baby

In the aftermath of the British and Irish Lions’ third Test against Australia in Sydney, a beaming Bundee Aki was riffing about all sorts of things.

The topics included the series win being the greatest achievement of his career, the special bonds forged between the players and how he would love to see Andy Farrell go again as Lions coach in 2029.

Then he mentioned something extraordinary, almost in passing – his wife Kayla had given birth to their fifth child in a car on her way to the hospital before the first Test of the series.

Asked what he wanted to do now, the New Zealand-born Ireland centre replied: “I want to enjoy my break, my family time.

“I haven’t seen my family for eight weeks. I have a newborn child who I haven’t met yet.”

Pardon?

“Yep, a girl. She was born when we were playing in Brisbane, so I haven’t met her. Her name is Aine, so I’m looking forward to going and meeting her,” he added.

Sorry?

“Credit to my wife,” he went on.

Indeed, much credit to Kayla, who has now given birth to the couple’s fifth child.

The first was born in hospital and the next three at home, while Aine entered the world in the back of a car en route to a hospital in New Zealand, where the rest of the Akis were visiting family, as Bundee and the Lions prepared for the first Test in Brisbane.

The remarkable scene happened mid-tour and never got out in public.

“She’s a powerful woman, a strong woman. If you only knew the story of what happened, it’s a funny story in itself,” the 35-year-old said.

At that point, Aki was faced with a gaggle of journalists desperate for the full story.

We have journeyed around Australia for six weeks looking for gold like this and here we were, literally doing the last player interview of the entire trip and the greatest tale of the tour was tumbling out in front of us.

“Have we got time?” asked the Connacht player. He may as well have asked if we would like a free lunch.

“It was a good day. I was in the team hotel. I knew we were overdue. The missus calls me and she’s like, ‘My water hasn’t broken but I’m going to the hospital, I’m feeling contractions’.

“We were getting ready for the team meeting pre-match and she calls back and says she’s now on the way to the hospital.

“Five minutes later, she sends a photo – her water had broken. I was like, ‘Cool, OK, are you almost there?’ This is like 30 or 40 minutes away from the hospital. I said, ‘You’ll be all right, Mum is there’.

“Ten minutes later, she video calls. I was like, ‘What’s going on?’ – and I saw a baby on the video call. She had it in the car on the way to the hospital. They’re both strong and healthy, so happy days.”

TOTTENHAM star Son Heung-min was cradled like a baby by a 7ft 2in former MMA star at an open training session earlier today.

The South Korean superstar and his team-mates took part in the session at the home of Anyang FC in Seoul.

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After training, Son was joined pitchside by Korean ex-MMA fighter Choi Hong-man.

The enormous wrestler competed in MMA between 2006 and 2016, and even fought arguably the greatest heavyweight of all time Fedor Emelianenko.

During the interaction, Choi picked Son up and began cradling him.

The Tottenham captain, not exactly small at 6ft, was in fits of giggles while being picked up, even sheepishly covering his face.

Spurs will take on Newcastle in front of 66,000 fans at Seoul World Cup Stadium, home of the South Korean national team, tomorrow.

The match is likely to be Son’s last for Tottenham, after he announced that he will be leaving the club after 10 years earlier today.

Sitting alongside manager Thomas Frank, Son began an emotional press conference by saying: “I’ve decided to leave the club in the summer.

“And respectfully, the club is helping me with my decision.

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“So I just want to share this information before we start the press conference.”

On how he came to the decision, Son added: “It was the most difficult decision of my football career.

“I’ve been here ten years at a beautiful club with beautiful fans and having such amazing memories.

“And after all that, it was so hard to make this decision. But as I said, I feel like I need a new environment and to push myself.

“And to get more of me, I feel like I need a little bit of change. Ten years is a lot of time when you’re thinking about it.

He added: “I came to London as a kid. 23-years-old, a very young age, [and] a young boy came to London who even didn’t speak English.

“And [I’m] leaving this club as a grown man. This is a very, very proud moment.

“So I just wanna say thank you to all of the Spurs fans that gave me so much love.

“I felt like it was my home. But yeah, it was, it was one of the toughest decisions I’ve ever made.”

A MODERN DAY LEGEND

Son signed for Tottenham from Bayer Leverkusen in 2015 aged 23 in a deal worth around £22million.

The popular forward went on to score 173 goals in 454 appearances for the North Londoners, placing him fourth on the club’s all-time list of goalscorers.

Son was appointed club captain by former boss Ange Postecoglou in 2023.

The Tottenham legend went on to lift the Europa League trophy in May, as the club ended its 17-year drought.

On the timing of his White Hart Lane exit, Son said: “The goodbye is always also in a good timing. But I think it’s the right time to make this decision.

“I hope that everybody understands my decision and I hope that everybody respects that.”

Son has been strongly linked with a move to MLS side LAFC.

The switch would see him reunite with his predecessor as Spurs captain Hugo Lloris.

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Reigning Strictly Come Dancing champion Dianne Buswell shares dreams for the future with her long-term love Joe Sugg and their plans to start a family

Dancing is at the centre of everything for Dianne Buswell – it’s where she made her name and found the love of her life. But the Strictly Come Dancing professional says she’s prepared to waltz away for a while to start a family with partner, podcaster and YouTuber Joe Sugg.

The pair met on the 2018 series of the BBC show after being paired together and romance blossomed away from the bright lights and the cameras once their stint had ended.

Dianne, 36, has opened up about their family plans as she shares what made her fall for Joe, 33. “It wasn’t until the show ended that we realised we missed each other’s company a lot – our relationship went from there,” she explained.

READ MORE: ITV star ‘banned’ from Strictly Come Dancing as they admit ‘I can’t do it’

“We always got on, he was so funny to me, and I loved how creative he was. We’ve always wanted kids, it’s just finding the right time. I don’t feel worried about taking time out from dancing, I just don’t see the point in worrying. When everything aligns, it will happen. I have to have that vision. I like to practise manifestation, I’m quite spiritual.”

The couple live in Brighton, where they share a £3.5million mansion. They’ve long been open about their desire to start a family. Dianne recently had to deny suggestions the pair had got engaged after speculation grew online after she was spotted wearing a ring on her wedding finger.

Grilled on Good Morning Britain by Susanna Reid and Ed Balls, she explained how some of her fingers had swollen up after a flight, so she moved rings from her right to her left hand. “I was taking pictures with my family and I put them online so everyone thought I was engaged,” she recalled. “I’m not engaged.”

Joe may not have got down on bended knee, but their relationship is going from strength to strength, with Joe beginning to enjoy some of Dianne’s passions. “Joe laughs at me because I’m always investing in the latest wellness product,” tells Dianne.

“It’s a big passion. I have an ice bath at home. I can get a bit anxious but cold-water therapy calms me down. I’m so proud of Joe – he never knew about any of this wellness stuff, but he’s enjoying it. He loves the ice bath. He does it more than me, to be honest.”

Since joining Strictly in 2017, Australian pro dancer Dianne has been putting her body through hours of gruelling rehearsals day after day, so she has to look after herself.

“There’s only so much you can give before you need to recharge,” says Dianne. “In this line of work, we’re giving, giving, giving, because we want people to have the best time, but there comes a point when you need to give yourself time and space. I need moments of quiet and calm.”

A self-confessed “homebody”, Dianne loves a night in as much as a showbiz party. “I’m okay being in my own company. At a party, I’m not the loudest one in the room by any stretch of the imagination.”

She shares her home life with fans on social media – she and Joe have built up a huge following through their daily vlogs. Dianne says it’s helped show people the “real” her. “I always wanted my YouTube channel and the podcast [Winning Isn’t Everything] to be as raw as possible,” she tells Prima magazine.

“First thing in the morning, I’ll vlog and show the real me, who hasn’t been in hours of hair and make-up. It comes with age and becoming more confident in yourself as a person.

“When I was younger, I used to be self-conscious and would never step outside unless I had a full face of make-up on. It’s no longer about looks, it’s about how I feel and what I feel. That’s why I’m so honest – if I can help at least one or two people, then I feel like my job’s done.”

As Strictly’s reigning champion after her historic win with blind comedian Chris McCausland, 48, last year, Dianne is preparing to line up with another celebrity for the new series, with the professional dancers rehearsing already ahead of the show starting in September.

But she and Chris do the Winning podcast together, and she says he changed her outlook on life – and she doesn’t feel as much pressure any more. “I feel just as excited as any other year, and I’ve put no expectations on myself,” she insists.

“Last year taught me it’s not about perfection. I used to think of winning, winning, winning, but the past few years, it hasn’t been about that at all – maybe that comes with age and maturity.

“Chris and I could have left at any point and would have gone thinking we’d won anyway. It doesn’t feel like a competition any more. I taught him a lot, but he taught me just as much.

“Chris has allowed me to be more of the character that I naturally am. I don’t feel pressure to be the world’s best dancer as I get older – you don’t need to be a world champion to be a great Strictly professional. It’s a mixed bag of stuff, like being able to communicate with someone as a teacher.”

She is looking forward to reuniting with friend and fellow pro Amy Dowden, 34, who returned to the show in the last series after breast cancer but had to pull out after a foot injury.

Dianne said: “She’s a tough cookie. I’ve never met anyone who loves dancing so much, she lives and breathes it and for that to be taken away from her for a period was so upsetting. But she is back 100%, thriving and full of life.”

■Read the full interview in September’s issue of Prima, out now, and online.

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Israeli TV personalities are making fun of children dying of starvation in Gaza, with one even claiming a mother ate her baby. It is part of a right-wing media campaign that is promoting the famine as a hoax.

A man who murdered his wife in front of their infant son has been jailed for life.

Kulsuma Akter, 27, had been living in a refuge in Bradford when she was fatally stabbed by her husband, Habibur Masum, as she pushed their seven-month-old baby in a pram through the city centre in April last year. The child was unharmed.

Last month, Masum, 27, of Leamington Avenue, Burnley, was convicted of murder following a trial at Bradford Crown Court.

Sentencing him at the same court on Tuesday to a minimum 28 years, the judge, Mr Justice Cotter, told Masum he “viciously and mercilessly” attacked Ms Akter, stabbing her 26 times.

Former MP Kate Kniveton bravely opens up about the decade of abuse she endured at the hands of her ex-husband and Conservative MP Andrew Griffiths who raped her while she was sleeping

As violence against women and girls reaches epidemic levels with police receiving a domestic abuse call every 30 seconds, one woman is telling her deeply personal story and making it her mission to stand up for victims of domestic abuse.

Former Conservative MP for Burton in Staffordshire, Kate Kniveton, 54, warns how domestic abuse can affect absolutely anybody – regardless of their background or profession – after she endured a decade of abuse at the hands of her ex Tory MP husband.

Bravely waving her right to anonymity, she also shines a light on the abuse many survivors endure long after the relationship has ended and how family courts are letting down vulnerable children.

“People don’t think it can happen to professional middle-class people – but domestic abuse has no boundaries, it can affect absolutely anybody,” Kate says. “When I was elected I made a promise to be an advocate of victims of domestic abuse. I am traumatised – not just by the 10 years of abuse I experienced – but the following five years where he continued to use the legal system to abuse me.”

READ MORE: ‘Dad strangled my mum to death – I forgive him and will stand by him’

The former MP explains how easy it is for women to get sucked in and find themselves stuck in unhealthy relationships. “He was very personable, charming and charismatic,” she says about her abusive ex Andrew Griffiths. “In hindsight I can see there were warning signs – but I always put it down to him being under a lot of pressure.

“For most people looking in from the outside our relationship was perfect, but the abuse had been going on for several years. Every time I said I was going to go to the police, I’m going to report you, he’d always say, ‘Nobody would believe you, Kate. I’m the MP here. I’ve got a great relationship with the police — they all think I’m the blue-eyed boy.'”

But behind closed doors things were not what they seemed. Kate recalls how her husband would rape her in her sleep and scream abuse at their two-month old baby. “It would start when I was asleep – I’d wake up and he would have started having sex with me,” she recalls.

“Sometimes I’d just think ‘let it carry on’ but there would be other times when I would cry. And those times he’d sometimes stop – not all times – but then he’d be in a foul mood if he did. I remember he’d be kicking me until he kicked me out of bed. And I would go into our spare room and barricade myself in another room for the night or leave the house.”

A turning point was when she realised their two-week-old child was also in danger. “I still hoped Andrew could change but when our baby was just two weeks old I realised that the abuse may not stop with me,” she adds. “He was up early in the morning to catch a train back down to Westminster and our baby started crying for a feed. He turned round and said ‘shut the F up’ and it was said with such force and aggression – and he tried to make out afterwards that he was just tired – but it was just a baby.”

Ironically, her abusive ex-husband campaigned for women’s rights – but in 2018 – Griffiths made the headlines when he got caught sexting two constituents – later resigning from his position. Kate took the opportunity to leave the family home but then had to fight the family courts to stop Griffiths from seeing their child.

Then in 2019 – some 18 months after the sexting scandal – Kate stood as an MP against her ex husband and won. Griffiths was found to have raped and physically abused his wife by a family court judge in 2021. Griffiths denies raping Kate.

Kate tells her story in a new ITV1 and ITVX documentary, Breaking The Silence: Kate’s Story, where she speaks in-depth for the first time about the decade of abuse she endured at the hands of her ex-husband. In it she is also keen to shed light on the problem with family courts – where an estimated 30,000 cases each year involve allegations of domestic abuse.

Many survivors report feeling retraumatised and disbelieved by the very process meant to protect them. Kate and other survivors share their experiences, voicing deep concerns that the courts often fail to safeguard children from violent ex-partners.

Dr Charlotte Proudman, who was Kate’s barrister in the family court, explains in the film, “It’s very common, even when there are convictions for domestic abuse offences, for a parent to be granted regular unsupervised contact with their child.”

This comes five years on from the Ministry of Justice’s Harm Report, which warned that the family courts were putting children’s safety at risk – yet many of its key recommendations still remain unimplemented. It’s an alarming reality reinforced by Women’s Aid, whose latest report found that 67 children have been killed in the UK in the past 30 years during contact visits with a known domestic abuser.

In the film, Kate also meets with Jess Phillips MP, the newly appointed Minister for Safeguarding and VAWG, to discuss the urgent reforms needed to better protect survivors and their children. Jess tells her, “So much of what happens in the domestic abuse space is so hidden from the public’s view. I think if people knew half of what you and I have seen, there’d be pitchforks… there is absolutely loads to do — it’s so ingrained, whether it’s in the court system or how councils commission local refuge and support services.”

The Ministry of Justice responded to allegations raised in the film: “Any case involving the death of a child is a tragedy, and our sincere condolences go out to the families [affected]. We will see where improvements can be made to the Family Court system to help prevent these awful crimes.” They added that work is ongoing to ensure the family court is safe for children and families, highlighting the Pathfinder pilot to improve outcomes in private law cases.

At the final hearing in January 2024, Griffiths accepted all the findings of abuse found by the family court, except that of rape. However, when asked to respond to this programme he said: “I have always denied the allegations made. The Family Court has a much lower burden of proof and has always been private and confidential.

“The Family Court has failed our child. Publication of salacious allegations can only harm the children. Every child has the right to have both parents in their lives. I will never stop fighting to be a father to my child, and to demonstrate to them just how much I love them.”

Breaking The Silence: Kate’s Story, Sunday 20th July at 10.20pm on ITV1 & ITVX.

For confidential support, call the 24-hour National Domestic Abuse Freephone Helpline on 0808 2000 247 or visit womensaid.co.uk.

A Palestinian baby has died of starvation in Gaza as Israel maintains its blockade on aid supplies and fires on people forced to seek food at controversial United States-backed aid sites described as “death traps”.

The 35-day-old infant died of malnutrition at Gaza City’s al-Shifa Hospital, director Muhammad Abu Salmiya told Al Jazeera. The unnamed infant was one of two people who succumbed to starvation in the facility on Saturday.

The deaths occurred as Gaza’s Ministry of Health warned that hospital emergency wards were overwhelmed by unprecedented numbers of starving people, with officials saying that 17,000 children in Gaza are suffering from severe malnutrition.

Meanwhile, the Israeli military continued to pound the Strip, with medical sources reporting that at least 116 people were killed across the enclave since dawn, including 38 who were shot dead while seeking food from aid sites run by the US-backed Gaza Humanitarian Foundation (GHF).

Civil defence agency spokesman Mahmud Bassal said the deaths happened near a site southwest of Khan Yunis and another centre northwest of Rafah, both in southern Gaza, attributing the fatalities to “Israeli gunfire”.

The Health Ministry says almost 900 Palestinians have been killed by Israeli forces and private military contractors near dangerous GHF sites since the foundation began distributing aid in late May, opening four points that replaced about 400 centres run by United Nations agencies and charities.

Witness Mohammed al-Khalidi told Al Jazeera the shots fired at aid seekers on Saturday were “meant to kill”.

“Suddenly, we saw the jeeps coming from one side and the tanks from the other, and they started shooting at us,” he said.

Another witness, Mohammed al-Barbary, whose cousin died in the shootings, said the GHF sites are “death traps”.

“Anyone can get killed. My cousin was innocent. He went to get food. He wanted to live. We want to live like everyone else,” said al-Barbary.

Reporting from Deir el-Balah in central Gaza, Al Jazeera’s Hind Khoudary said families hoping for something to eat are instead burying their loved ones.

The GHF denied that Saturday’s killings happened at its site, claiming they occurred “several kilometres away” and “hours before our sites opened”.

The Israeli military said it was reviewing the incident.

‘Open the gates’

Jagan Chapagain, the secretary-general of the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies, warned that Palestinians in Gaza face “an acute risk of famine”.

“No one should have to risk their life to get basic humanitarian assistance,” he said.

Basic supplies are not available in markets or distribution points, while the cost of essentials such as flour skyrocketed, making it impossible for the population of 2.3 million to meet their daily nutritional needs.

No one should have to risk their life to get basic humanitarian assistance.

Recent weeks have seen desperate people risking their lives just to receive basic aid in Gaza.

The population is facing an acute risk of famine, with continuously worsening conditions. Basic food…

— Jagan Chapagain (@jagan_chapagain) July 19, 2025

Jan Egeland, the head of the Norwegian Refugee Council (NRC), rejected assertions made earlier in the week by European Union foreign policy chief Kaja Kallas, who noted “some good signs” regarding aid distribution in Gaza.

“For NRC and many others no relief has entered for 142 days. Not one truck. Not one delivery,” Egeland wrote on X. He noted that 85 percent of aid trucks never reach their destination because of looting or other issues fuelled by the Gaza starvation crisis.

The UN agency for Palestinian refugees, UNRWA, which Israel has banned from operating in the Palestinian territory, including in occupied East Jerusalem, said it had “enough food for the entire population of Gaza” waiting at the border crossing in Egypt.

“Open the gates, lift the siege and allow UNRWA to do its work,” the organisation said on X.

Wave of attacks

At least 116 Palestinians were killed in Gaza on Saturday as Israel continued its ruthless onslaught, bombing tents for the displaced and homes across the enclave.

Four bodies were recovered from the site of Israeli strikes on Bani Suheila near southern Khan Younis, sources at Nasser Hospital told Al Jazeera.

At least one person was killed by an Israeli drone attack on a tent housing displaced Palestinians in Khan Younis.

Further north, Israel struck a residential home in the town of az-Zawayda in central Gaza, killing the director of the Nuseirat police, Colonel Omar Saeed Aql, along with 11 of his family members, according to the Interior Ministry.

In Gaza City, three people were killed in two Israeli air attacks on the Zeitoun neighbourhood, according to a source at al-Ahli Hospital.

Also in the city, five people were killed in an Israeli air attack on the Tal al-Hawa neighbourhood, according to the Palestinian Red Crescent.

Medical sources said two people were killed in Israeli shelling in the Jabalia an-Nazla neighbourhood, in northern Gaza.

Israeli forces also opened fire on and arrested three Palestinian fishermen off the Gaza coast, according to the Palestinian Prisoners’ Media Office.

The Israeli military has maintained a naval blockade on Gaza since 2007, when Hamas took over the enclave, which has been tightened since the start of the war in October 2023.

Pete Davidson is going to be a father.

The “Saturday Night Live” alum’s girlfriend, British model and actor Elsie Hewitt, confirmed the news Wednesday with a cheeky Instagram post.

“Welp now everyone knows we had sex,” the model captioned a carousel of pregnancy photos, images of the pair and memes (including the viral “Love Island” “mamacita” moment).

Davidson, who famously avoids social media and does not have a public Instagram account, has not yet commented on the news.

Hewitt, 29, and Davidson, 31, first sparked dating rumors in March when they were spotted kissing in Palm Beach, Fla., and they’ve reportedly been living together in Brooklyn and Upstate New York. They made their red carpet debut in May at the Blossom Ball in New York City.

Hewitt, who previously dated Jason Sudeikis and Benny Blanco, has modeled for Guess and was a Playboy Playmate. She landed her first television role in 2018 on the series “Turnt” and has since made appearances on rapper Lil Dicky’s sitcom “Dave.”

Since Davidson left “SNL” in 2022, he has pivoted to focus more on stand-up and movies. The comedian — whose high-profile exes include Ariana Grande, Kim Kardashian, Madelyn Cline, Kate Beckinsale, Margaret Qualley, Kaia Gerber and Phoebe Dynevor — has a few projects lined up this year, including a starring role in the horror movie “The Home,” out July 25.

Davidson spent eight seasons on “SNL,” where he served as the show’s “resident young person,” developed his popular recurring character “Chad” and even bought a boat (the Staten Island Ferry) with co-star Colin Jost. He returned to host in 2023 and participated in the 50th anniversary special in February.

Olivia Culpo and Christian McCaffrey are now parents, and the arrival of their baby girl has them both feeling lucky.

Model-actor Culpo revealed Sunday that she and her NFL star husband welcomed their daughter earlier this month. She marked the beginning of her journey into motherhood on Instagram, sharing several pictures from her newborn’s first moments in the world. A carousel of black-and-white photos document tender moments between Culpo, McCaffrey and their baby at Cedars-Sinai.

Culpo’s Instagram post also included a name reveal. “Colette Annalise McCaffrey,” she captioned her photos, adding a white heart emoji.

Additionally, Culpo shared photos from baby Colette’s arrival to her Instagram stories, where she praised her San Francisco 49ers running back husband. “Colette is so lucky to have the best daddy in the world,” she wrote in an Instagram photo of McCaffrey tending to their newborn. “A love like no other.”

In another Instagram story on Sunday, Culpo recalled her labor as the “scariest and most rewarding of all experiences” and her husband’s calming effect. She shared a photo of McCaffrey holding her head during her delivery. In his Instagram story, McCaffrey reciprocated the sentiment, posting a photo of himself holding his baby girl.

“Luckiest man on the planet,” he captioned the photo. “I love you @OliviaCulpo.”

Culpo, 33, and McCaffrey, 29, were rumored to be dating as early as May 2019 and got engaged in April 2023. They married in June 2024 in Culpo’s native Rhode Island. Culpo, a former Miss Universe, announced in March that she and her husband were expecting their first child together.

“Next chapter, motherhood,” she captioned photos from her maternity photo shoot.

A representative for Culpo did not immediately respond on Monday to The Times’ request for additional information.

A mum has been praised as a ‘genius’ after sharing the main activity she packed to keep her baby occupied during their three-hour flight from Germany to Spain – and it’s not what you might expect

If you’re going on a family holiday anytime soon, you’ll probably know parents or guardians often face the added challenge that come with travelling with babies. This will become extra nerve-wracking if it’s their first flight so you don’t know how they’ll react.

While parents are often armed with a selection of toys and activities to entertain their kids in the cabin, it’s a whole different experience when it comes to keeping babies entertained. While popular tips usually include packing their favourite things to play with or timing flights to coincide with nap time for keeping infants happy mid-flight, sometimes it pays to have an extra trick up your sleeve.

One creative mum known as Lala, took to TikTok, where she has over 6.1 million followers, to share her unique life hack for keeping her seven-month-old daughter amused on their recent three-hour flight from Germany to Spain.

“If you don’t pack a head of lettuce for your next flight with your baby, what are you even doing?” Lala said in her video while packing a head of sweet gem lettuce into a zip lock bag.

The video then cut to Lala and her partner getting onto the plane with their sleeping baby snuggled up in her arms. She went on to explain the little one slept through take-off, only to wake later on as they soared high above the ground, which is when they introduced the lettuce.

“Whenever we want to eat in peace at home, we always give her a piece of lettuce, and it always keeps her occupied for so long. And I thought, if it works at home, why would it not work on a plane?” Lala said as she showed their baby the lettuce before letting her tear off a leaf.

Lala added: “She loves tearing things, like anything really. Like, bread, paper, tissue, anything. But bread is way too messy, like there are crumbs everywhere. And with paper or tissue, we always have to keep an eye on her that she doesn’t eat it. But lettuce, lettuce is genius.”

Continuing, she expressed how the lettuce provided a fun and unique texture for the infant to explore, as well as being a healthy, hydrating snack if wanted to taste it.

“This kept her occupied almost the entire flight,” Lala revealed. “She had so much fun, and the best part when it’s time to clean up, you can just eat it. This way, I’m not only entertaining my baby but I’m also getting my greens in.”

Lala then shared: “We were so nervous about her first flight at first, but this was such an amazing experience for us. She did so well, she was just having fun the entire flight and we’re so proud of her.”

The comment section of the video soon filled with comments from viewers sharing their take on the clever hack for in-flight entertainment.

One person joked: “I have a 14 hour flight with my baby next month. I’ll just bring a whole field,” while another added: “Plus points cause it helps her develop her fine motor skills.”

A fellow mum wrote: “You Lala have just unlocked a whole new toy for all of us mums out there thank you.”

“That’s effing genius! I’m trying this on the next flight!” another viewer wrote.

Naomi Schiff is a familiar face to Formula 1 fans as she co-hosts all the action from the motorsport as part of the Sky Sports presenting team

Popular among F1 fans and a key figure in Sky Sports’ presenting team, Naomi Schiff will be at the forefront of this weekend’s racing excitement as they showcase the much-anticipated British Grand Prix at Silverstone.

Racing enthusiasts will witness home hero Lewis Hamilton make his premier appearance at Silverstone as a Ferrari driver, while Lando Norris aims to forge ahead in his quest for the 2025 world championship title, rivalling teammate Oscar Piastri.

Naomi, a retired racing driver herself, is set to deliver all the electrifying updates from the event to eager viewers. The presenter, who hails from Belgium, has Rwandan and Belgian heritage and grew up in South Africa, has transitioned from her racing pursuits to television presenting.

Now at 31 years old, not only is Naomi thriving in her new role, but she’s also embracing the joy of impending motherhood with her French husband Alexandre Dedieu. We delve into her life beyond the screen…

Marriage and baby news

Naomi celebrated her marriage to Alexandre in 2024 with two ceremonies – a modest official exchange and big wedding, reports the Express.

After their civil union in September, Naomi expressed her joy on Instagram, sharing pictures and writing: “Officially Mr. & Mrs. ‘Oui’ was never in doubt, it’s always been you. So grateful for this beautiful moment and excited for forever. Can’t wait to celebrate our big day in the days to come!”

Naomi shared breath-taking snaps in a bridal white dress and long veil from her wedding, posting: “From unforgettable moments to cherished memories, our wedding day was everything we dreamed of and more. Thank you to everyone who celebrated with us, filling our day with laughter, love, and joy.”

Not long after their nuptials, Naomi thrilled her followers with news that she’s expecting, unveiling her bump in a clip with the caption: “Been keeping the tiniest little secret.”

In May, she revealed she was “halfway” to greeting their bundle of joy.

F1 absences explained

Whilst Naomi is set to embrace maternity leave soon, spectators have noted her sporadic absences at races.

Given this year’s packed F1 schedule with 24 races, Sky Sports F1’s large presenting roster means some faces will naturally be missing from time to time. Despite the varied presenter lineup, Naomi is slated to cover 12 races for Sky.

During an Instagram Q&A session, Naomi addressed whether she picks which weekends she’s on, saying: “The @skysportsf1 on-screen team is pretty big. So, it’s about being able to split races amongst everyone both numbers-wise but also geographically”.

She pointed out that scheduling can be tricky due to personal commitments that jostle for attention within the Sky Sports F1 presenting crew’s annual calendars.

Bond with Lewis Hamilton

Naomi’s bond with F1 legend Lewis Hamilton has seen the driver step up to defend her during times of controversy.

When Naomi ventured into presenting at the Mercedes AMG Petronas F1 Team car launch and co-hosted Sky Sports F1 show Any Driven Monday in 2022, a critic doubted her suitability for the role, according to The Sun.

The sceptic posted: “Meet Naomi Schiff, Sky Sports latest Formula 1 commentator. Can you guess what her main qualification for the job is? Hint: It isn’t Formula 1 experience.”

Naomi retorted with three yawning emojis to express her indifference to the criticism. Champion Lewis Hamilton was quick to come to Naomi’s defence on Twitter (now renamed X), disagreeing with the detractor’s view.

He commented: “Naomi is an ex-professional racing driver & totally qualified to give her opinion as part of the Sky team. She’s been a great asset since joining & we should welcome more representative broadcasting with open arms.

“Still have a long way to go to change these attitudes in sport.”

Sky Sports is hosting coverage of the British Grand Prix throughout the weekend with the race coverage starting on Sunday, July 6 at 1.30pm

Natalie Z. Briones is a concert veteran. She’s been to heavy metal concerts and a punk music festival where she napped most of the time. On Sunday, she attended her first baby rave.

Natalie is a few months shy of two. In the arms of her dad, Alvin Briones, 36, the pigtailed toddler squealed “Hi!” to anyone passing by the Roxy Theatre in West Hollywood where the Briones family was lined up to meet Lenny Pearce, the mastermind behind Natalie’s favorite song, “The Wheels on the Bus.”

Natalie Z. Briones, held by her father Alvin Briones, sports rainbow face paint at the baby rave.

(Elizabeth Weinberg / For The Times)

It’s not the classic version most parents sing while slowly swaying and clapping — Pearce’s rendition rages with enough bass to rattle rib cages. Natalie is here for it, and so is her mom, Alondra Briones, who plays the techno remix during her drives to work even without Natalie in the backseat.

“It’s a pick-me-up,” said Alondra, 28, from Compton, before filing into the theater with other parents and caregivers for an afternoon rager with their kids.

In Pearce’s techno remixes of classic children’s music, an unexpected subgenre is taking off — toddler techno — which melds the cloyingly sweet lyrics of songs like “Head, Shoulders, Knees and Toes” with the edgy beat drops associated with music from gritty warehouse parties.

The unlikely musical pairing creates a bridge between parents like Sandra Mikhail and her 6-year-old daughter, Mila. Both dressed in fuchsia at Pearce’s dance party, the mother-daughter duo were there to celebrate Mila’s promotion from kindergarten. In their Riverside home, Pearce’s music is on heavy rotation.

Children squeal in delight at the baby rave at the Roxy as Kuma the money, Lenny Pearce’s sidekick, hypes up the crowd.

“I can handle kids’ music now,” said Sandra, 38. “With the beat and [Pearce] adding that techno touch to it, it makes me able to tolerate listening to it all day long.”

For the last year, Pearce has been hosting sold-out dance parties boldly called baby raves — first in his native Australia — then on the first leg of his U.S. tour, which culminated in a June 29 double-header at the Roxy.

In the afternoon show timed for that sweet spot many parents know well — post-nap and right before the evening witching hours — Pearce pranced, high-fived kids and waved at babies being hoisted in the air.

Lenny Pearce vibes with the crowd at his sold-out show at the Roxy.

(Elizabeth Weinberg / For The Times)

At 34, he’s been an entertainer for most of his life. Over a decade ago, he was dancing in music videos as a member of the Australian boy band, Justice Crew. Now, he’s firmly affixed in his dad era. His dance partner is now a large balloon spider named Incy Wincy.

“I’m just being a dad on stage,” said Pearce in a video interview from New York. “I can make a clown of myself to entertain kids.”

From boy band to toddler techno

Lenny Pearce uses props during his shows, including an inflatable duck.

(Elizabeth Weinberg / For The Times)

Pearce’s journey into children’s entertainment seemed preordained, if only because his identical twin brother is arguably the second most famous purple character on a children’s TV show (behind Barney, of course).

“We’re both in the toddler scene,” said John Pearce, the older twin by minutes, who in 2021 joined “The Wiggles” cast as the Purple Wiggle. “[My brother’s] stuck with it for a long time, and it’s all paid off now.”

At the Roxy, many parents and caregivers said they found Pearce through the Purple Wiggle. Others discovered him on social media: He has more than 2 million followers on TikTok and more than 1 million followers on Instagram.

Before becoming children’s entertainers, the Pearce brothers were members of Justice Crew, a dance troupe that won “Australia’s Got Talent” in 2010. For a few years, the boy band’s future burned white hot with the aspiration to break through in the U.S. — a dream that never materialized.

Lenny Pearce started making what he calls toddler techno music after his daughter was born in 2022. As a dad, he says he’s happy to act silly for kids.

Most boy bands have a finite time in the spotlight, said Pearce. In 2016, he quit the Justice Crew to focus on DJing and music production, but the transition from boy band to toddler techno didn’t happen overnight. For a time, he worked as a salesperson at an Australian electronic store.

“People were like, ‘Aren’t you from Justice Crew?’” he said. “And I’m like, ‘Yeah. Now, do you want this lens with that camera?’”

In 2022, becoming a dad to his daughter Mila changed the course of his creativity. Pearce started remixing children’s songs with “ravey” music and filming himself dancing with her to the songs. Soon, other parents started sharing videos of their kids dancing to his songs, too. In this way, social media allows for ideas to be refined until something sticks.

In March, Pearce released his first solo album aptly titled, “Toddler Techno.”

All along the way, he imagined playing these songs at mini raves. For this generation of kids and their millennial parents, it’s not a stretch, said Pearce. Pretend DJ tables are just as commonly sold in toy aisles as construction trucks.

In the fall, Pearce and his baby raves will return to the U.S. — and, yes, to L.A. — in a 30-city tour. As a solo artist, he’s done what he couldn’t do in a band — he’s broken through to the U.S. and international audiences.

“It’s funny, isn’t it?” said Pearce. “I always felt like I had something to say, but no one really listened.”

But are techno parties OK for kids?

Many attendees at the baby rave were wearing ear covers.

(Elizabeth Weinberg / For The Times)

The roots of techno — in Detroit or Berlin depending on whom you talk to — were always antiestablishment, said Ambrus Deak, program manager of music production at the Los Angeles Film School.

“It was exploratory,” said Deak, a longtime DJ who went by DJ AMB, about techno.

Toddler techno plays with that contrast — an edgy genre made safe for kids. Deak would not attend a baby rave — “It would be very cringe for me,” he said — but sees the appeal.

“I can definitely see a lot of people being into it,” said Deak, 48.

Still, not everyone is sold on the idea of taking kids to a rave — even one held in the middle of the day with a face-painting station. In the comments of Pearce’s social media posts, parents occasionally debate the appropriateness of exposing kids to drug-addled rave culture.

“I know that most people would say, ‘Is this the image we want to teach our kids?’” said Pearce. “What image are you imagining? Because if you think about it, they’re just kids with light sticks, right?”

He gets the concern, but kids don’t know about the darker sides of raves unless they are taught. And that’s not what his baby raves are about.

In the right dose, some experts say techno music and baby raves can be beneficial for kids and parents.

“Parents’ happiness and stress regulation also matter,” said Jenna Marcovitz, director of the UCLA Health Music Therapy program. “Techno can promote oxytocin and boost endorphins. It can encourage joy and play and really support brain development, emotional regulation and really enhance the parent-child bond as well.”

At the Roxy, one man vigorously pumped his fist to the beat of the music.

“Fist pump like this!” he shouted to the child on his shoulders. Both fists — little and big — jabbed the air.

How to keep it safe and sane

Glow sticks were a popular accessory at the event.

(Elizabeth Weinberg / For The Times)

Everything — especially baby raves — should be enjoyed in moderation. The pulsating music, giant inflatables tossed into the crowd and sudden blasts of fog can overstimulate kids.

For the roughly one-hour show, the music is loud. Typically set to 85 to 90 decibels, Pearce said. Having a sensory support plan is key, said Marcovitz, who recommends toddlers wear headphones with a noise reduction rating of 20 to 30 decibels or higher — like this one or this one. Practicing dance parties at home, so your child knows what to expect, is also helpful.

At the rave, look for signs of overstimulation, which can present differently with each child — some might shut down while others might start shoving each other mosh pit-style. At the Roxy show, one toddler sat down, ate half a bag of Goldfish crackers and poured the rest on the floor. Another disappeared into the crowd for a few alarming moments before being returned by a good Samaritan.

Toddlers crawl and lay down amid the crowd at the baby rave.

(Elizabeth Weinberg / For The Times)

“For any child, I would recommend breaks every 30 minutes,” said Marcovitz. “Step outside.”

Because techno hypes people up — even little kids — it’s important to help a child regulate their nervous system back down after the show.

“Lots of cuddles, silence and hugs,” said Marcovitz.

Pearce also starts the party late, so the dance party before the rave can tucker kids out before he takes the stage.

Ashley and Todd Herles drove from Santa Clarita to the Roxy so their son, Oliver, 3, could meet Pearce before the show. They said they bought $120 VIP tickets, which included a meet and greet and table seats where Oliver got to high-five Kuma, Pearce’s dancing sidekick in a turquoise monkey suit. For Pearce’s November 23 show at the Novo in downtown Los Angeles, ticket prices currently range from $48 to $195, fees and taxes included.

Overall, Oliver loved it — until he didn’t.

“[The] meltdown happened around 1:40 so we left then,” said Ashley, 40.

They had big post-rave plans to refuel with french fries. But Oliver was tired.

And, most importantly?

“Our backs hurt,” said Ashley.

Children bopped along to the music from atop their parents’ shoulders during the dance party.

The twins who played Ross and Rachel’s baby on Friends have shared where they are now 22 years after the iconic show ended – and they’ve gone down very different career paths

The unforgettable episodes of Friends that took us on an emotional journey with Ross and Rachel, played by David Schwimmer and Jennifer Aniston. The couple who were famously ‘on a break’ and each other’s ‘lobsters’, also brought us the joy of baby Emma Geller-Green.

Twin sisters Athena Conley and Alexandra Conley were just six months old when they took on the role of the beloved baby from the end of season 8 through season 9. So what actually happened to the actresses who played the tiny tot?

Fast forward to today, and the twins are now 23 years old and thriving. And they look part on their sitcom experience very fondly.

Hailing from Long Beach, California, the sisters landed the part after their mother learned of the audition through a friend in a twins club.

In an interview with People, Athena revealed: “So she told my mom about it and she was like, ‘You should just take your daughters to L.A. just for one day.’ And it wasn’t far from us at all, so she did.”

After having their photos taken at the audition, the twins and their mother were on their way out when they received the news that they had been cast.

They went on to appear in 10 episodes, before being replaced as the show required an older actress to portray Emma as she grew.

Alexandra opened up to People, revealing: “It’s actually crazy because growing up, I always just knew I was on Friends, but I didn’t really know what that meant.

“It didn’t hit me, I think until like maybe like middle school or even like early high school, how big that was.”

The twins have since become “obsessed” with the iconic sitcom and are regular viewers.

Despite their early brush with fame, they’ve stepped back from acting to focus on their new careers as recent university graduates.

Alexandra has made Los Angeles her home, where she’s carving out a career in social media and marketing for a cosmetics company. Her Instagram is a vibrant collage of travel snapshots and snippets of social gatherings with mates.

She’s also quite the dancer, often teaming up with her sister for dance videos. Alexandra’s influence extends to a collaboration with Kim Kardashian’s Skims, which she promotes on her TikTok account.

Athena, on the other hand, has settled in Denver and seems to be thriving in her busy life.

Her professional path has led her to a role as an investment control reconciler at a financial firm. Impressively, she’s also a cheerleader for the NFL’s Denver Broncos.

Alexandra doesn’t hold back in expressing her admiration for Athena, proudly supporting her from the stands and declaring herself her sister’s number one fan.

Kayleigh McEnany and husband Sean Gilmartin welcomed their third child — a girl.

“We are overjoyed to announce the newest member of the ‘Outnumbered’ family,” Emily Compagno said Monday during the Fox News Channel show she co-hosts with McEnany. She noted that viewers could see the baby “letting out a big yawn” in photos provided by her mom and dad.

Avery was born on Wednesday, the network said.

McEnany tweeted Monday that she and her husband are “so in love with our new baby girl, Avery Grace! Blake and Nash love their baby sister, and we are enjoying this beautiful time in life!”

McEnany was a tad more nuanced in notes given to Compagno, who quoted the three-time mom as saying that while big sister Blake, 5, “can’t stop thinking about the baby,” big brother Nash, 2, had “finally warmed up to her.”

In her announcement, the former White House press secretary included Psalm 139: 13-14, “For you created my inmost being; you knit me together in my mother’s womb. I praise you because I am fearfully and wonderfully made; your works are wonderful, I know that full well.”

Compagno said the “Outnumbered” crew, headed by Harris Faulkner, was “wishing Kayleigh and Sean all the best as they continue to grow their beautiful family.” She told McEnany to please come back, but “not too soon.”

McEnany announced back in March that she and Gilmartin were expecting their third child.

“It’s very sweet. It’s been a special time,” she said. “I’ve been pregnant during Christmas and during Thanksgiving, and my daughter Blake now knows, so she runs up and holds my stomach and is like, ‘Let me kiss the baby.’ ”

The baby got in just under the June deadline that McEnany shared at the time.

McEnany and Gilmartin, a pitcher who retired from professional baseball in 2022, started dating in 2015 and got married in 2017. After working in broadcast media initially, McEnany served as press secretary to President Trump from April 2020 through the end of his first term in January 2021, landing at Fox soon after.

She’s one of a host of former press secretaries who have landed jobs on cable and broadcast news.

When it comes to vaccines, virtually nothing that comes out of Robert F. Kennedy Jr.’s mouth is true.

The man in charge of the nation’s health and well being is impervious to science, expertise and knowledge. His brand of arrogance is not just dangerous, it is lethal. Undermining trust in vaccines, he will have the blood of children around the world on his hands.

Scratch that.

He already does, as he presides over the second largest measles outbreak in this country since the disease was declared “eliminated” a quarter century ago.

“Vaccines have become a divisive issue in American politics,” Kennedy wrote the other day in a Wall Street Journal essay, “but there is one thing all parties can agree on: The U.S. faces a crisis of public trust.”

The lack of self-awareness would be funny if it weren’t so tragic.

Over the past two decades or so, Kennedy has done more than almost any other American to destroy the public’s trust in vaccines and science. And now he’s bemoaning the very thing he has helped cause.

Earlier this month, Kennedy fired the 17 medical and public health experts of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices — qualified doctors and public health experts — and replaced them with a group of (mostly) anti-vaxxers in order to pursue his relentless, ascientific crusade.

On Thursday, at its first meeting, his newly reconstituted council voted to ban the preservative thimerosal from the few remaining vaccines that contain it, despite many studies showing that thimerosal is safe. On that point, even the Food and Drug Administration website is blunt: “A robust body of peer-reviewed scientific studies conducted in the U.S. and other countries support the safety of thimerosal-containing vaccines.”

“If you searched the world wide, you could not find a less suitable person to be leading healthcare efforts in the United States or the world,” psychiatrist Allen Frances told NPR on Thursday. Frances, who chaired the task force that changed how the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, or DSM, defines autism, published an essay in the New York Times on Monday explaining why the incidence of autism has increased but is neither an epidemic nor related to vaccines.

“The rapid rise in autism cases is not because of vaccines or environmental toxins,” Frances wrote, “but is rather the result of changes in the way that autism is defined and assessed — changes that I helped put into place.”

But Kennedy is not one to let the facts stand in the way of his cockamamie theories. Manufacturers long ago removed thimerosal from childhood vaccines because of unfounded fears it contained mercury that could accumulate in the brain and unfounded fears about a relationship between mercury and autism.

That did not stop one of Kennedy’s new council members, Lyn Redwood, who once led Children’s Health Defense, the anti-vaccine group founded by Kennedy, from declaring a victory for children.

“Removing a known neurotoxin from being injected into our most vulnerable population is a good place to start with making America healthy again,” Redwood told the committee.

Autism rates, by the way, have continued to climb despite the thimerosal ban. But fear not, gullible Americans, Kennedy has promised to pinpoint a cause for the complex condition by September!

Like his boss, Kennedy just makes stuff up.

On Wednesday, he halted a $1-billion American commitment to Gavi, an organization that provides vaccines to millions of children around the world, wrongly accusing the group of failing to investigate adverse reactions to the diptheria vaccine.

“This is utterly disastrous for children around the world and for public health,” Atul Gawande, a surgeon who worked in the Biden administration, told the New York Times.

Unilaterally, and contrary to the evidence, Kennedy decided to abandon the CDC recommendation that healthy pregnant women receive COVID vaccines. But an unvaccinated pregnant woman’s COVID infection can lead to serious health problems for her newborn. In fact, a study last year found that babies born to such mothers had “unusually high rates” of respiratory distress at or just after birth. According to the CDC, nearly 90% of babies who were hospitalized for COVID-19 had unvaccinated mothers. Also, vaccinated moms can pass protective antibodies to their fetuses, who will not be able to get a COVID shot until they are 6 months old.

What else? Oh yes: Kennedy once told podcaster Joe Rogan that the 1918 Spanish flu epidemic was “vaccine-induced flu” even though no flu vaccine existed at the time.

He also told Rogan that a 2003 study by physician scientist Michael Pichichero, an expert on the use of thimerosal in vaccines, involved feeding babies 6 months old and younger mercury-contaminated tuna sandwiches, and that 64 days later, the mercury was still in their system. “Who would do that?” Kennedy demanded.

Well, no one.

In the study, 40 babies were injected with vaccines containing thimerosal, while a control group of 21 babies got shots that did not contain the preservative. None was fed tuna. Ethylmercury, the form of mercury in thimerosal, the researchers concluded, “seems to be eliminated from blood rapidly via the stools.” (BTW, the mercury found in fish is methylmercury, a different chemical, which can damage the brain and nervous system. In a 2012 deposition for his divorce, which was revealed last year, Kennedy said he suffered memory loss and brain fog from mercury poisoning caused by eating too much tuna fish. He also revealed he has a dead worm in his brain.)

Kennedy’s tuna sandwich anecdote on Rogan’s podcast was “a ChatGPT-level of hallucination,” said Morgan McSweeney, a.k.a. “Dr. Noc,” a scientist with a doctorate in pharmaceutical sciences, focusing on immunology and antibodies. McSweeney debunks the idiotic medical claims of non-scientists like Kennedy in his popular social media videos.

Speaking of AI hallucinations, on Tuesday, at a congressional committee hearing, Kennedy was questioned about inaccuracies, misinformation and made up research and citations for nonexistent studies in the first report from his Make America Healthy Again Commission.

The report focused on how American children are being harmed by their poor diets, exposure to environmental toxins and, predictably, over-vaccination. It was immediately savaged by experts. “This is not an evidence-based report, and for all practical purposes, it should be junked at this point,” Georges C. Benjamin, executive director of the American Public Health Assn. told the Washington Post.

If Kennedy was sincere about improving the health of American children he would focus on combating real scourges like gun violence, drug overdoses, depression, poverty and lack of access to preventive healthcare. He would be fighting the proposed cuts to Medicaid tooth and nail.

Do you suppose he even knows that over the past 50 years, the lives of an estimated 154 million children have been saved by vaccines?

Or that he cares?

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Agnes (Eva Victor) has the face of a classical Hollywood movie star but she dresses like an old fisherman. Her expressions are inscrutable; you never know what’s going to come out of her mouth or how. When asked on a written questionnaire how her friends would describe her, she puts down “smart,” crosses it out, then replaces it with “tall.” She is all of those things: tall, smart, striking, endearingly awkward, hard to read. And she is an utterly captivating, entirely unique cinematic presence, the planet around which orbits “Sorry, Baby,” the debut feature of Victor, who not only stars but writes and directs.

Agnes’ backstory, revealed in time, is a distressingly common one of sexual assault, recounted with bursts of wild honesty, searing insight and unexpected humor. Victor’s screenplay earned her the Waldo Salt Screenwriting Award at the Sundance Film Festival this year, where the film had its premiere. As a writer and performer, Victor allows Agnes to relay what happened in her own way while keeping the most intimate horrors protected.

Set in the frigid environs of the English department at a rural Massachusetts university, “Sorry, Baby” carries a literary quality, emphasized by nonchronological titled chapters (e.g., “The Year With the Baby,” “The Year With the Bad Thing,”) carefully establishing our protagonist, the world she inhabits and a few nagging questions.

Agnes is a professor of English at the university where she completed her graduate studies, but we first meet her as the best friend of Lydie (Naomi Ackie), who arrives for a winter weekend visit. Two codependent besties reunited, they snuggle on the couch and laugh about sex. Lydie delights at the mystery man who turns up on her friend’s doorstep — a friendly, familiar neighbor named Gavin (Lucas Hedges).

But Lydie’s quiet concern for her friend is also palpable. When she reveals her pregnancy to Agnes, she says, “There’s something I need to tell you about my body,” as if Agnes is a child who needs gentle explanation. And in a strange way, Agnes seems to take to this childlike role with her friend. Lydie carefully probes her about her office and its previous occupant. She presses her about remaining in this town. Isn’t it “a lot”? “It’s a lot to be wherever,” Agnes replies. Lydie requests of her, “Don’t die” and Agnes reassures her she would have already killed herself if she was going to. It’s cold comfort, a phrase that could capably describe the entire vibe of “Sorry, Baby.”

Victor then flips back to an earlier chapter, before their graduation, to a time when Agnes seems less calcified in her idiosyncrasies. Their thesis advisor, Preston Decker (Louis Cancelmi), handsome and harried, tells Agnes her work is “extraordinary” and reschedules a meeting due to a child-care emergency. They both end up at his home, where dusk turns to night.

What ensues is what you expect and dread, though we only hear about it when Agnes recounts the excruciating details of the incident to Lydie later that night. The fallout renders Agnes emotionally stunted, running alternately on autopilot and impulse. Lydie fiercely protects (and enables) her friend until she has to move on with her life, leaving Agnes frozen in amber in that house, that office, that town, that night.

There’s an architectural quality to Victor’s style in the film’s structure and thoughtful editing, and in the lingering shots of buildings standing starkly against an icy sky, glowing windows beckoning or concealing from within: a representation of a singular kind of brittle, poignant New England stoicism. Victor captures Agnes the same way.

Thanks to the profound and nuanced honesty Victor extracts from each moment, “Sorry, Baby” is a movie that lingers. Even when Agnes does something outlandish or implausible — turning up on foot at Gavin’s door in a tizzy is one of her curious quirks — it feels true to the character.

But Agnes is a mystery even to herself, it seems, tamping down her feelings until they come tumbling out in strange ways. She goes about her daily life in a never-ending cycle of repression and explosion, cracking until she shatters completely. Her most important journey is to find a place to be soft again.

The only catharsis or healing to be found in the film comes from the titular apology, more a rueful word of caution than anything else. We can never be fully protected from what life has in store for us, nor from the acts of selfishness or cruelty that cause us to harden and retreat into the protective cocoon of a huge jacket, a small town, an empty house.

Life — and the people in it — will break us sometimes. But there are still kittens and warm baths and best friends and really good sandwiches. There are still artists like Victor who share stories like this with such detailed emotion. Sometimes that’s enough to glue us back together, at least for a little while.

There is a simple tattoo of a windowpane on the middle finger of Eva Victor’s right hand. When I ask about it, the filmmaker launches into a story that involves miscommunication with an Italian tattoo artist while on a trip to Paris.

“I drew this really intricate fine-line tattoo of a window with all these curtains and little things in it,” explains Victor. “And I went to the woman and she was like, ‘I cannot do that.’ And I was like, ‘OK, what can you do?’ And she drew a box with lines in it and I was like, “OK, let’s do that.’ And she did it.”

With a little distance and perspective, what could have been a permanent disaster now means something else.

“It seriously is a really rough tattoo,” Victor adds with a lighthearted laugh. “But, you know, life is life. And that’s my tattoo and I have it on my hand every day of my life.”

Much like “Sorry, Baby,” the debut feature that Victor wrote, directed and starred in, the tattoo story is one that begins in odd whimsy but takes an unexpected turn toward something deeper, a personal journey.

“I have a lot of tattoos that are day-of tattoos,” Victor, 31, says. “Sometimes with big decisions I find it’s easier to just do it. It matters more to me that I’m doing this than what it is.

Seeing it every day, the little window is a reminder of another life. “It is definitely like a memory of a person I was who would do something like that,” she adds.

“Sorry, Baby” premiered earlier this year at the Sundance Film Festival, where it won the Waldo Salt Screenwriting Award and was picked up for distribution by indie powerhouse A24. The film more recently played at Cannes and opens in limited release this week.

Told via a literary-inspired chapter structure across five years, the story follows Agnes (Victor), a professor at the small East Coast liberal arts college where she was also a grad student, as she tenuously recovers from the free fall following a sexual assault by one of her instructors. Naomi Ackie (also recently seen in “Blink Twice” and “Mickey 17”) brings an openhearted allegiance to Agnes’ best friend Lydie, who, over the course of the film, comes out as gay, marries a woman and has a baby, while Lucas Hedges plays a sympathetic neighbor.

Eva Victor in the movie “Sorry, Baby.”

(A24)

It’s a recent quiet Monday morning at a West Hollywood vegetarian restaurant where we meet and Victor, who uses they/she pronouns and identifies as queer, peruses the menu with a mix of curiosity and enthusiasm.

Victor is a self-described pescatarian but will make the odd exception for a slider at a fancy party or a bite of the pork and green chile stew at Dunsmoor in Glassell Park, a favorite. Having moved to Los Angeles a little over a year ago to work on the editing of “Sorry, Baby,” Victor has settled into living in Silver Lake with their cat, Clyde.

“I love it — I do,” Victor says with quiet conviction. “It’s very comforting. I have all my little things I get when I’m home, but it’s been a while since I’ve been home for a bit. So I’m looking forward to being able to rest at home soon.”

After breakfast, Victor will head to the airport to go shoot a small acting part in an unnamed project and by the end of the week will make a talk show debut with an appearance on the “The Late Show With Stephen Colbert.”

“It’s been very intense for me,” Victor says of the period following Sundance. “I’m very interested in my privacy and also in routine of the day. I really like having things I do every day. It’s weird to go from making a movie for four years, basically, that nobody knows about. And then it premieres at Sundance and that’s how people find out about it and everyone finds out about it in the same night. That is a very bizarre experience for the body.”

Victor adds, “It does feel like there are a lot of layers between me and the film at this point.”

There’s an unusual, angular physicality to Victor’s performance in “Sorry, Baby,” as Agnes struggles to reengage with her own body following the assault, mostly referred to in the film as “the bad thing.”

“I keep hearing, ‘Oh, Agnes is so awkward.’ I’m like, ‘What the hell?’” says Victor, protectively. “I’m very humbled by people’s reactions to how bizarre they think that character is because I’m like: ‘Oh, I thought she was acting legitimately normal, but OK.’”

“It’s life-affirming for me to know that I wrote the film in a leap-of-faith way to be like: ‘Is anyone else feeling like this?’” says Victor. “And it’s nice to know that there are people who are understanding what that is.”

(Jason Armond / Los Angeles Times)

Victor, grew up in San Francisco and studied playwriting and acting at Northwestern University, moving to New York City after graduation with ambitions to work as a staffer on a late-night talk show. She got a job writing for the satirical website Reductress and began making short online videos of herself, many of which became offbeat viral comedy hits for the way they jabbed at contemporary culture, including “me explaining to my boyfriend why we’re going to straight pride” and “me when I def did not murder my husband,” and “the girl from the movie who doesn’t believe in love.” She also appeared as a performer on the final three seasons of the series “Billions.”

The character sketches of those videos only hinted at the nuance and complexity of which Victor was capable. Throughout “Sorry, Baby” there is a care and delicacy to how the most sensitive and vulnerable moments are handled. In the film, the sexual assault itself occurs offscreen — we don’t see it or hear it — as a shot of the facade of the teacher’s house depicts the passage of time from day to night. Later, Agnes sits in the bath as she describes to Lydie what happened, a moment made all the more disarming for the tinges of humor that Victor still manages to bring.

“At the end of the day, I really wanted to make a film about trying to heal,” Victor says. “And about love getting you through really hard times. And so the violence is not depicted in the film and not structurally the big plot point of the film. The big plot point of the film in my opinion is Agnes telling Lydie what happened and her holding it very well. That to me is sort of what we’re building to in the film — these moments in friendship over time and the loneliness of a person in between those moments.”

The relationship between Agnes and Lydie forms much of the core of “Sorry, Baby,” with the chemistry between Victor and Ackie giving off a rare warmth and understanding. The connection between the two actors as performers happened straight away.

“The script was so incredible that, to be honest with you, I already felt like I knew them,” says Ackie on a Zoom call from New York City. “There was something about the rhythm of how the writing was that made me feel like we might have something in common. When I was reading it to myself, it felt so natural in my mouth. And then we finally met and it was like all of the humor and the heart and the tragedy of the script was suddenly in a person. There was a sense of ease in the way we were talking and openness and a joyfulness and an excitedness that was kind of instantaneous.”

Naomi Ackie, left, and Eva Victor in the movie “Sorry, Baby.”

(A24)

The film is the product of an unusual development process spurred by producers Barry Jenkins, Adele Romanski and Mark Ceryak. Based on their fandom of Victor’s online videos, Jenkins reached out through DMs and set up a meeting, setting in motion the process that would eventually lead to a screenplay for “Sorry, Baby.”

“When Ava sent the first draft of ‘Sorry, Baby,’ it arrived in the way that the most special things have for me, which is fully formed,” says Romanski. “Not to say that we didn’t then go back and continue to refine it, but it just arrived so clear and so emotional. It hit from the first draft. So it felt like it would be such a shame not to figure out how to put that into a visual form that other people could experience what we were able to experience just from reading it.”

From there, the team set about making Victor feel comfortable and confident as both a filmmaker and a performer. Having already had experience working with first-time feature directors such as Charlotte Wells on “Aftersun” and Raven Jackson on “All Dirt Roads Taste of Salt,” the producing trio knew the process would require extra care and attention.

“Part of the reason this challenge felt possible is how much work we’ve done in how best to support a director in that debut space,” says Romanski. “There was a lot of confidence and assuredness around how to be that producer for that first-time filmmaker.”

The team arranged something of an unofficial directing fellowship, allowing Victor to shoot a few scenes from the script and then sit down with an editor to discuss how to improve on the footage. Victor made shot lists after watching Jenkins’ “Moonlight” and Kelly Reichardt’s “Certain Women,” leaning further into the mechanics of how to visually construct scenes. Victor also shadowed filmmaker Jane Schoenbrun during production for last year’s acclaimed “I Saw the TV Glow.”

“There was no prescriptive timeline to the course that it took,” explains Romanski. “It was just kind of, we’ll keep finding things to help you fortify and put on directorial muscle mass until you tell us, ‘I’m ready.’ And then when you say, ‘I’m ready,’ we’ll pivot to putting the movie together. There’s no blueprint for this, at least not for us. We haven’t done it quite like this before, but that’s also what’s exciting about it.”

Without ever sharing specifics, the story is rooted in Victor’s personal experience. Going back to some of their earliest press around 2018, Victor would self-describe as a sexual assault survivor. There was material about it in a stand-up comedy routine. (“It didn’t work,” Victor notes, dryly, adding that they longer do stand-up.)

The experience of making the movie and putting it out into the world has been one of potentially being continually retriggered, sent back to emotions and feelings Victor has worked hard to move forward from. Yet the process of making the film began to provide its own rewards.

“The thing about this kind of trauma is it is someone deciding where your body goes without your permission,” Victor says. “And that is surreal and absurd and very difficult. It’s very difficult to make sense of the world after something like that happens.”

The “Sorry, Baby” shoot in Massachusetts last year was a turning point, says Victor, one of validation. “The experience of directing myself as an actor is an experience of saying: This is where my body’s going right now,” says Victor. “And a crew of 60 people being like, ‘Yes.’ It’s this really special experience of being like, ‘I am saying where my body goes’ and everyone agrees. In the making of the film, that was very powerful to me.”

Eva Victor and John Carroll Lynch in the movie “Sorry, Baby.”

(A24)

Even with the success of “Sorry, Baby” and the way it has launched Victor to a new level of attention and acclaim, there is a tinge of melancholy to discovering just how many people are connecting to the film because it speaks to their own experiences.

“It’s a very personal film for a lot of people and there’s a sadness to that because it’s a community of people who have experienced things that they shouldn’t have had to,” says Victor. “It’s life-affirming for me to know that I wrote the film in a leap-of-faith way to be like: ‘Is anyone else feeling like this?’ And it’s nice to know that there are people who are understanding what that is.”

While recently back in France, Victor got another tattoo, this time on her foot, where she doesn’t see it as often.

“Maybe there’s a dash of mental illness in it,” says Victor. “But I think with tattoos, it’s such a good one, because it’s not going to hurt you but it is intense and permanent. So it is risk-taking.”

That attention to a small shift in personal perspective, a change in action and how one approaches the world, is part of what makes “Sorry, Baby” such a powerful experience. And as it now continues to make its way out to more audiences, Victor’s experience with it continues to evolve as well.

“There is a process that’s happening right now where it’s like an exhale. I’m like, whatever will be will be,” Victor says. “Putting something out into the world is a process of letting go of it. And I had my time with it and I got to make it what I wanted it to be. And now it will over time not be mine.”

The experience of making “Sorry, Baby” has pushed Victor forward both professionally and personally, finding catharsis in creativity and community.

“I guess that is the deal,” Victor offers. “That is part of the journey of releasing something. I mean it’s legitimately called a release.”

COOL Britannia is back – and that’s official. 

High society bible Tatler is among those making the declaration on its new edition, which features the offspring of Nineties music legends Liam Gallagher and Richard Ashcroft. 

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Heralding the rebirth of the Britpop-era movement, the magazine pictures Molly Moorish-Gallagher and musician Sonny Ashcroft proudly standing in front of a giant Union Jack. 

Anyone over the age of 40 is likely to spot the obvious homage being paid to a similar front cover published by Vanity Fair in 1997. 

That iconic picture saw Oasis singer Liam sharing a bed with his then girlfriend, actress Patsy Kensit. 

The couple married a few months later when Oasis were arguably the biggest music stars of the decade. 

And it is no coincidence the new magazine cover comes just days before the Oasis reunion tour, which will have Richard Ashcroft as the support act. 

But Tatler did not go for another “power couple”, like Liam and Patsy were, and instead took the nepo baby route. 

But as the new faces of Cool Britannia take centre stage, it’s less champagne supernova, more alcohol-free explosion.

Tatler

However, editors still think the duo are living proof of a second coming.

The mag claims: “Ahead of the Oasis reunion, Liam’s daughter Molly Moorish-Gallagher and The Verve scion Sonny Ashcroft are leading the Britpop revival. 

“They’re the next generation of Britpop: Molly Moorish-Gallagher and Sonny Ashcroft are gracing the cover of Tatler as their fathers, Liam Gallagher and Richard Ashcroft, prepare for an earth-shattering Oasis reunion. 

“But as the new faces of Cool Britannia take centre stage, it’s less champagne supernova, more alcohol-free explosion.” 

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The piece continues: “She is the daughter of Lisa Moorish and Liam Gallagher; he is the eldest son of Richard Ashcroft and Kate Radley. 

“Together, they are the new faces of the (Br)it crowd. 

“But what do the pair make of Cool Britannia 2.0?” 

It turns out that neither of the nepo babies shares their parents’ hellraising ways, and the revival will not be based around downing pints of lager or being “chained to the mirror and the razor blade”, as Oasis once sang. 

Sonny proudly tells the magazine he’s not one for a night out.

He said: “I’m very much a night-in person.

Seeing friends, some good food and drinks and playing games of some kind.

Molly Moorish-Gallagher, Liam’s daugher

“A nice meal with friends and then gathering over some sort of board game or film at home.” 

While Molly says her idea of a wild night is: “Seeing friends, some good food and drinks and playing games of some kind.” 

But if the Cool Britannia nepo kids aren’t keeping the Nineties hedonistic vibe going, it seems Gen Z-ers are keeping the momentum going through fashion. 

Love Island host Maya Jama recently recreated Liz Hurley’s famous Versace safety pin dress that she wore to the Four Weddings And A Funeral premiere in 1994. 

Singers Dua Lipa and Lola Young have been inspired by other huge names of the Nineties in their fashion choices. 

And Liam’s son Lennon was pretty much an identikit copy of his dad when he attended a Burberry pub takeover last week. 

A new study has also revealed that youngsters are now huge fans of some of the decade’s greatest hairstyles, including The Rachel from Friends, the floppy hair of actor Johnny Depp and Victoria Beckham’s Posh bob. 

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The study, commissioned by Funkin Cocktails, also found a fondness for Doc Marten boots and baggy jeans, famously sported by the likes of Mark Wahlberg when he was rapper Marky Mark. 

Ashley Birch-Ruffell, from Funkin Cocktails, said: “Nineties fashion is very on trend, and it’s fun to see what our official favourite styles are. 

“There are clearly many iconic hairstyles and memorable moments from this decade that live on in the public consciousness. 

“It seems clear that Nineties trends aren’t going anywhere anytime soon — and why would we want them to?” 

“It’s clear that the whole culture of the Nineties is still considered unapologetically iconic.” 

Gen Z can’t match our hellraising era 

IT was a sensational whirl of bucket hats, Union Jacks, lads’ mags, boozy bands and more than a whiff of the old marching powder, writes Rod McPhee.

The late Nineties were a hellraising golden age not seen since the Swinging Sixties. 

But despite being due another period of partying, I’m sorry to say we’ll never quite be able to match the magic of the original Cool Britannia. 

Trust me, I was there, I did it. I got the T-shirt – and the dodgy Liam Gallagher shaggy haircut

What’s more, I loved it all. From music to fashion, and movies to models, the run-up to the year 2000 was the perfect blend of sex and, yes, drugs, plus lashings of rock ’n’ roll. 

Of course, it’s great to get a taste of the good old days when Oasis stage their comeback tour next week, plus there’s the prospect of the Spice Girls doing a similar celebratory event next year. 

But nothing can once again live up to a period in modern pop culture history which I believe was genuinely unique. Maybe I’m looking back at the past through rose-tinted glasses. 

But no pop groups, artists, catwalk stars or actors these days come close to the tearaway Primrose Hill crowd that kept us entertained and shocked three decades ago. 

That said, no one would love reliving some of the brilliance of the Nineties more than me. 

So let’s make the most of summer 2025. 

Unlock even more award-winning articles as The Sun launches brand new membership programme – Sun Club.

REALITY TV star Lateysha Grace rushed her sick six-month-old baby to hospital after she started struggling to breathe.

The 32-year-old’s daughter “took a turn for the worse” before she was diagnosed with bronchitis and croup.

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Posting a snap from hospital, the terrified mum of Navy Storm Grace told fans: “Sorry I’ve been so MIA guys.

“Navy took a turn for the worse on Friday night and we ended up in hospital until Saturday.

“It was so scary. She got diagnosed with bronchitis and croup bless her.

“I’m going to add a video in of her breathing to warn other parents to go straight to A&E if their child has similar symptoms.

“She’s on the mend now. Her breathing is so much better.

“She’s drinking her milk and her temperature has gone.”

Lateysh added: “Apparently she had it for a couple of days prior and day four or five is the worst, which were the days we were in hospital.

“So even if your baby has the tiniest of coughs/colds get it checked out.

“I honestly thought it was nothing at first as she had no temperature and was eating, drink and sleeping normally.”

Croup is a common condition that mainly affects babies’ and young children’s airways.

Symptoms usually include a barking cough and high pitched, rasping sound when breathing in.