begins

A highly anticipated new Western drama in the hit Yellowstone franchise is about to start on Paramount+

Yellowstone’s new spin-off that puts Kayce Dutton (played by Luke Grimes) at the forefront is finally here, and it’s a must-watch for fans of the gripping Western drama.

Airing today (Sunday, 1st March) on CBS in the US and later available on Paramount+, Marshals: A Yellowstone Story follows the rancher and former Navy SEAL as he enlists with an elite squad of US Marshals to deliver justice across Montana.

As he wages war against violence and learns to adapt to working with a team, he must also strive to become the best father possible to his teenage son, Tate (Brecken Merrill).

The latest of several spin-offs from the popular neo-Western saga created by Taylor Sheridan, Marshals promises action-packed cases and gripping drama each week that is sure to keep viewers satisfied.

Although reviews have been mixed so far, garnering a 50 percent score on Rotten Tomatoes, critics agree the show has huge potential and is bound to keep die-hard fans enthralled.

Collider has praised Grimes’ central performance as Kayce, writing that he comes into his own as the Yellowstone franchise’s newest lead.

“Grimes carries the series with ease,” they went on, “graduating from being a supporting cast member roaming alongside Kevin Costner’s shadow to the leading man of his own cowboy-flavoured crime drama.”

Their review also assured fans that the shift to CBS hasn’t sanitised the gritty Yellowstone brand too much, adding: “Marshals is a neo-Western that is chock-full of potential.

“It’s action-packed, thrilling, and full of everything you could ask for in a Kayce Dutton-led series that fights hard to divorce itself from the “Y” that still lingers in the background. It’s not perfect, nor does it claim to be, but once it gets through the initial growing pains, it will be able to stand firmly on its own.”

Men’s Journal described the series as “kick-a**”, promising it still has the “Yellowstone magic”.

The review went on: “Marshals may not be as twisty or unpredictable as 1923 or the recent season of Landman, but it has that same sparkle and magic of the other Sheridan westerns.

“It’s the sort of show that doesn’t ask much to get invested, and rewards you with the simple pleasure of feeling good after you’ve watched an episode. In a world of morally grey anti-heroes, Kayce Dutton is here to be the perennial good guy on horseback. And frankly, it’s good to have him back.”

TVLine was also impressed with the Yellowstone universe’s latest offering, urging potential viewers not to be put off by Marshals’ broadcast on CBS, home to crime procedurals such as NCIS and FBI.

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“Marshals actually manages to serve both of its masters quite well,” they wrote.

“With its swelling score, sweeping cinematography, and gorgeous opening credits sequence (a dying art!), you’ll often find yourself wondering, ‘Wait, am I really watching a network procedural right now?’

“Marshals fires on all cylinders, sending the team on explosive missions that guarantee your Sunday nights will end with a bang.”

They concluded: “A visual treat with genuine heart, Marshals is enough of a crime procedural to appeal to viewers who enjoy a complete story told in 60 minutes, while also remaining prestigious enough to satisfy Yellowstone fans who might not typically watch a show like, say, S.W.A.T. or NCIS.”

Marshals: A Yellowstone Story premieres Sunday, 1st March on CBS and the following Monday on Paramount+.

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Donald Trump has never been one to play by the rules.

Whether it’s stiffing contractors as a real estate developer, defying court orders he doesn’t like as president or leveraging the Oval Office to vastly inflate his family’s fortune, Trump’s guiding principle can be distilled to a simple, unswerving calculation: What’s in it for me?

Trump is no student of history. He’s famously allergic to books. But he knows enough to know that midterm elections like the one in November have, with few exceptions, been ugly for the party holding the presidency.

With control of the House — and Trump’s virtually unchecked authority — dangling by a gossamer thread, he reckoned correctly that Republicans were all but certain to lose power this fall unless something unusual happened.

So he effectively broke the rules.

Normally, the redrawing of the country’s congressional districts takes place once every 10 years, following the census and accounting for population changes over the previous decade. Instead, Trump prevailed upon the Republican governor of Texas, Greg Abbott, to throw out the state’s political map and refashion congressional lines to wipe out Democrats and boost GOP chances of winning as many as five additional House seats.

The intention was to create a bit of breathing room, as Democrats need a gain of just three seats to seize control of the House.

In relatively short order, California’s Democratic governor, Gavin Newsom, responded with his own partisan gerrymander. He rallied voters to pass a tit-for-tat ballot measure, Proposition 50, which revised the state’s political map to wipe out Republicans and boost Democratic prospects of winning as many as five additional seats.

Then came the deluge.

In more than a dozen states, lawmakers looked at ways to tinker with their congressional maps to lift their candidates, stick it to the other party and gain House seats in November.

Some of those efforts continue, including in Virginia where, as in California, voters are being asked to amend the state Constitution to let majority Democrats redraw political lines ahead of the midterm. A special election is set for April 21.

But as the first ballots of 2026 are cast on Tuesday — in Arkansas, North Carolina and Texas — the broad contours of the House map have become clearer, along with the result of all those partisan machinations. The likely upshot is a nationwide partisan shift of fewer than a handful of seats.

The independent, nonpartisan Cook Political Report, which has a sterling decades-long record of election forecasting, said the most probable outcome is a wash. “At the end of the day,” said Erin Covey, who analyzes House races for the Cook Report, “this doesn’t really benefit either party in a real way.”

Well.

That was a lot of wasted time and energy.

Let’s take a quick spin through the map and the math, knowing that, of course, there are no election guarantees.

In Texas, for instance, new House districts were drawn assuming Latinos would back Republican candidates by the same large percentage they supported Trump in 2024. But that’s become much less certain, given the backlash against his draconian immigration enforcement policies; numerous polls show a significant falloff in Latino support for the president, which could hurt GOP candidates up and down the ballot.

But suppose Texas Republicans gain five seats as hoped for and California Democrats pick up the five seats they’ve hand-crafted. The result would be no net change.

Elsewhere, under the best case for each party, a gain of four Democratic House seats in Virginia would be offset by a gain of four Republican House seats in Florida.

That leaves a smattering of partisan gains here and there. A combined pickup of four or so Republican seats in Ohio, North Carolina and Missouri could be mostly offset by Democratic gains of a seat apiece in New York, Maryland and Utah.

(The latter is not a result of legislative high jinks, but rather a judge throwing out the gerrymandered map passed by Utah Republicans, who ignored a voter-approved ballot measure intended to prevent such heavy-handed partisanship. A newly created district, contained entirely within Democratic-leaning Salt Lake County, seems certain to go Democrats’ way in November.)

In short, it’s easy to characterize the political exertions of Trump, Abbott, Newsom and others as so much sound and fury producing, at bottom, little to nothing.

But that’s not necessarily so.

The campaign surrounding Proposition 50 delivered a huge political boost to Newsom, shoring up his standing with Democrats, significantly raising his profile across the country and, not least for his 2028 presidential hopes, helping the governor build a significant nationwide fundraising base.

In crimson-colored Indiana, Republicans refused to buckle under tremendous pressure from Trump, Vice President JD Vance and other party leaders, rejecting an effort to redraw the state’s congressional map and give the GOP a hold on all nine House seats. That showed even Trump’s Svengali-like hold on his party has its limits.

But the biggest impact is also the most corrosive.

By redrawing political lines to predetermine the outcome of House races, politicians rendered many of their voters irrelevant and obsolete. Millions of Democrats in Texas, Republicans in California and partisans in other states have been effectively disenfranchised, their voices rendered mute. Their ballots spindled and nullified.

In short, the politicians — starting with Trump — extended a big middle finger to a large portion of the American electorate.

Is it any wonder, then, so many voters hold politicians and our political system in contempt?

Iran has begun 40 days of mourning after Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei was killed in ongoing attacks by the United States and Israel, according to Iranian state media.

Top security officials were also killed in Saturday’s strikes, along with Khamenei’s daughter, son-in-law and grandson. The killings mark one of the most significant blows to Iran’s leadership since the 1979 Islamic revolution.

President Masoud Pezeshkian condemned the killing as “a great crime”, according to a statement from his office. He also declared seven days of public holidays in addition to the 40-day mourning period.

Reporting from Tehran, Al Jazeera’s Tohid Asadi said people were pouring into the streets of the capital following the news of Khamenei’s killing.

“There will be expected ceremonies,” he said, noting they would likely take place amid continuing bombardment across the country.

Protests denouncing Khamenei’s killing were also reported elsewhere, including Shiraz, Yasuj and Lorestan.

“There will be expected ceremonies,” he said, noting they would likely take place amid continuing bombardment across the country.

Footage aired by Iranian state media showed supporters mourning at the shrine of Imam Reza in Mashhad, with several people seen crying and collapsing in grief.

The killing also led to protests in neighbouring Iraq, which declared three days of public mourning. In Baghdad, protesters confronted security forces in the heavily fortified Green Zone, which houses Iraqi government buildings and foreign embassies.

Videos verified by Al Jazeera showed demonstrators waving flags and shouting slogans, with witnesses saying some were attempting to mobilise towards the US Embassy. Footage also showed protesters blocking vehicles at a roundabout near one of the entrances to the area.

There was also a protest in the Pakistani city of Karachi, where footage, verified by Al Jazeera, showed people setting fire to and smashing the windows of the US consulate.

However, there have also been reports of celebrations in Iran, with the Reuters news agency quoting witnesses as saying some people had taken to the streets in Tehran, the nearby city of Karaj and the central city of Isfahan.

Meanwhile, the official IRNA news agency reported that a three-person council, consisting of the country’s president, the chief of the judiciary, and one of the jurists of the Guardian Council, will temporarily assume all leadership duties in the country. The body will temporarily oversee the country until a new supreme leader is elected.

Khamenei assumed leadership of Iran in 1989 following the death of Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, who had led the Islamic revolution a decade earlier.

While Khomeini was regarded as the ideological force behind the revolution that ended the Pahlavi monarchy, Khamenei went on to shape Iran’s military and paramilitary apparatus, strengthening both its domestic control and its regional influence.

Attacks across the region

Meanwhile, the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) pledged revenge and said it had launched strikes on 27 bases hosting US troops in the region, as well as Israeli military facilities in Tel Aviv.

Explosions have continued to be reported in Qatar and the United Arab Emirates, while security alerts are in place in several countries across the region.

US President Donald Trump, in a social media post on Sunday, warned Iran that it would be hit “with a force that has ⁠never been seen before” if it retaliated.

Iran’s retaliatory attacks since Saturday have targeted Israel and US assets across multiple Middle East countries, including Qatar, the UAE, Kuwait, Bahrain, Jordan, Saudi Arabia and Iraq.

Harlan Ullman, chairman of the strategic advisory firm Killowen Group and an adviser to the Atlantic Council in Washington, DC, said the US may have made a “big mistake” by killing Khamenei.

“Decapitation only works when you get all the leaders, and I don’t think that we got all the leaders,” Ullman said, adding that the US should not expect Iran’s leadership to enter negotiations in the immediate aftermath.

Iranian state media reported on Saturday at least 201 people have been killed in the joint US-Israeli attacks across 24 provinces, citing the Red Crescent. In southern Iran, at least 148 people were killed and 95 wounded in a strike on an elementary girls’ school in Minab on Saturday, with the toll continuing to rise, according to state media.

Defending Southern Section Division 1 champion St. John Bosco, the top team in The Times’ high school baseball rankings, began its season Friday with an 8-0 win over La Serna.

Julian Garcia, who missed last season while recovering from an arm injury, was impressive in his debut. He struck out five with no walks and no hits in four innings. Closer Jack Champlin continued to blank the Lancers, getting the final two outs, one on a strikeout.

Noah Everly had three hits and James Clark added two hits and two RBIs.

Orange Lutheran 10, Crespi 0: Gary Morse struck out eight in five innings and Brady Murrietta had two hits and two RBIs for the Lancers.

Gahr 1, El Dorado 0: A ninth-inning run ended the pitching duel. Jake Ourique gave up one hit in six innings for Gahr.

Harvard-Westlake 3, Cypress 0: Evan Alexander, Jake Chung and Nate Blum combined for the shutout. Jake Kim had two RBIs.

JSerra 17, Prosper (Texas) 9: Brise Boop had a home run, a double and four RBIs, and Blake Bowen homered and finished with thee hits for JSerra in Texas.

Sherman Oaks Notre Dame 2, Servite 0: Beckett Berg gave up three hits in six innings. Jacob Madrid and Malakye Matsumoto each had two hits for 4-0 Notre Dame.

Granada Hills 6, Sylmar 1: Max Szczech had a home run, double and single for the Highlanders.

Moorpark 7, Rio Mesa 3: Carson Cerny had a home run, a triple and five RBIs for Moorpark. He also struck out three in three innings. Cody Brossard threw four shutout innings of relief.

Hart 4, Bishop Alemany 2: Hayden Rhodes and Jaiden Chan had RBI hits for Hart, which received six shutout innings from pitcher Cayden Kollasch.

Birmingham 4, San Marcos 2: A two-run fifth lifted the Patriots. Aidan Martinez got his second save.

South Hills 4, Bonita 0: Carson Baker threw a four-hitter with five strikeouts for South Hills. Richie Soto hit a home run.

Los Alamitos 8, Yucaipa 1: Cruz D’Errico had a two-run double and Will McCullough had two hits and two RBIs for Los Alamitos.

El Camino Real 8, Sun Valley Poly 5: An eight-run third inning propelled the Royals. Hudson December gave up no runs in five innings for El Camino Real. RJ De La Rosa had two hits and two RBIs. Blake Dubin had a double, a single and three RBIs.

Sierra Canyon 3, West Ranch 1: Kingston Monette and Mac Kennedy combined on a five-hitter for Sierra Canyon.

Bell 10, South El Monte 1: Adolfo Esquivel finished with two hits and two RBIs and also threw four hitless innings.

La Cañada 9, Arcadia 2: Will Park and Joe Bell each had two hits and two RBIs for La Cañada. Scott Burns struck out seven.

Santa Margarita 4, Loyola 3: The Eagles picked up a run in the top of the seventh to beat their second Mission League team this week. Warren Gravely IV contributed two doubles.

Westlake 6, Highland 1: Blake Miller and Dylan Lee had two hits each for Westlake.

Fountain Valley 4, Tesoro 1: Josh Grack had three hits, including a home run, to lead Fountain Valley. He also threw two scoreless innings with three strikeouts.

Carson 5, West Torrance 0: Skylar Vinson threw five scoreless innings and also had two hits for the Colts.

Newport Harbor 6, Foothill 1: Gavin Guy struck out seven and had two hits for 5-0 Newport Harbor. Henry Mann went three for three.

Boys’ basketball

Gardena Serra 57, Pilibos 51: Chinemerem Anyikwa scored 25 points to help Serra win the Southern Section Division 5 championship at Azusa Pacific. Demetri Galadjyan scored 23 points for Pilibos.

Girls’ basketball

St. Margaret’s 57, Murrieta Valley 41: Jayden Witten had 19 points, one of four players in double figures, to help St. Margaret’s win the Division 3 championship.

Savanna 46, Warren 25: Jazara Madrid led Savanna to the Division 6 title with 16 points.

Crescenta Valley 51, Saugus 43: Kelin Shajanian scored 14 points and Anik Nortikyan contributed 11 rebounds to lead the Falcons to the Southern Section Division 2 championship.

Feb. 20 (UPI) — The Dominican Republic opened the year with 1.22 million tourists in January, a 5.5% increase compared with the same month last year. The increase was driven by growth in air arrivals and sustained demand from the United States.

Tourist arrivals to the island by air surpassed the 800,000-passenger mark for the first time in a single month, posting year-over-year growth of 8.7%, according to the Ministry of Tourism,. The figure exceeds pre-pandemic levels and is 61% higher than recorded in January 2019.

“Receiving 1,219,606 visitors for the first time in the history of Dominican tourism tells us how extraordinary this year will be for the sector,” Dominican Republic Tourism Minister David Collado said.

Collado held meetings in New York with representatives of JPMorgan, Bank of America, Standard & Poor’s and American Express, as well as other key players in the international financial system, as part of a strategic agenda to position tourism as the country’s leading productive sector.

According to information released Thursday by the presidency, Collado presented projections for Dominican tourism for this year, highlighting the sector’s sustained growth and predicting that if the current trend continues, 2026 could close with new record figures for the industry.

Dominican tourism continues to position itself as a reliable destination for investment, authorities said, backed by what they describe as “a vision of sustainable development that inspires confidence in international markets.”

According to information from the Ministry of Tourism, North America is the main source market for tourists to the island, accounting for 59% of air arrivals, led by the United States and Canada. Latin America also showed solid performance and expanded its share of total visitors.

Punta Cana accounted for the largest share of the country’s air traffic during the month. The cruise segment recorded a slight decline compared with the same period last year, while hotel occupancy averaged 82% nationwide during peak season.

Tourism is one of the main generators of foreign exchange and employment. In 2025, the country received more than 11.6 million visitors, consolidating its position as the Caribbean’s leading tourist destination.

As part of its international promotion strategy, the Ministry of Tourism signed a strategic alliance with Visa Inc., making the Dominican Republic the first country in the Caribbean to finalize an agreement of this kind with the global payments company.

The alliance includes joint campaigns, targeted promotions and exclusive benefits for international travelers, with emphasis on key markets such as the United States, Canada, Europe and Latin America.

The Dominican Republic is projected to be the fastest-growing economy in Latin America and the Caribbean in the coming years, according to the most recent forecasts by the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund.

Growth projections for 2026 place real GDP expansion between 4.0% and 4.5%, positioning the country as one of the economic leaders in the Caribbean region.

In that scenario, tourism is a strategic engine and the backbone of the Dominican economy. Its role is not only to generate revenue, but also to act as a catalyst for other key sectors, such as construction, commerce and transportation.

In 2025, the sector contributed approximately $21.1 billion, representing about 16% of the gross domestic product.

Palestinians are marking the start of the holy month of Ramadan in Gaza where the impact of Israel’s genocidal war continues to be felt, despite a ceasefire in place since October.

It has been a roller coaster week for theme parks boss Josh D’Amaro, who was named the next chief executive of Walt Disney Co. last week.

Once he officially takes the helm of the Mouse House in mid-March, he must tackle several key areas to chart the future of the 102-year-old media and entertainment giant.

For one, he’ll need to bolster Disney’s pipeline of content. As the saying goes, “content is king.”

The Burbank company already has a strong stable of franchises and stories that power its entertainment and streaming businesses, theme parks, merchandise and cruise ships, but Disney will need to keep building on that.

Strong sequels like last year’s “Zootopia 2” and live-action adaptations such as “Lilo & Stitch” — both of which grossed more than $1 billion in worldwide box office revenue — show that good stories can keep paying dividends in new ways, Moffett Nathanson senior research analyst Robert Fishman wrote in a note to clients last week.

On the bright side: This year’s film lineup has several historically strong franchise contenders, including Disney and Pixar’s “Toy Story 5,” Lucasfilm’s “Star Wars: The Mandalorian and Grogu” and Marvel Studios’ “Avengers: Doomsday.” (Marvel, however, has struggled in recent years to pump out consistent hits at the box office.)

But Disney also needs to develop new stories — which has been more of a struggle.

Disney and Pixar’s “Elio” misfired at the box office last year, as original animated movies have had a harder time bringing in the massive audiences they once did because of the drop-off in theater attendance since the pandemic.

That puts more pressure on Disney and Pixar’s upcoming “Hoppers,” an original animated film out in March. The film has gotten strong early traction in online trailer views, Fishman wrote.

The content investment also extends to scripted series, which Fishman noted are a “critical component of success and cannot become an afterthought to theatrical.” He singled out Disney-owned FX as a “prestige outlet” that can contribute to both television and streaming lineups. The network has had a number of successes, including 2024’s “Shogun,” which was one of my favorites.

D’Amaro likely will get help on the content side from soon-to-be president and chief creative officer Dana Walden, a longtime television executive who is respected in Hollywood and well-versed in the entertainment knowledge he lacks.

D’Amaro’s area of expertise is Disney’s experiences sector, which includes the theme parks, cruise line, merchandise and Aulani resort and spa in Hawaii and brings in the lion’s share of operating income for the company. In the fiscal first quarter of this year, the experiences business hauled in a record $10 billion in revenue.

The challenge there will be maintaining Disney’s market dominance in the theme park space while continuing to invest to drive growth and managing attendance in the face of ongoing competition from arch rival Universal Studios.

On the investment front, Disney is all in. The experiences business is in the midst of a 10-year, $60-billion expansion project that would add new themed lands to parks around the world, including at Anaheim’s Disneyland Resort. The company also is building a park in Abu Dhabi and added new cruise ships.

In the near term, however, are concerns about “international visitation headwinds” at Disney’s U.S. parks. The company signaled in its most recent earnings call that those foreign visitor trends could contribute to “modest” operating income growth for the experiences division in the fiscal second quarter, along with pre-launch costs for a new cruise ship and an upcoming “Frozen” land in Disneyland Paris.

To keep attendance rates up, the company shifted its marketing and promotional focus to a more domestic audience, said Hugh Johnston, senior executive vice president and chief financial officer, on the earnings call. But stock analysts — and D’Amaro — undoubtedly will be keeping an eye on international attendance rates and what that will mean for the theme parks going forward.

The part of the company with the potential to drive the most growth, analysts say, is its streaming business.

After recording billions of dollars in losses, Disney’s streaming services, which included Disney+, Hulu and ESPN+, finally reached profitability in 2024. The company’s next goal is to reach 10% operating margins in its entertainment streaming business comprised of Disney+ and Hulu — a milestone that would give investors confidence in its vision.

To get there, continued investment in local language content will be a key priority to increase international subscriptions, as well as bolstering the tech that powers the platforms and provides recommendations.

In short, D’Amaro faces a choice.

“Some investors are thinking, ‘Will he choose to be the same? Or can he start a new era?’” asked Laurent Yoon, senior analyst at Bernstein.

At least one former Disney CEO has weighed in.

“My advice to Josh is continue Bob Iger’s strategy that creativity will handle profits, always protect the brand, and keep close the words of Walt Disney: ‘We love to entertain kings and queens, but the vital thing to remember is this — every guest receives the VIP treatment,’” Michael Eisner posted on social media last week.

But D’Amaro’s own words provide an idea of what he’s thinking. At a global town hall meeting with Disney employees last week, D’Amaro spoke about the company’s legacy — and its path forward.

“We are 100 years old, but we’re 100 years young as well, willing to embrace new technology, new creators and new markets,” he said. “That willingness to change and take risks is what keeps the brand going, and it’s something I intend to continue to push on.”

Stuff We Wrote

Film shoots

Number of the week

Post-apocalyptic horror film “Iron Lung” has grossed $34.3 million in worldwide box office revenue, a remarkable number given the film’s reported $3 million production budget and self-distribution route.

Written, directed and executive produced by YouTuber Mark Fischbach, who goes by the online alias of Markiplier and also stars in the film, “Iron Lung” follows the story of a convict who sails a blood ocean in a submarine. The movie had a $17.8-million opening during the weekend of Jan. 30, placing it right behind Disney’s 20th Century Studios’ “Send Help,” which grossed about $19.1 million in its debut. “Iron Lung” picked up an additional $6 million this past weekend.

Its success reignited the debate about self-distribution and the theatrical draw of content creators.

What I’m watching

Since the Olympics started last week, I’ve been all in on figure skating, a sport I’ve watched since I was a kid who marveled at the artistry and athleticism of stars like Kristi Yamaguchi, Scott Hamilton, Brian Boitano and Michelle Kwan.

So I was supremely interested in this piece by my colleague Thuc Nhi Nguyen about the strength of the U.S. Olympic figure skating team this year, and the camaraderie between U.S. women Amber Glenn, Alysa Liu and Isabeau Levito.