speed and balance on offense. The Spartans have three players who can run 100 meters in 10.5 seconds or faster, including the state’s fastest athlete, record holder Jaden Jefferson. Quarterback Brayden Knight is capable of completing clutch passes. And the defense has been particularly impressive with three shutouts.

“We’re showing up to compete,” Alumbaugh said. “That’s our mindset and in our blood. There were a couple years we knew we were overmatched. We have a good team. We can compete with any team in the country.”

That’s good news for fans bored with a running clock in the fourth quarter of championship games, such as when Serra lost 35-0 in 2023, 45-0 in 2022 and 44-7 in 2021.

But Santa Margarita coach Carson Palmer warned after his team’s win over Centennial, “We’re playing real good right now.”

Every section champion earned a state playoff berth, with regional action starting next weekend. The state finals are Dec. 12 and 13 at Saddleback College, Fullerton High and Buena Park High.

Los Alamitos and San Diego Cathedral Catholic will meet in the 1-AA regional final on Friday at Long Beach Veterans Stadiums, testing the Southern Section Division 2 champion against the San Diego Section Open Division winner. City Section Open Division champion Carson is in 3-A and will take Delano Kennedy at 6 p.m. on Saturday at home.

One of the best matchups is the only battle of the unbeaten teams, Rio Hondo Prep (14-0) taking on Solano Beach Santa Fe Christian (13-0) on Saturday at Carlsbad in 2-A.

Drone video shows widespread destruction in part of Sumatra in Indonesia, where more than 440 people have died in flooding and landslides across the country. Hundreds of others are still missing.

Winter – meteorologically speaking – has started on a very wet note with rain across much of the UK.

That trend is likely to continue for most of Monday and turn particularly heavy at times.

Rainfall totals will build quite widely but with very saturated ground there are numerous yellow Met Office warnings in force.

A more severe amber Met Office warning is in force for south Wales until 23:59 GMT.

Between 20 and 40mm (0.8 and 1.6in) of rain is expected to fall widely here, with some south-western facing hills seeing nearer to 120mm (4.7in).

This would mean a month’s worth of rain would fall in just one day.

Extensive flooding is possible along with disruption on the road and rail network, loss of power and communities potentially cut off.

The Met Office has also warned that fast flowing or deep floodwater is possible, causing a danger to life.

WHEN The Wanted reunited shortly before the tragic death of bandmate Tom Parker, it was hoped the band’s long-running feud had finally come to an end.

But instead of bringing them closer together, the brief reconciliation in 2021 did nothing to mend the secret divide – and now Nathan Sykes has spoken for the first time about the breakdown of the group’s friendships.

The Wanted – made up of Nathan, Tom, Max George, Siva Kaneswaran and Jay McGuiness – catapulted to fame in 2009 and became a platinum-selling group with hit songs including Glad You Came and All Time Low.

They split five years later, claiming at the time they were pausing to pursue solo careers. However, Max later confirmed simmering tension behind the scenes drove them apart – and they were no longer on speaking terms.

Speaking to The Sun, Nathan now says he’s in therapy to process his time in the band, admitting: “Looking back can be really happy, but it can be challenging as well.”

He has ruled out ever reuniting with The Wanted again – while Max and Siva have reformed as a duo to perform all over the world as The Wanted 2.0.

In a shock blow to fans, Nathan and Max unfollowed each other on Instagram, cutting off communication. Siva and Max were also missing from Nathan’s wedding to his girlfriend of six years, Charlotte Burke, in October.

Opening up about the struggles in the band, Nathan told us: “I think being content in where you are at in life and accepting things because they’ve happened and then navigating through them, that’s part of growing up and acknowledging things.

“Look, everyone goes through difficult times and everyone has challenging experiences.

“I feel very lucky, very fortunate that I got to do the most amazing things with the band and I have the most amazing memories.

“If there were difficulties within that, then that’s something that I need to kind of process.”

With any job, you form some relationships that are better than others

Nathan Sykes

Nathan still maintains a close friendship with Jay after the pair formed a bond in the band – something that he admits he didn’t have with the older members.

Nathan, who was just 16 when he joined The Wanted, was five years younger than Max and Tom. Siva was 20, while Jay was closest in age at 19.

He says being a teenager who was home-schooled while the others partied was part of the problem in how their relationship played out.

“I’ve got an amazing relationship with Jay,” he says.

“He was at my wedding a few weeks back. There’s a lot of love there.

“But with any job, you form some relationships that are better than others.

“I think with being the youngest, I naturally gravitated towards the person that was closest in age, which was Jay, who is three years older than me.

“With the older guys, especially when we started, I was 16 and the other three were 21, so there was always a difficulty in forming those bonds.”

Nathan added: “Bless them. Looking back, I really feel for them because they were like, ‘What are we meant to do with this child?’

“They could all go out, socialise, get to know each other, go sit in the pub, have a pint and find out about each other’s lives.

“I was back at the hotel where we were staying doing homework, so that’s always going to be difficult to figure out relationships.

“Then by the time the band ended, I was the same age that they were when it started. They were so far ahead of me in terms of life experience.”

However, Nathan insists that there’s no bad blood from his side and even claimed to be unaware of the social media snub.

An olive branch

In fact, the 32-year-old denied any fallout between him, Max and Siva – despite admitting they don’t talk.

“As far as I’m aware, there’s no problems at all. Genuinely, it’d be news to me.

“I can confirm that I haven’t unfollowed anyone. So I don’t know if there’s been a mistake somewhere, but I definitely haven’t unfollowed anyone.

“If I’m honest, I’m so bad with technology, I wouldn’t know how to.”

Offering an olive branch to his former bandmates, Nathan insisted: “If anyone rang me tomorrow and said, ‘I need a favour’, I think all of us would just be on the end of the phone.”

Before Tom’s death, The Wanted reunited for a greatest hits album and one-off show in 2021, followed by a tour in early 2022.

Reflecting on that time, Nathan added: “The reunion tour that we did, and the celebration of everything we achieved, was really important because we all got to see each other as adults for the first time.

“It was a really healing experience.

“And especially having that time with Tom. I wouldn’t swap that time for anything.”

Max suffered his own health struggles lately after doctors discovered a heart block, but after two surgeries he’s back performing.

He’s set to reunite with Siva for Mighty Hoopla in May 2026 after wrapping up their American tour last month.

Meanwhile Nathan, who was recently diagnosed with autism, is now focusing on his solo career, having released new album Ultraviolet last month.

It is his second solo album and follows his 2016 debut, Unfinished Business.

Nathan said: “I formed a really safe space within the writing group for my new album and I think that allowed me to be vulnerable with my writing and in my music.

“I’ve prioritised my safe space and my happy place, shall we say, and I think it’s really, really important to get to that place.

“Therapy definitely helps. I think it’s a really healthy thing.”

When he’s not in the studio or performing on stage, Nathan is happiest at home with his new wife Charlotte and their dog, Willow.

The animal lover became an ambassador for Dogs Trust, inspired by his 13-year-old Dalmatian.

Nathan said: “I get overwhelmed in social situations so having a best friend in Willow means the world to me.

“She’s at an age now where she’s definitely qualified for a bus pass, she’s a little old lady and she’s absolutely precious. She brings us so much joy and is the centre of our world.

“Willow even helped us to unwrap our wedding presents because she gets so much joy out of unwrapping presents. That’s her happy place.”

Despite Nathan’s assurances there’s not a problem between him, Max and Siva, it’s clear there is friendship is non-existent, and with any chance of a reunion ruled out, the possibility of them being involved in each other’s lives seems over.

However, as Nathan says: “I’m always at the other end of the phone.” Let’s hope the boys have a change of heart and choose to make that call.

After years of attending the likes of Winter Wonderland and other Christmas markets across the UK, this felt like a breath of fresh air to me – stripping it back to basics

Tucked away in the rolling hills of Derbyshire, people from all over the UK take the drive down winding roads to find themselves at Chatsworth Christmas Market – and now I know exactly why.

Albeit a bit of a journey for those not living in villages nearby, unlike some of the rest of the UK’s most popular Christmas markets which tend to sit smack bang in the middle of a city centre, Chatsworth Christmas Market offers something different. I felt as though it was a truly festive event, exactly as intended, full of traditional offerings, with a warm and fuzzy feeling, and a lot more class over tat.

Many people’s complaints from some of the UK’s most frequented markets have all been down to high prices, overcrowding and the lack of offerings outside of festive food. A lot of the comments I’ve read online have seen people asking what is on offer, aside from food, and why it’s all so expensive at other destinations.

Instantly it was clear to me that Chatsworth was ready to dismiss these beliefs and instead opt to use local vendors and small businesses with their gifting and food creations. Moving away from the viral food trends and fairground rides, they stuck to providing visitors with local vendors.

From Bakewell tarts made right there in Bakewell to Derbyshire-made honeys and jams, local cheesemongers, and butchers – and that’s just the food alone. Alongside it was a wide range of hand-crafted gift stalls, from hand-knitted scarves and gloves to jewellery, candles, customisable notebooks, home decor, fashion and more – totalling over 100 individual stalls, all housed by local brands.

I opted for trying, frankly, the biggest focaccia I’ve ever seen for just £9, which I thought was reasonable considering the ever-popular Yorkshire pudding wraps can cost up to £15. My sweet tooth was further treated to chunky cookies, one stuffed with Dubai chocolate and the other Milkybar, for £4.75 each – again what I’d consider to be a fair price for the size and flavours they had to offer.

Other food available, I thought, matched this with its reasonable prices, with bacon rolls for £7.50, loaded fries for £10, crepes starting at £7.50 and coffees ranging from £3.95 to £5.50. Of course, you’re always going to pay more within an enclosed market, similar to that of festivals, and it’s safe to say I didn’t even scratch the surface with the delicious dishes you can choose from.

What is undeniably special about this market is, of course, that it’s set against the backdrop of the gorgeous grounds of the estate. As you stand at the top of the market, you’re looking out at luscious greenery, with the House itself towering over it, for unmatched views of Chatsworth.

Whilst you take a stroll around the market, which admittedly took longer than I anticipated as I was surprised with just how big the space would be, you are serenaded by live music. There was a traditional brass band playing some classic Christmas tunes, as well as a humming street organ adding to that wholesome festive feeling – as opposed to screaming children or booming music from rides.

Although, the elephant in the room with this event is the sheer price, and let’s face it, it’s not cheap. It now costs £30 for a parking spot at Chatsworth House Christmas Markets, and this acts as your entry fee, so it’s recommended that you pile as many friends into one vehicle as possible to get your money’s worth.

On top of this, visitors can experience a festive tour of the famed house itself as a part of ‘Chatsworth at Christmas’ for £40. If you choose to book this experience, your entry to the market perched upon Lodge Hill is also included – if you’re travelling far, I think it’s worth making a day out of it.

The overall atmosphere, in my opinion, was one that felt far more inviting and especially tailored for adults than that of the UK’s busiest markets. Having visited London’s landmark Winter Wonderland numerous times now, there’s only so much heavy drinking, loud music, expensive rides and long queues that one can take. Chatsworth offers a higher-end version of this experience for those who are there for the sweet treats and mooching, not just a day of drinking beer out of a stein glass.

A travel expert has shown how a perfectly legal train booking method called ticket splitting helped her save significant money on a journey from London to Manchester

If soaring rail fares have driven you towards lengthy car journeys and packed coaches, one travel expert claims there’s a completely legal method to pay significantly less for both short and long trips across Britain.

Amy Doherty, a travel expert at Travel by Luxe who frequently shares money-saving tips for British travellers, says she has discovered a technique that can “beat the system” without breaking any rules. She explains the secret lies in something known as train splitting.

“You’re essentially buying two or more tickets that cover your whole trip, and bizarrely, this often works out cheaper than buying one straightforward ticket from A to B,” said Amy.

Amy insists the process is far simpler than most people think. “A few years ago, you had to manually check every stop the train passed through to find savings. Now, most major booking platforms do it for you. They scan thousands of fare combinations and bring up the cheapest. It’s honestly one of the simplest ways to save money on train travel.”

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To demonstrate its effectiveness, she recently tested it using an actual journey from London Euston to Manchester Piccadilly, one of Britain’s busiest long-distance routes.

Amy explained: “A direct ticket from London to Manchester can easily cost around £90 for a standard single if you book late. But by splitting the journey at Milton Keynes Central, the price dropped dramatically.

“I booked a standard ticket from London to Milton Keynes, and then another from Milton Keynes to Manchester. The total came in at £65 instead of £90. Exact same journey, same day, same destination… but £25 cheaper.”

Whilst some passengers simply use split tickets to cut the basic fare, Amy revealed an even cleverer approach: dividing your journey between standard and first class.

“What the booking apps don’t always highlight is when you could upgrade part of your trip to first class, and still save money overall. That’s the real magic of this hack. Sometimes the first-class fare for a shorter section of the route is incredibly cheap. If you combine that with a standard ticket for the first leg, you can travel in serious comfort without paying a premium.”

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Using the Manchester example, she explains: “I went through every stop the train passed. On this route, Milton Keynes offered the perfect balance. A standard fare into Milton Keynes can be reasonable, and first-class advance fares from Milton Keynes up to Manchester can be surprisingly low if you book ahead. It meant I could upgrade to first class for the second half of the trip without blowing the budget.”

In Amy’s situation, the direct first-class ticket from London to Manchester on the same day was over £150. However, by splitting the fare, she managed to secure the standard-plus-first-class combination for around £80, saving roughly £70 overall, whilst still enjoying the benefits.

She adds: “This isn’t always the case, but it happens more often than people think. British rail pricing is unpredictable at the best of times, and that inconsistency actually creates opportunities.”

Amy also revealed that occasionally this method means hanging around briefly at the changeover station. “For the Manchester trip, we ended up waiting about 40 minutes at Milton Keynes because the earlier train into the station was cheaper and quicker. That little pause saved enough money to feel well worth it, and Milton Keynes has plenty of places to grab a coffee while you wait.”

How to save money with train splitting

1. First, check how much the full first-class ticket would cost. That gives you your baseline.
2. Next, examine every potential stopping point along the route. On certain lines there are two distinct train services, an express service and a stopping service, so you’ll need to review both.
3. After that, start searching individual single fares between your starting point and each of those stops, checking the standard price and the first-class price for each section.” Amy says she frequently uses booking platforms that display standard and first-class prices together, because “it becomes so obvious where the sweet spot is.”
4. When you identify that “cheap first-class leg”, she says, the choice is straightforward. “If the numbers work out, book it. You can often treat yourself to a proper comfy ride for less than the cost of a single standard ticket for the whole journey.”

At 38 years of age, Darren Hughes has done a lot in his football career, but the Scotstown veteran is thrilled to have another opportunity to win an Ulster club title following Sunday’s epic semi-final win over Newbridge.

Hughes stroked home the winning penalty in the shootout after the game finished 2-20 apiece after extra-time, joking “I wanted to hit the first one and get it out of the road”, but was simply relieved to have come out on the right side.

Leading by 10 early in the second half and then by nine with 15 to go, it seemed Scotstown were well on their way to a return to the final for the first time since 2023, but Newbridge forced extra-time and then penalties with Conor McAteer twice finding equalisers.

However, they held their nerve, converting all four of their spot-kicks with Newbridge missing their final two as Scotstown emerged 4-2 winners.

“A couple of times we could have lost it, but we’ve been around the block this year, going to extra-time in our club championship and have been here before in the Ulster Club against Trillick a couple of years ago,” Hughes told BBC Sport NI.

“We just tried to call on those experiences, reset and go again. It took penalties but thankfully we got over it.

“We probably let them back into it, but credit to them, they could maybe have pinched it if there was another minute or two at the end, but thankfully we will be back here in two weeks.”

Scotstown will now face Kilcoo in the final on Saturday, 13 December, whom they lost heavily to in last year’s semi-final after edging the Magpies in 2023.

A first Ulster title since 1989 is on offer for the Monaghan club, but Hughes is aware of the challenge they will face.

“We’ve had plenty of good days and plenty of bad days, so it’s great to be able to look forward to the final against Kilcoo,” he added.

“We didn’t feel as though we did ourselves justice last year when they steamrolled us.

“The year before we won by a point but the biggest difference between us and them is they know how to win an Ulster club, so there’s a lot of work to do over the next two weeks.”

Dec. 1 (UPI) — Authorities in Australia on Monday said they have arrested and charged four Sydney men for their alleged role in what they called “an international satanic child sex abuse material ring.”

The suspects were detained Thursday when police executed six search warrants in the Sydney regions of Waterloo, Ultimo and Malabar, the New South Wales Police said Monday in a statement.

At the Waterloo residence, a 26-year-old man was arrested. Police allege he played a leading role in the illicit group. The three other suspects, aged 39, 42, and 49, were arrested at a unit block in Malabar.

The suspects were arrested by officers of Strike Force Constantine, which investigates the online distribution of child sexual abuse material involving ritualistic or satanic themes.

Officers with the task force uncovered what the NSW Police Force said was “a Sydney-based pedophile network” involved in facilitating, possessing and distributing such illegal material via an internationally administered website.

All four men were denied bail Friday.

Video of the arrest at the Waterloo location was shared with reporters showing masked officers in tactical gear storm an apartment. The 26-year-old suspect, seen dressed in a zebra print shirt and pants, is escorted from the residence in handcuffs by police. The suspect hides his face with the brim of a baseball cap pulled down.

An excerpt of the video was published on social media by the NSW Police Force.

Dept. Supt. Jayne Doherty told reporters during a press conference Monday that the suspects had shared “abhorrent” content online involving children as young as infants, as well as animals.

Thousands of videos were discovered on electronic devices seized during the execution of the search warrants last week, she said.

“Police will allege in court that this international group were engaging in conversations and the sharing of material which depicted child abuse and the torture of children involving symbols and rituals linked to Satanism and the occult,” she said.

The abuse captured was “particularly devastating in that they used symbols and rituals around it in the discussions that they were having about abusing children,” she said, adding, “it had. a very ritualistic overview.”

The four men have been charged with various counts related to the possession and online distribution of child sex abuse and bestiality material.

Authors: Tuhu Nugraha and Taufan Teguh Akbari*

Why the Third Space Leader Matters Now

As if these psychological and digital pressures were not complex enough, the broader geopolitical landscape intensifies them.

The need for a new leadership model is even more urgent in today’s geopolitical landscape. The intensifying U.S – China rivalry is pressuring many Southern nations into binary alignments they do not want. Leaders who maintain strategic autonomy engaging both sides without becoming proxies are essential.

Simultaneously, the global AI transition is outpacing regulation. Without emotionally grounded leadership, uncertainty becomes fertile ground for disinformation, techno-populism, and governance paralysis.

Climate instability adds further stress. Extreme weather, food inflation, and migration erode public trust. The lack of a stable, equitable global climate solution creates opportunities for authoritarian populists who promise simple answers to complex crises.

In this environment, the Global South does not need leaders who merely perform globality, nor those who retreat into defensive nationalism. It needs leaders who can navigate complexity with calmness, legitimacy, and clarity.

Many regions now operate within overlapping spheres of influence, making geopolitical navigation an exercise in diplomacy as much as national strategy. Leaders must balance economic interdependence with political independence, crafting relationships that protect national interests without submitting to global pressures. This balancing requirement aligns with the emerging profile of a Third Space Leader.At the same time, climate shocks and technological disruptions strain public trust, increasing susceptibility to simplistic narratives and divisive populism. Leaders who can interpret these cross-cutting crises without amplifying anxiety become critical stabilizers in the global system. Their value lies not in charisma alone but in emotional and strategic maturity.

The Third Space Leader

A Third Space Leader is neither a technocratic elite nor a populist strongman. They represent a new equilibrium, global enough to command respect, local enough to earn trust. They move confidently in international forums yet remain grounded in local memory and moral vocabulary. They understand both algorithmic behavior and human psychology. Above all, they operate without the emotional weight of inherited insecurity or resentment.

A new conceptual area that lies outside the two conventional poles of human and technological capacities is referred to as “Third Space.” Human intuition, empathy, morality, and ideals are on one side. Artificial intelligence, algorithms, and data are examples of technical competence. Operating at the nexus of these two worlds, a Third Space Leader neither fully submits to data-driven reasoning devoid of ethical perspective nor exclusively relies on unproven utopian aspirations.

Such a leader is neither the “old-style leader” who relies solely on intuition and experience nor the “new technocratic leader” who blindly adores automation and efficiency. Rather, this leader creates a more advanced, integrated, and comprehensive leadership paradigm by combining human depth with technology expertise.

This synthesis reflects the demands of modern diplomacy, which increasingly requires leaders to operate across institutional, cultural, digital, and psychological domains simultaneously. Leaders must understand technological systems while retaining the human intuition needed to interpret emotion-driven publics. The Third Space Leader embodies this hybrid competence.Their greatest strength lies in coherence: the ability to harmonize global fluency with local grounding, digital alignment with ethical clarity, and emotional intelligence with strategic foresight. This makes them uniquely suited to guide societies through a landscape where identity, technology, and geopolitics intertwine.

Why the North Should Support Third Space Leaders

Though rarely said aloud, a Third Space Leader is not only beneficial for the South, they are also the most stabilizing and predictable partners for the North.

They provide clarity without submissiveness, autonomy without antagonism, and steadiness without theatrics. They are less likely to swing into populist volatility or harden into isolationist authoritarianism.

For the North, the greatest challenge in the South is instability not poverty or lack of capacity. Volatility disrupts investment, supply chains, and cooperation. Hyper-nationalist regimes, on the other hand, threaten markets, assets, and diplomatic channels.

A Third Space Leader sits at the midpoint global stability increasingly requires. Research from Chatham House, UNDP, and CSIS converges on this: the future of global cooperation depends on emerging leadership models in the Global South.

For the North, stability is strategic. For the South, dignity is essential. For both, the Third Space Leader is the bridge.

Many analyses of global cooperation highlight that predictability is the most valuable trait in international partnerships. States seek leaders who can negotiate firmly yet constructively, uphold agreements without political whiplash, and maintain ethical consistency even in turbulent environments. Third Space Leaders meet these criteria by balancing autonomy with dialogic openness.

For societies in the South, dignity is equally essential. A leader who is respected globally yet rooted locally gives citizens a sense of pride without sacrificing sovereignty. For the North, such leaders ensure regional stability. Thus, a Third Space Leader becomes not only a domestic necessity but a global asset.

Closing

The evolution of leadership in this direction marks a shift from externally derived validation toward internally cultivated legitimacy. When societies recognize the worth of their own cultural identity, they reshape their place in the global landscape not through imitation, but through confidence. This is the foundation from which the next generation of diplomatic leadership must rise.

Reimagining leadership in the Global South is not about mimicking Western templates or assembling algorithm-friendly personas. It is a slow act of psychological restoration until citizens can say, not “They look like them,” but:

“They look like us and the world respects that.”

Algorithms cannot rewrite this narrative.

But Third Space Leaders can.

*Taufan Teguh Akbari, Leadership, Innovation & Sustainability Strategist

Since its launch in November 2022, hundreds of millions of people have used ChatGPT to write wedding toasts, college essays, apology texts, bad jokes and even worse poetry. Billy Ray — Oscar-nominated screenwriter and unapologetic human being — is not one of them.

Ray, whose writing credits include “Shattered Glass,” “Captain Phillips” and “The Hunger Games” (that now-iconic Nicole Kidman AMC ad with “Somehow heartbreak feels good in a place like this” is also his), has never even opened the ChatGPT site. Not to fix a clunky line. Not to win a bar trivia argument. Not to figure out what to do with the leftovers in his fridge.

A series on how the AI revolution is reshaping the creative foundations of Hollywood — from storytelling and performance to production, labor and power.

To Ray, generative AI — already creeping into every corner of Hollywood, from script development and previsualization to casting and marketing — isn’t just another tool for creatives, like Final Draft or a Steadicam. It’s an existential threat, “a cancer masquerading as a profit center,” he says, eroding not just storytelling but the storyteller.

“My level of impostor syndrome, neuroticism and guilt is high enough while I’m working my ass off,” Ray says by phone, his voice equal parts weariness and outrage. “There’s no way I’d make myself feel worse by letting a machine do my writing for me. Zero interest.”

When AI hype and fear first swept through the entertainment industry, screenwriters quickly found themselves on the front lines — and the picket lines. During the 2023 strike, the Writers Guild won precedent-setting contract language: Studios can’t require writers to use AI, and anything generated by it can’t be considered “literary” or “source” material. Writers are free to use AI if they choose — but only with the studio’s approval, and under rules that protect credit, authorship and intellectual property.

The agreement was hailed as a landmark: the first real attempt to set limits on a fast-moving, poorly understood technology. But for Ray, those protections don’t go far enough. The tools are getting exponentially more powerful, he says, and adoption is already happening quietly, behind closed doors. “What I’m hearing anecdotally is that studios and streamers are putting more and more time and energy into exploring what AI can do for them,” he says. “The result will inevitably be chaos, bad movies, bad TV shows and a lot of people out of work.”

A longtime WGA member and former co-chair of the guild’s negotiating committee, Ray says his level of alarm is greater now than it was during the strike. That alarm is shared by many in a business where thousands of writers already hustle from project to project and where the prospect of studios using AI to shrink writers’ rooms, eliminate junior positions or even generate first drafts has added new urgency to the debate. The anxiety is not theoretical: According to the Writers Guild’s 2024 financial report, the number of members reporting earnings fell by nearly 10% from the prior year — and by more than 24% compared with 2022.

Signs decrying AI were ubiquitous on the picket lines when the Writers Guild of America went on strike in 2023.

(Jay L. Clendenin / Los Angeles Times)

With AI technology leaping ahead at algorithmic speed, Ray is urging the union to move faster. “We need to put firewalls in place before the next round of negotiations,” he says. “That’s going to be necessary.” Though he still refuses to touch AI himself, he isn’t trying to police his peers. “I’m not telling writers they can’t use it,” he says. “But the public has a right to know when they’re watching something written by a human being. And I think they want to know.”

As he speaks about the potentially apocalyptic implications — for Hollywood and for humanity at large — Ray sounds both incredulous and downright scared. “We as a species have a limited window to get control of AI and put guardrails around it, but we as writers have an even more limited window,” he says, his frustration rising. “It makes no sense. If all Hollywood has to offer is a bunch of warmed-over AI bulls—, why would someone turn away from TikTok or YouTube?”

Across the film industry, AI has begun to permeate nearly every stage of the production pipeline: helping directors visualize scenes before they’re shot, cloning actors’ voices for foreign dubs and assisting editors in assembling early rough cuts. But of all the creative roles AI is taking on, writing may be the most controversial — and at risk. Actors can fight to protect their likeness. Directors still need a crew to execute their vision. Writers often work in solitude, in front of a blinking cursor, the very place AI is now starting to intrude.

Unlike a human writer, a “large language model” — the technical term for AI systems like ChatGPT that are trained on massive amounts of text — doesn’t grasp plot, motivation or theme in any true sense. It can stitch together scenes that feel plausible on the surface — a couple arguing in the rain, a soldier saying goodbye before heading off to war — and can sometimes even surprise you with a turn of phrase or an unexpected twist. What it can’t do is understand what those moments mean or shape them to make an audience feel something lasting.

To be fair, that might also describe more than a few human-written screenplays. And Hollywood has long flirted with the idea of turning writing into a system. In the 1970s and ’80s, a cottage industry blossomed around screenwriting formulas — from Syd Field’s three-act paradigm to Robert McKee’s guru lectures and the ever-resilient “Save the Cat” beat sheet. Storytelling became something you could learn, teach and sell, often quite successfully. (See: “Adaptation,” which turned the whole idea into a punch line.)

The difference now is that the machine isn’t just applying the formula — it’s trying to do the writing itself.

The late critic Roger Ebert famously called cinema a “machine that generates empathy.” But as generative AI takes on more of the creative process, a deeper question emerges: What does it mean when stories are shaped by a system that, for now at least, can’t feel — and whose users may not need it to?

“I’m scared of it,” says writer-director Todd Haynes, whose films, including “Safe,” “Far From Heaven” and “May December” (scripted by Samy Burch and Oscar-nominated for its screenplay), explore all-too-human themes of identity, sexuality and social constraint. “Creativity is born out of mistakes, obfuscation, fumblings, desire — things that computer technology can never replace.”

Who’s holding the pen now?

In the spring of 2023, two weeks after the writers’ strike began — and with the actors soon to join them on the picket lines — Hollywood’s first “AI on the Lot” conference opened its doors in Hollywood, a bold show of tech optimism in the midst of labor upheaval.

“We thought we were going to have picketers out front,” says organizer Todd Terrazas, who founded the nonprofit AI LA and co-founded FBRC.ai, an AI-driven venture studio launched in 2023 to bridge creativity and technology. “But sure enough, there was none of that. Six hundred people showed up and really leaned into how this technology could expand the industry and support everyone.”

Todd Terrazas, founder of AI LA and FBRC.ai., photographed outside his office in Venice, CA.

(Carlin Stiehl / Los Angeles Times)

Two years later, by this spring’s edition, the event had expanded and moved to the Culver Theater, drawing nearly twice the crowd with 1,100 attendees, a mix of indie filmmakers, startup founders and tech execs from Google, Amazon, Nvidia and OpenAI. The vibe was more techno-optimism than hand-wringing. But the stage was still missing something: writers.

“AI is a very touchy subject, especially for writers, because it’s so personal,” says Terrazas, who has emerged as a key connector between Hollywood creatives and the fast-expanding AI tech world. “Even though they’re experimenting with large language models to help organize thoughts or explore new characters or ideas, at the end of the day they want to be known as the one who actually wrote everything, like, ‘This was 95% me.’”

In a legal gray zone where authorship is murky and copyright law hasn’t caught up with technology, what’s at stake isn’t just credit or ego but ownership. “Writers are walking a tight line,” Terrazas adds. “They want to be very careful that they’re showing their work, documenting their process, so they can obtain copyright and stay in bounds with the studios and the guilds.”

While many writers worry about AI encroaching on authorship, a wave of startups sees opportunity — not to replace writers, they say, but to streamline the clutter around them. Amit Gupta, who co-founded the AI writing tool Sudowrite in 2020, began development by interviewing screenwriters about what they actually needed. The complaints he heard were often surprisingly mundane. “They’d say they dreaded writing the logline, the one-page treatment, the three-page treatment, once the screenplay was done,” he says. These were exactly the kind of mundane tasks his AI platform could automate.

Some studio executives may already be imagining a future with fewer writers, a field that’s historically one of the most developmentally expensive and unpredictable parts of making a movie. Since the spec script boom of the 1990s, when writers like Shane Black (“Lethal Weapon”) commanded multimillion-dollar paydays, screenwriting has carried a uniquely speculative price structure for work that’s often unproven. Robert Altman’s 1992 film “The Player” famously centered on a murder of a screenwriter, satirizing the industry’s long love-hate relationship with the written word.

But Gupta pushes back on that vision. He says AI is far from being able to write a good movie on its own — at least not yet. “You could watch it,” he says. “But you’re not going to like watching it.” What excites him more is the potential for co-creation, humans still driving the process with machines supporting rather than replacing them.

“I think that’s where the skill of the writer really comes in,” Gupta says. “If I go to ChatGPT and say, ‘Write me a short story about someone in L.A., reading an article on the film industry and hanging out with their dog,’ it will give me something generic, because that’s what the model is. But the prompt actually matters a lot. The people who are really good with this stuff are kind of mind-blowing.”

What exactly qualifies as a mind-blowing prompt is not entirely clear, but Gupta believes developing that kind of conjuring ability will become as essential as programming or writing itself. “Once you get adept at handling it with precision, it feels like a tool — not something doing the work for you. That’s going to be a very real skill set in the future.”

A fault line in the craft

If Gupta sees AI as a tireless, ego-free assistant for the grunt work of writing, others have leaned in further, treating it more like a virtual writers’ room — riffing on scenes, dialogue and structure — or even an uncredited auteur behind the curtain.

In January, Paul Schrader, the writer of “Taxi Driver” and his Oscar-nominated “First Reformed,” known for his psychologically intense, deeply human portraits of guilt and faith, caused a stir by praising ChatGPT online as a kind of creative oracle. After asking the AI chatbot to generate movie ideas in the style of various auteurs — Paul Thomas Anderson, Ingmar Bergman, Martin Scorsese, Quentin Tarantino, David Lynch — he was floored.

“I’M STUNNED,” Schrader wrote on Facebook. “Every idea ChatGPT came up with (in a few seconds) was good. And original. And fleshed out. Why should writers sit around for months searching for a good idea when AI can provide one in seconds?”

Writer-director Paul Schrader, photographed by The Times in 2018.

(Los Angeles Times)

In another post, Schrader said the model instantly gave feedback on an old script he had written years earlier “as good or better than I’ve ever received from a film executive.” The experience, he said, left him certain that AI was the superior writer: “This is an existential moment, akin to what Kasparov felt in 1997 when he realized Deep Blue was going to beat him at chess.”

The backlash came fast. “Paul, is everything OK?” one commenter wrote. Ever the provocateur, Schrader showed no sign of backing down, gleefully sharing AI-generated images, including one in which he is seen conjuring characters with a magic pen.

Asked about Schrader’s AI enthusiasm, Billy Ray offered a pointed retort: “I have enormous regard for his career and for the work he’s done — he wrote ‘Taxi Driver,’ for God’s sake. But I don’t see how that’s helpful.”

Filmmaker Bong Joon Ho takes a more humanist tack. The writer and director of genre-scrambling films like “Snowpiercer,” “Parasite” and “Mickey 17” — a mix of original stories and literary adaptations — acknowledges AI’s value as a subject for sci-fi but doubts its capacity to tell stories with real depth or irony.

“We’ve seen from films like ‘The Terminator’ that AI can be a great source of drama, and we can create a lot of stories around it,” he told The Times earlier this year. “But I honestly don’t think AI programs will write a fun story about themselves and how s— AI can be. I feel like I am a better writer for those stories.”

Others worry that as AI becomes embedded in Hollywood, even human-written work will start to sound like the data it was trained on: smoother, safer, harder to tell apart. Roma Murphy, a young writer and story artist who serves as co-chair of the Animation Guild’s AI Committee — one of several new working groups formed in the wake of the 2023 strikes — describes herself as “a bit of a purist.” Like many, she is concerned about the exploitation of unlicensed material — the countless film and TV scripts that may have been scraped to train AI now being pitched back to the industry.

“I’m certainly not going to type my own ideas into the platform and just give them to it to train with,” Murphy says.

“Look, it’s much better than it was in 2022 — it can at least generate a document,” she says. “But I have yet to meet someone who was still thinking about their AI screenplay more than 12 hours later. People engage with art because they want to see some truth about humanity reflected back to them, and AI is never going to reflect a new truth. Nothing I’ve seen generated feels like anything more than a cheap party trick.”

Striking Writers Guild of America workers picket outside the Sunset Bronson Studios on Tuesday, May 2, 2023.

(Luis Sinco / Los Angeles Times)

At film schools, where many future screenwriters get their start, the question of when and how to introduce AI has become its own point of debate. USC’s School of Cinematic Arts, one of the nation’s most influential film programs and alma mater to filmmakers like George Lucas and Ryan Coogler, now offers courses like “Art in Post-Reality: Critical and Creative Approaches to AI” and “AI Magic: Revolutionizing Media and Workplace Creativity.”

According to Holly Willis, chair of the Media Arts and Practice Division and co-director of USC’s new AI for Media & Storytelling initiative, student attitudes toward the technology vary widely.

Willis points to the first AI-focused class USC offered in 2023, launched during the height of the strikes. “The students came in very wary,” she recalls. “They weren’t even telling their friends they were in the class — out of fear of reprisal. Some were saying, ‘Why am I paying for this education when you could just prompt and make a film?’”

But even as the school has integrated AI across a range of filmmaking disciplines, one area remains off-limits: screenwriting. “We’ve been very intentional about protecting that early phase when students are still figuring out who they are as writers,” Willis says. “They need space to develop their own voice and stories before turning to tools like this. Understanding how the technology works is important, but so is safeguarding that vulnerable creative moment.”

Writing in the gray zone

Oscar Sharp arrived in the future a little earlier than most in Hollywood. Nearly a decade ago, the British filmmaker set out to see what would happen if a computer tried to reverse engineer a science-fiction screenplay using nothing but genre tropes. “My writer friends joked with me, quite reasonably, ‘You hate writing so much that you’d build a machine to do it for you, even if it’s really bad,’ ” Sharp says dryly. “There’s some truth to that.” But his real aim, he says, was to see what the genre’s average story looked like when processed by an early AI model.

The result was 2016’s “Sunspring,” a nine-minute short scripted by a custom-built neural net —dubbed Benjamin — trained on dozens of sci-fi films, mostly from the ‘80s and ‘90s. Created with AI researcher Ross Goodwin, the film stitched together a surreal, dystopian mashup of familiar — if often nonsensical — beats, delivered by Thomas Middleditch and the cast with deadpan sincerity. A year later, Sharp followed with “It’s No Game,” a short set during a fictional AI-inspired writers’ strike, featuring David Hasselhoff performing AI-generated dialogue distilled from his past work in shows like “Knight Rider” and “Baywatch.”

Screenwriter Billy Ray calls AI a “cancer masquerading as a profit center.”

(Marcus Ubungen / For The Times)

In truth, Sharp’s AI experimentation was less about replacing writing than exposing the underlying code of storytelling itself. “It’s looking for statistical patterns — like, what similar things have happened before,” Sharp, a discursive and reflective speaker, says on a video call. “But those patterns were themselves created by feedback loops. So if you train something on them, you’re just deepening those same loops.”

Today, Sharp is still experimenting with AI but only very occasionally and never to outsource the work. He’s more cautious about how publicly he engages. “I’ve kept a pretty low profile about this sort of stuff,” he says, aware of how charged the debate has become within the industry. He suspects he’s not alone. “Far more people are probably using it than are comfortable saying they are,” he says. “It’s widely available and extremely effective for those who employ it in particular ways. It would be very weird if that wasn’t happening.”

Sometimes he uses it not as a collaborator but as a kind of negative muse, a foil to push against.

“I’ve asked it to write a really bad scene — just let it go kind of mad,” he says. “Then I rewrite every damn word, often doing the opposite of what it gave me. It’s actually pretty adaptive for a writing process. Writers have always looked for ways to get the ball rolling. Whether they’re Hemingway and they get drunk to get the ball to roll is up to them. But in terms of a process, it’s not that different.”

What worries him more is what happens if, over time, that ball keeps rolling in the same direction. “Set it to make money and AI will produce feedback loops, loops that make things less good,” Sharp says. “That gets you McDonald’s. But humans still want mother’s home cooking too.”

During the 2023 strike, Sharp marched with fellow writers, many holding signs aimed squarely at the moment’s anxieties. Some read: “Alexa will not replace us.” Or “AI came up with 10 suggestions for this sign: THEY ALL SUCKED.”

One afternoon, as he marched in a circle in the summer heat, a delivery robot — one of dozens now trundling through L.A. neighborhoods — rolled past.

A dark, unmistakably human thought crossed Sharp’s mind. “There I am, walking round and round with these folks,” he says, “and I remember thinking, ‘They should send a fleet of those robots down here with AI protest signs on their backs to walk the circle for us.’ Because it’s really hot out here and nobody wants to be doing this.”

For now, Sharp plans to keep experimenting quietly, pushing back against the technology he once treated as a curiosity — and wondering how long that will still feel like a choice.

Barbara has also explained why she has to hide water

A flight attendant has revealed the surprising rukes she has to follow when in uniform. Barbara Bacilieri worked as a flight attendant for 14 years. Now a travel influencer, the 33-year-old revealed five things she’s banned from doing while wearing the airline’s colours.

Barbara said: “Kissing and public displays of affection are prohibited. We’re also banned from smoking, whether tobacco or vape pens.”

And for any cabin crew member who has recently quit smoking, they aren’t allowed to chew gum either. And that includes “blowing bubbles” with the gum, she said. Barbara said flight attendants have to be careful about where they drink tea or coffee.”

She said: “Drinking coffee at the boarding gate is also forbidden. And of course, alcohol is strictly prohibited”, she said, “but water isn’t denied to anyone.”

Barbara also revealed that flight attendants are sizing up the passengers from the moment they step on the plane. She said: “When you board the plane and we greet you with a smile, we’re actually assessing you in seconds.

“While we say ‘welcome’ or ‘hello’, we’re observing if you’re walking with any difficulty. We’re checking if you’re nervous or apparently under the influence of alcohol. Whether you’re travelling with babies or people who might need assistance.”

She added: “And also if you could be helpful in an emergency, for example, if you seem strong or have medical training.”

Barbara previously said she serves passengers water in secret to stop a “domino effect” on board the plane. She explained: “If a passenger asks for a glass of water, we give it to them secretly.”

Barbara explained that the sly trick isn’t part of formal airline training – it’s something flight attendants learn on the job. Even though it’s free and part of the basic service, Barbara said it can quickly get out of hand. “Water is contagious,” she said.

“If someone sees a flight attendant walk by with a cup in their hand, passengers in other seats immediately start asking for the same. That’s why, when we carry it, we hide it.

“This isn’t a strict policy or an airline mandate, but rather a trick learned through experience.”

Barbara explained that on longer flights, a wave of water requests can throw off the entire service flow, which is why discretion is key. She also urged passengers not to hit the call button for water – but to pop to the galley and ask quietly instead.