Ukraine has increased attacks on Russian energy infrastructure in bid to disrupt financing of its war.
The Ukrainian military reported that it has struck a Russian warship and a drilling rig in the Black Sea.
Kyiv’s drone forces commander Robert Brovdi said on Monday that the attack targeted the Admiral Makarov missile carrier in the port of Novorossiysk, which is Russia’s largest oil exporting outlet on the Black Sea. Ukraine has increased its attacks on Russian energy infrastructure in a bid to disrupt export revenues that feed into Moscow’s war chest.
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Russian authorities said at least eight people, including two children, were injured in Novorossiysk, without specifying whether the port was struck.
Videos posted on Telegram and verified by Al Jazeera’s verification unit showed a fire at one of the oil port’s docks in the city.
Novorossiysk’s Mayor Andrei Kravchenko said debris from drones had fallen on two locations in the city, including a residential area.
Russia’s military said in the early morning that air defence units had downed 148 Ukrainian drones over a three-hour period. It added that officials said emergency crews were restoring power to nearly half a million households in outages linked to air attacks.
Ukraine has concentrated drone attacks around the port of Novorossiysk throughout the war, but has raised its efforts to halt Russian energy exports recently (File: Reuters)
The area of the port of Novorossiysk is also a location for the Caspian Pipeline Consortium’s (CPC) terminal, which exports oil from Kazakhstan and whose shareholders include US majors such as Chevron and ExxonMobil.
Ukraine has significantly intensified attacks on Russia’s energy facilities, including the largest oil exporting hubs both on the Baltic and Black Seas, as it seeks to reduce Moscow’s revenues from the sales of oil, the lifeblood of its economy.
Kyiv officials complain that Russia will use the additional revenue on new weapons to hit Ukraine harder.
Later on Monday, Russia reported that Ukrainian drones had attacked the CPC terminal. The export facility, which handles 1.5 percent of global oil supply, reported damage to mooring, loading, and storage infrastructure, the Reuters news agency reported.
“The Kyiv regime deliberately attacked facilities of the international oil transportation company Caspian Pipeline Consortium in order to inflict maximum economic damage on its largest shareholders – energy companies from the United States and Kazakhstan,” the defence ministry said in a statement.
Alexander Drozdenko, governor of Russia’s northwestern Leningrad region, said a fuel reservoir in the Primorsk port area leaked when it was hit by shrapnel.
Odesa has been targeted numerous times by Russian strikes (EPA)
In Ukraine, a Russian overnight drone attack on the southern port city of Odesa on Monday killed two women and a toddler, authorities said.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said in a post on X that 16 people were wounded, including a pregnant woman and two children.
Russia’s overnight strikes also hit energy infrastructure in the Chernihiv, Sumy, Kharkiv and Dnipro regions, Zelenskyy said.
More than 300,000 households were without electricity in the northern Chernihiv region after distribution facilities were damaged in attacks, according to the regional power utility.
The Ukrainian leader said that over the past week, Russia launched at Ukraine more than 2,800 attack drones, nearly 1,350 powerful glide bombs and more than 40 missiles of various types.
Having reached the Five-Timers Club, as addressed in an obligatory monologue sketch featuring Jonah Hill, Tina Fey, Candice Bergen and others, Black was a returning hero. He’s frequently cited as one of the favorite hosts among the cast. And while this time may not have reached the frenetic highs of last year’s manic and musical outing, it had some memorable moments.
Black paired up with Marcello Hernández to play martial arts instructors who teach unorthodox self-defense methods. It played to Black’s physical comedy chops, but something felt off about the execution, especially because of the hard-to-understand dialogue. Black played the last Spartan to be considered for inclusion in the group of 300 Greek fighters against Persia (spoiler: he doesn’t make it in). He played an intrusive Airbnb host with Melissa McCarthy, who was also on board for the Five-Timers sketch.
While the monologue was a blast of fresh chaos (or at least the sense of chaos) with Black jamming out with White, the rest of the show didn’t have the same kind of verve, falling back on familiar sketch formulas. That said, Black committed throughout and sang well when he had the opportunity.
Breaking a streak of cold opens featuring President Trump and/or members of his cabinet, this week’s opening sketch featured instead a March Madness NCAA post-game roundup featuring Ernie Johnson (James Austin Johnson), Kenny Smith (Kam Patterson), Charles Barkley (Kenan Thompson) and coach Bruce Pearl (Jeremy Culhane). The joke here was that Barkley, already known for being outspoken, has been getting kudos for speaking out in favor of immigrants on a CBS broadcast. On the show, he jokes that it’s “the first time I went viral without a prescription for Valtrex.” Emboldened, this version of Barkley keeps saying he’s going to be careful with his words, before weighing in on the Iran war, the Artemis II space mission (“A waste of money. They just flying around the moon.”) and the firing of former U.S. Atty. Gen. Pam Bondi. Bondi (Padilla) appeared to refute the comments, referring to “The final four… years of this country.” Barkley said he was going to choose his words carefully one more time before delivering, “Live from New York… It’s Saturday Night!”
For his induction to the Five-Timers Club, Black was joined by a jacket-clad Hill who revealed that there’s something wrong with the lounge where the Five Timers hang out. The room, indeed, appeared spooky and abandoned with cobwebs and Fey wearing a robe made out of Paddington, which she said she got after hosting “SNL UK” last month. Fey revealed the lounge has fallen apart after literally being run into the ground by too many Five-Timers Club sketches. The suave Hernández character Domingo appeared briefly but was conked on the noggin by White, who also achieved Five-Timers status, but as a musical guest. He left early to move his hearse: apparently musical Five Timers only get their parking validated for 15 minutes. Black chose to rock out to revive the lounge, launching into a version of White’s “Seven Nation Army” with the guitarist accompanying him. After a brief musical rockening, Black told the audience, “Stick around, we’ll be White Black!”
Best sketch of the night: If only we could remember why this song was so good
Beyond his spot-on Trump impression, Johnson has proven to be adept at musical impressions, and here he does a nice job launching into a country song, “Words to Live By,” about a man who hears his father’s dying words … and then forgets what the wisdom was that was imparted. Black takes over as a man who climbed a mountain in Tibet and spent 20 hours with a guru, only to forget what he learned while walking down the mountain and getting a text from his wife. That would have been plenty, but a third section features Andrew Dismukes as an annoyed father refusing to listen to his 6-year-old son’s words. “You don’t even know how to wipe your own butt,” he sings, “you maybe only know the names of like 30 weird Pokemon guys.” The three singers at least remember the name of the “Men in Black” device that erases your memory: The Neuralyzer.
Also good: There’ll be peace when you are done (watching this sketch)
What looked at first to be a repeat of a recent sketch about wine-drinking wives chatting in the kitchen and playing truth or dare instead pivoted to a scene about husbands stuck together in a den with nothing to talk about. That might have been premise enough for a piece about men having trouble making friends, but instead, a mumbled lyric for the Kansas song “Carry On Wayward Son” turned into a full-blown sing-along that peaks when the men jam out with ribbon sticks and strip their outerwear to reveal colorful jumpsuits. When you have a guest who can sing as well as Black, you’ve got to lean into that talent.
‘Weekend Update’ winner: A scandal that keeps ballooning
Patterson had some funny moments as the new Black version of Professor Snape slated to appear in the new “Harry Potter” series, but Sarah Sherman was tough to ignore as Kristi Noem’s husband Bryon, currently embroiled in a scandal over online chats. Sherman as Bryon Noem wore two giant balloons under a shirt, challenging “Update” co-host Michael Che and others to make fun of his kink. “I dare you to find one thing that’s funny about this whole situation,” Bryon said. The segment got more and more absurd as Bryon challenged the cue-card master Wally Ferensten, Lorne Michaels (shown having already left, leaving a spinning desk chair), Kristi Noem (Padilla) and even the dog she shot, shown in heaven with a halo. It was as distasteful a segment as you’d expect from “Update,” yet also somehow straddled the line between wallowing in the scandal and mining some genuine laughs out of it.
Hello! I’m Mark Olsen. Welcome to another edition of your regular field guide to a world of Only Good Movies.
This is another strong week for new releases. By now you have likely heard something about “The Drama,” which has become inescapable thanks to the tireless promotion of its two stars, Zendaya and Robert Pattinson.
In a movie written and directed by Norwegian provocateur Kristoffer Borgli (“Dream Scenario”), the pair play Emma and Charlie, an engaged couple who find their wedding week thrown into disarray by the revelation of a deep secret from the bride-to-be.
Robert Pattinson and Zendaya in the movie “The Drama.”
(A24)
As Amy Nicholson put it in her review, “To another screenwriter, ‘The Drama’ would be an intimate study and a more emotionally wrenching film. But Borgli forces us to parse the mushy stuff from the mess and analyze the pending nuptials as an impersonal problem: What comes after a public shaming for the guilty and the inquisitors? That’s one of the most important (and unresolved) questions of the modern era, so I’ll forgive the filmmaker for being no more interested in writing Emma and Charlie as complex human beings than if they were character names in a math quiz about two people on two trains speeding toward a crash.”
Meanwhile, Tim Grierson spoke to Shira Small, the folk artist whose sole 1974 album features a song heard in an early scene of “The Drama.” Small, a delightful interview, goes into the music career she left behind a long time ago — one which may be reigniting now thanks to the movie.
Also opening in Los Angeles this week is Israeli filmmaker Nadav Lapid’s “Yes,” a guaranteed conversation-starter. Ariel Bronz stars as a musician who, in the aftermath of the Oct. 7 attacks, decides to say yes to composing a vicious new political anthem..
Reviewing the film, Joshua Rothkopf said, “It’s a movie about a citizenry at war with itself, hoping to keep the plates spinning for one more night. You watch it and think how easy it would be to envision an American remake — and wonder, too, if a filmmaker like Lapid even exists here.”
One of my favorite films from SXSW 2025, “Fantasy Life,” is finally coming to theaters. Written and directed Matthew Shear, the movie is an affectionate nod to the chatty dramedies of Noah Baumbach (some of which Shear has acted in). Here he plays Sam, a troubled law school dropout who takes a job looking after the children of a Brooklyn couple (Amanda Peet and Alessandro Nivola) and finds himself in an emotional affair with the wife.
“Fantasy Life” actor-writer-director Matthew Shear and star Amanda Peet bond in New York.
(Justin Jun Lee / For The Times)
I recently spoke to Shear and Peet about their collaboration on the film. Peet’s character in the film is also an actor and, though much of the film’s anxieties felt familiar to her, one scene in particular is drawn from Peet’s own experience: She is often mistaken in public for Lake Bell, including once on a red carpet.
“It’s a weird thing because you’re like, what do I do here?” said Peet with a laugh. “What’s the least douchey way to get out of this?”
The Black Pack’s resistance humor
Robert Townsend in the 1987 movie “Hollywood Shuffle.”
(Samuel Goldwyn Company / Photofest)
Curated around a new book by Artel Great, the UCLA Film and Television Archive is launching the series “The Black Pack: Rewriting American Comedy,” to spotlight a moment in the 1980s and ’90s when a small group of Black creators reached the very heights of Hollywood.
Eddie Murphy, Paul Mooney, Robert Townsend, Keenan Ivory Wayans and Arsenio Hall were friends and collaborators who, from 1987 to 1994, created the work showcased in the series. The Black Pack is a name they gave to themselves, partly in response to the John Hughes-affiliated Brat Pack.
Things begin tonight with a 35mm screening of Townsend’s essential 1987 satire “Hollywood Shuffle.” Great will be there for an introduction and a Q&A with cast member Anne-Marie Johnson and Spring Mooney, daughter of late actor Paul Mooney, who also appeared in the movie.
The cast of “In Living Color,” to be celebrated as part of the UCLA screening series “The Black Pack.”
(Fox / Photofest)
Other events include an evening of episodes of Wayans’ sketch comedy series “In Living Color,” 1988’s “Coming to America,” starring Murphy and Hall, a 35mm screening of Townsend’s 1991 “The Five Heartbeats” and a 35mm screening of 1989’s “Harlem Nights,” the only movie starring, directed, written and produced by Murphy, then at the height of his cultural capital.
This series is a terrific example of why smart programming matters. Here is a group of films (and a TV show) that might seem only related in a vague way, but when put together under a specific theme or idea, they are suddenly transformed into something revelatory.
Each evening of the series is designed to make the case for a different aspect of the Black Pack’s work and influence. The series as a whole puts forward a larger concept Great has coined a term for.
“I’m arguing through the series that the Black Pack’s cultural material is connected to a longstanding tradition that I call Black resistance humor,” says Great, now an associate professor at San Francisco State University, in an interview this week. “This idea of Black resistance humor is really a cultural practice where Black cultural workers are using political wit, irony, satire, parody, absurdity to challenge corrupt authority, to give voice to racial trauma and also attach themselves to re-imagining what freedom can really look like.”
From left, Arsenio Hall, Eddie Murphy, James Earl Jones and Madge Sinclair in the movie “Coming to America.”
(Paramount / Photofest)
There are plans for Black Pack programs in other cities, including Atlanta, San Francisco and Chicago, bringing this fresh look at their specific moment to venues around the country.
“I’m hopeful that the series will allow communities and audiences to see the Black Pack as cultural strategists who are using this idea of Black resistance humor to address very serious issues of power, identity and race,” says Great. “But also as a way of thinking, as a way of seeing and as a way of building alternative systems. Because that’s what they were able to do.”
Points of interest
‘The Birthday Party’ in 35mm
Actor Robert Shaw, left, with director William Friedkin on the set of “The Birthday Party” in 1968.
(Larry Ellis / Getty Images)
As part of its series celebrating the legacy of actor Robert Shaw, the Academy Museum will screen 1968’s “The Birthday Party” in 35mm on Sunday. One of the earliest features directed by William Friedkin (who would go on to such classics as “The Exorcist” and “To Live and Die in L.A.”), the film’s screenplay was written by Harold Pinter, adapting his own play. Shaw, Friedkin and Pinter make for a combustible intensity.
Shaw plays Stanley, the lone boarder at a seaside inn. When two mysterious men (Dandy Nichols and Sydney Tafler) arrive, they engineer a party for Stanley that becomes increasingly ominous.
In his original review, Charles Champlin lauded Shaw, saying he gives “one of the total and totally engrossing movie performances,” adding that Friedkin “as a director is everything a dramatist, and an audience, could want. The sense of loving care and artistic sureness which characterizes every aspect of the movie is extremely tonic. Pinter may be an acquired taste, but it is easy to acquire.”
‘He Got Game’ in 35mm
Denzel Washington in 1998’s “He Got Game.”
(David Lee / Touchstone Pictures)
Spike Lee’s prolific career is now studded with movies that maybe didn’t quite get their due in their day but deserve renewed attention. Screening in 35mm on Sunday at Brain Dead Studios is Lee’s 1998 “He Got Game,” which is just that kind of movie: stuffed with ideas and ambitions even if it doesn’t totally all come together for everyone. I particularly like his use of composer Aaron Copland’s music, which gives many of the images an epic quality they might not otherwise fully achieve, challenging preconceived notions of what can be thought of as Americana.
The movie stars a particularly electric Denzel Washington as Jake Shuttlesworth, a once-promising basketball player whose life took a turn. Now he’s in prison. His son, Jesus (played by NBA star Ray Allen), is a promising prospect and Jake is given an offer of a reduced sentence if he can convince his son to attend a certain college. The mixture of two of Lee’s own personal preoccupations, basketball and family, makes for a potent combination.
Reviewing the movie when it was released, Kenneth Turan wrote, “Given that writer-director Lee is one of the most visible of the New York Knicks’ celebrity fans, what’s surprising is not that he made a film about the sport he cares so much about but that he waited so long. … Though ‘He Got Game’ is periodically awkward and unruly, it benefits, as many of Lee’s films do, from the director’s determination to connect with the troublesome issues of the real world. Too few American directors work with Lee’s kind of social immediacy, and that makes his films, flawed and didactic though they sometimes are, essential viewing.”
Harmony Korine’s ‘Gummo’
Jacob Reynold, left, and Nick Sutton in Harmony Korine’s ‘Gummo’
(Criterion Collection)
Harmony Korine’s first feature as director, 1997’s “Gummo,” will screen at Vidiots on Monday. The event is co-presented by the Cinegogue, a group perhaps best known for their limited-edition movie-themed clothing drops, but who describe their mission thusly: “Our goal: make movies cool again through concert-like experiences and fanfare. … Because even though a movie might end, cinema is forever.” (And that’s a sentiment we here can get behind.)
The film finds Korine attempting to bring elements of experimental film and video to a nominally more mainstream context. It’s both confrontational and playful. Using a collage-like structure, the film follows a few kids as they make their way around their small town in Ohio after a tornado. Mostly featuring non-actors, the cast also includes Linda Manz and Chloë Sevigny, who is also credited as the film’s costume designer.
Writing about “Gummo” and Korine’s subsequent “julien donkey-boy,” Kevin Thomas made special note of “the intensity of Korine’s compassion for individuals who have so little going for them and so much going against them, yet at times are capable of experiencing an exhilarating freedom of spirit.”
NASHVILLE, N.C. — Ricky Brinkley has lived in rural North Carolina nearly all of his 65 years, and he likes it “out in the county,” past the street lights and bustle of the small towns that carpet the landscape.
But the former truck driver can feel left out when elections roll around in this battleground state.
“People don’t come out like they should and ask you how you feel about things,” Brinkley said while he manned the counter at his daughter’s beauty supply store down the street from the Nashville courthouse. “You want somebody to vote, but you don’t want to do nothing to get the vote. No, it don’t work that way.”
Brinkley is among the rural Black residents who Democrats have often failed to mobilize as they try to dent Republican advantages here. It’s an urgent demographic puzzle for the party, which is normally strong with Black voters but tends to fall short in rural areas.
Success could help former Gov. Roy Cooper win a hotly contested U.S. Senate race this year and tilt the balance of power in Washington. It could also reshape presidential elections, providing Democrats with a wider path to the White House.
“People want to look at the word ‘rural’ in North Carolina and equate it to the word ‘white,’” said state party chair Anderson Clayton, a 28-year-old who won her job three years ago promising to expand the party beyond cities. “In my vision of a Democratic Party, when you talk about reaching out to rural voters, you are talking about rural Black voters.”
The Rev. James Gailliard, a former state lawmaker who leads a large Black congregation in Rocky Mount, put it even more bluntly.
“You don’t win this state in Durham,” Gailliard said. “You win it in the east.”
It’s about more than Cooper’s Senate bid
North Carolina is known for the university-heavy Research Triangle that includes Durham, Raleigh and Chapel Hill, along with Charlotte’s banking hub. But it also includes large swaths of small towns and rural areas where Democrats have lost ground in recent decades.
That’s not just because of white voters realigning with Republicans. It’s also because Black voters who lean Democratic don’t vote as often as their urban counterparts. Those rural Black voters are concentrated east of the triangle, extending along winding state highways through small towns, flatlands and farmland toward the Atlantic coastline.
Cooper, 68, won two terms as governor and four terms as state attorney general. However, Republicans control the state courts and the legislature, and they’ve redrawn the congressional map to expand their advantage in the U.S. House. Donald Trump carried the state for Republicans all three times he ran for the White House.
A native of rural Nash County, Cooper already in recent months held roundtable sessions with Black farmers, business owners and civic leaders in eastern North Carolina, along with students from North Carolina A&T University, a historically Black school that draws students from across the state. His campaign promises a statewide organizing effort before November.
Gailliard wants a more intentional effort
But Gailliard wants more.
The founding pastor at Word Tabernacle Church, Gailliard was among the Black state lawmakers who lost seats after Republican-led redistricting. He said regaining ground will require neighborhood-level organizing and investment from national Democrats, something he struggled to get from Kamala Harris’ 2024 presidential campaign.
“I couldn’t get any traction,” Gailliard recalled. “I begged them to bring her to Rocky Mount. I said, ‘Listen, Rocky Mount is the gateway to the East. If we crack Rocky Mount, we’ve cracked the East.’ Could not convince them to come. Two weeks later, guess who’s in Rocky Mount? Donald Trump.”
The Harris campaign sent former President Bill Clinton to the area instead.
Gailliard said Cooper needs people like him to get elected.
“Roy is a great friend, and I’m gonna run my butt off to help him in every way, but I’m not banking on his coattails,” Gailliard said. “I’m going to do the opposite. I’m going to grow coattails for him.”
The state party tries to fill gaps
Clayton, the state party chair, said the national party and its donors haven’t prioritized North Carolina early enough in recent cycles.
She said she’s relied mostly on local money to finance 25 full-time staffers, more than three times what the state party had heading into the 2022 midterms.
Bertie County Democratic chairwoman Camille Taylor, whose hometown of Powellsville has fewer than 200 residents, said she’s felt the shift.
She speaks regularly with a field organizer in nearby Greenville, the city closest to the northeastern counties with large proportions of Black residents. But she said it’s especially difficult to persuade rural voters to care about voting beyond the presidency, even though she tells them “these are the races and the people that you’re going to interact with more.”
Democrats have recruited candidates in all 170 legislative districts — two are Democratic-aligned independents — and every U.S. House district. State Supreme Court Justice Anita Earls, a noted civil rights attorney and Black woman, is running statewide for reelection.
Gailliard said he’s identified a few hundred nonprofits, neighborhood associations and other groups that can do issue-orientated work in his district as the election approaches. He wants to match each of them to specific precincts, routing money for them to reach voters and persuade them to vote.
He wants volunteers to get training from Democratic and left-leaning organizations rather than have the outsiders themselves knocking on rural Black voters’ doors.
“We can’t have 21-year-old recent college graduates from Utah knocking doors at $22 an hour in the hood,” Gailliard said. “That just does not work. They’re not a trusted messenger.”
Marginal voting changes add up
About 2 in 10 North Carolina voters in the 2024 and 2020 presidential elections were Black, according to AP VoteCast, as well as in the 2022 Senate election.
Roughly 4 in 10 Black voters in North Carolina’s last presidential election said they live in small towns or rural communities, similar to the share who said they live in the suburbs. Only about one-quarter reported living in urban areas.
Small shifts in persuasion matter, particularly when races are close. In 2008, Barack Obama became the last Democratic presidential candidate to win North Carolina, by a margin of just 14,000 votes out of 4.3 million votes cast.
Voter turnout between the 2020 and 2024 elections declined more in North Carolina counties that have larger Black populations.
Counties where Black voters make up about 30% to 40% of the electorate saw the biggest drop, with turnout falling by more than 3 percentage points. Counties with smaller Black populations saw more modest declines of about 1 percentage point. Overall, turnout remains higher in counties with fewer Black voters.
An old Cooper schoolmate just wants to be asked
Gailliard said Democrats cannot underestimate how much it means for someone to simply get asked for their vote.
“Black and rural voters are not transactional,” he said. “They are relational.”
Back in Nashville at the beauty supply store, Brinkley agreed.
“You get to be a big wheel, and you can forget where you came from,” Brinkley said. “I ain’t gonna say Roy forgot. He’s a hometown guy, so to speak, but I don’t expect to see him out here walking.”
Brinkley made it clear that if he votes, it would be for Cooper and other Democrats — but only if he votes.
“I could. I could. I may vote,” he said. “There’s just so much going on.”
Barrow and Sweedler write for the Associated Press. Sweedler reported from Washington. AP journalist Linley Sanders in Washington contributed to this report.
Weekly insights and analysis on the latest developments in military technology, strategy, and foreign policy.
Short-range kamikaze drones operated by an Iran-backed militia appear to have successfully targeted a U.S. military Black Hawk helicopter and a critical air defense radar at an American base in Iraq. This is the first known example of a successful attack of this kind on a U.S. military aircraft. It’s also not the first time we have seen evidence of these kinds of drones zipping over the same installation in recent weeks.
The incidents underscore the reality of the threat posed by small drones in the Middle East, where a wide variety of nefarious players have already employed these systems for surveillance and attacks against U.S. forces on multiple occasions, for years now. It is also a preview of what the U.S. could end up facing on its own homefront as it grapples with constant and sometimes highly perplexing drone incursions over sensitive bases and facilities. Even since the war began, there have been very alarming drone incursions over one of America’s most important bases that houses nuclear weapons and B-52 bombers that carry them. You can read all about these developments here.
One of the videos that began circulating yesterday, filmed from a first-person view (FPV) drone, shows a pair of Black Hawk helicopters sitting in a compound, protected only by a low blast wall. The video feed cuts out just before detonation, on or close to the main rotor, but the assumption is that one of these helicopters (at least) was struck.
An Iranian-backed militia carried out a successful FPV drone strike on Camp Victory in Iraq yesterday, successfully hitting multiple targets.
The location has been identified as the Victory Base Complex (VBC), a cluster of U.S. military installations surrounding Baghdad International Airport close to the Iraqi capital.
As for the helicopter, this appears to be a medical evacuation (medevac) configured HH-60M, emphasized by the video editing, in which it seems the prominent identification panels marked with red crosses have been obscured.
Noticing they blurred out a portion of their attack video (green). I think they were trying to hide the fact they attacked a medevac helo. Note white mark circled in orange.
These are actually US Army HH-60M CASEVAC helicopters. Not UH-60s. Assigned to Charlie Company, 2nd Battalion (General Support), 4th Regiment, 4th Infantry Division Combat Aviation Brigade. https://t.co/OIjvcxagz6
Whether the helicopter was damaged or even destroyed by the drone is unclear at this point, but most significant is the fact that such a target was able to be engaged by a relatively simple, low-cost threat. The same goes for the second video, where the extent of the damage is much clearer.
The target in this case is a container-based AN/MPQ-64 Sentinel radar, a system used to alert and cue short-range air defense (SHORAD) weapons, including the National Advanced Surface-to-Air Missile System (NASAMS). The radar is in operating mode, its antenna clearly rotating.
A video showing a U.S. Army AN/MPQ-64 Sentinel radar in action with the 10th Combat Aviation Brigade:
Sentinel Radar
This footage includes the perspective from another drone, which confirms that the radar was hit, after which it is seen burning.
While it’s clear that more than one drone was in the vicinity of the radar during the attack, there have also been unconfirmed reports that the militia used some kind of swarming tactics, or at least multiple kamikaze drones to perpetrate this attack, with some degree of coordination.
Reportedly, the attacks on the Black Hawk and Sentinel radar occurred yesterday. In both cases, it is apparent that there is no degradation in the video feeds as they drop very low over the ground, even behind structures. This might be the result of the drones having been launched very close to their targets, or that they used fiber-optic control links. Both those scenarios are alarming, but a fiber-optic FPV drone would explain why passive sensor systems would not have detected them as they approached the base.
Wow, for the first time, fiber-optic drones have been spotted in use by the Azawad Liberation Front (FLA) in Mali, who are fighting against both the Malian Armed Forces and Russia’s Africa Corps/Wagner Group. The drones and training were likely provided by Ukraine, with previous… pic.twitter.com/OxemaEbWwO
The drone strikes are notable for a number of other reasons.
First, there is no sign of air defenses attempting to engage the incoming drones.
Of course, a response to the drones in the form of electronic warfare and cyber warfare, or other ‘soft-kill’ options, is a possibility. In regards to other counter-drone capabilities, there is no indication that the limited number of directed-energy weapons the U.S. has were deployed to this facility, while surface-to-air interceptors are not generally suitable for engaging such small drones. Other options would include gun-based systems, as well as drone-based systems, like the Coyote, and the laser-rocket-slinging VAMPIRE. On the other hand, we also know there is a chronic scarcity of many of these systems.
Video footage shows Block 2+ Coyote drones engaging drones in an undated demonstration:
Raytheon Missiles & Defense proves counter-UAS effectiveness against enemy drones
It should also be noted that, for all their relative simplicity and low cost, FPV drones are very hard to spot and target, especially when they are moving quickly at very low level. In many cases, they will evade detection by traditional radars, while even microwave radars, tailored for counter-drone work, can provide sporadic coverage at very low altitude.
The apparent vulnerability of the Victory Base Complex is all the more surprising since this is not the first time that the same installation has been targeted by FPV drones.
Earlier this month, videos emerged showing drones purportedly belonging to the Iran-backed Kataib Hezbollah group.
A screenshot from a video released by the Iran-backed Iraqi militia Kataib Hezbollah showing an FPV drone approaching a hardened shelter at the Victory Base Complex earlier this month. via X
There have been suggestions that all of these various videos may have been recorded during the same (complex) attack, although the latest footage appears to come from a separate attack on a different date.
Thirdly, the threat posed by drones of this kind, while proliferating significantly since the start of Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, has been recognized long before that.
Last year, we reported on how U.S. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth had created a new task force specifically to counter the growing threats posed by small drones at home and abroad.
“There’s no doubt that the threats we face today from hostile drones grow by the day,” Hegseth stated at the time. “Emerging technologies — we see it in battlefields, in far-flung places, and we see it on our own border in small unmanned aerial systems. [These drones] target and bring harm on all warfighters, our people, our bases, and frankly, the sovereignty of our national airspace.”
Hegseth said the Pentagon “must focus on speed over process” when it came to new counter-drone efforts.
Soldiers from 2-130th Infantry Regiment hone their skills in a counter-drone training exercise at McGregor Range, New Mexico, last year. U.S. Army Staff Sgt. Raquel Birk
While there have been various regulatory barriers that have prevented the fielding of more robust drone defense of key installations and assets in the United States, this is not such a problem in Iraq, and especially in the course of a regional conflict.
It is notable, too, that there have been reports that some type of quadcopter-type drones may have been used for surveillance ahead of the Iranian strike on a U.S. logistics operations center in Kuwait on March 1. That attack led to the deaths of six U.S. service members, and more were wounded.
The incidents also underscore the very real risk faced by military infrastructure in the United States, a point that TWZhas repeatedly raised in the past. In particular, near-field attacks like these pose a huge threat and one that is hard to stop. Compared to a combat theater, something like this could be far more successful at home, where there are fewer defenses and more limited surveillance. As in Iraq, aircraft parked on the ground and radars are highly vulnerable, and the same threat even extends to traditional air defenses.
On June 1, the Security Service of Ukraine carried out a brilliant operation— on enemy territory, targeting only military objectives, specifically the equipment used to strike Ukraine. Russia suffered significant losses.
We have reached out to U.S. Central Command for more information about exactly what happened at the Victory Base Complex, and what kind of defensive measures are in place there.
As we wait for more details to emerge, to paint a fuller picture of these attacks on American assets in Iraq, it is clear that there are still questions to be asked about the resilience of the U.S. military in the face of kamikaze drones and similar threats.
It’s taken 18 months, but Bob Lomas has been shown the error of his ways and has said sorry to all those he offended
12:41, 13 Mar 2026Updated 12:56, 13 Mar 2026
Bob realises how misguided his remarks are once he spends time with youth worker Chris(Image: 72 Films)
Sacked Reform candidate Bob Lomas has apologised for the racist comment that saw him disowned by party leader Nigel Farage 18 months ago, after being chained to a Black youth worker on Channel 4’s Handcuffed.
The former soldier, 70, has posted his apology on Instagram, after he was persuaded by Chris Preddie that his views were offensive and racist. In the video post the ex-Reform member, from Yorkshire, said: “My name is Bob Lomas and 18 months ago I said that Black people should get off their lazy arses, go and get a job and stop acting like savages.
“I can’t change what I said, I can only apologise for saying it. I vehemently apologise for using those words. I made a bloody big mistake and I am bloody sorry that I did and I want to apologise to anybody that is affected.”
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Handcuffed, hosted by Jonathan Ross, sees people with opposing viewers shackled together for a shot at the £100,000 prize. In Monday’s episode viewers will see Chris Googling Bob to find out who he is actually chained to.
Bob admits having made the shocking comment that ended his political career, on Facebook, but starts off defending himself, arguing: “Everything’s racist if you want it to be. I witnessed a riot in London and was appalled by what was happening in my capital city. I could have worded it better but it gets to the point where you can’t say anything about anything.”
But Londoner Chris, who was awarded the OBE 13 years ago at the age of 25 for his inspirational youth work, said that the terminology had left him feeling “quite disgusted”. And once he has explained his own background, Bob backs down and admits that his views were wrong.
In the programme, Chris tells him that his father had died after being caught up in gangs and he was quickly groomed for a life of crime. himself. “I didn’t have a role model,” he explains. “I didn’t want to sell drugs but, if I didn’t, then I’m not eating. Not surviving.”
He credits the youth worker who helped him to break out with having “saved my life” because Chris feels certain he’d be “dead or in prison” without that support. Getting the OBE from the late Queen Elizabeth had been a huge honour. “I was so proud,” he confesses. “People started to see me as a normal citizen – I was told my whole life that I’d amount to nothing.”
Looking moved by what he’s learned, Bob admits that Chris’s story is “very, very shocking” and tells the camera that he’s impressed by how he not only got out, but went on to help others do the same. “He used that experience to help bring other young men and women out of that mindset. What he does for his community is unbelievable. I salute him.”
Bob was standing as the Reform candidate for Barnsley North when he was dropped by party leader Farage, along with two others, in June 2024 over remarks made by all three on social media. Speaking on Question Time afterwards, Farage claimed: “I wouldn’t want anything to do with them”. The racism within Reform was widely condemned by other political leaders, with Farage told to “get a grip” on his party.
– Handcuffed – Last Pair Standing continues on Monday, Channel 4, 9pm
Black smoke could be seen in Dubai’s financial district where witnesses reported hearing explosions on Friday morning. Authorities there said a building was hit by debris from an intercepted missile.
The Black Crowes singer Chris Robinson is reflecting on his rollercoaster relationship with his younger sibling, guitarist Rich.
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The Black Crowes lead singer Chris Robinson, left, and his guitarist sibling RichCredit: ROSS HALFINThe pair had no set ideas for the record, as they got creative in the studioCredit: ROSS HALFIN
Their explosive chemistry once earned the outfit a fitting accolade — “The Most Rock ’n’ Roll Rock ’n’ Roll Band in the World”.
Chris is first to admit they’ve had their ups and downs since forming in 1984 under their original name, Mr Crowe’s Garden, as schoolkids in Atlanta, Georgia.
“Rich and I, for better or worse, were stubborn and arrogant but always strong believers in the art,” he admits.
“This has always been our path and, no matter what, we have to do it like this.
“Sometimes, you have to take your lumps,” continues Chris, employing that very American phrase for suffering setbacks. “But, right now, we’re in the zone. The chemistry is 100 per cent there.
“The way we feel goes right back to when we started — it’s f*** it, just play it — even if we are more well-mannered.”
But the pandemic slammed on the brakes before the dates finally happened across the US in 2021, uncorking the band’s celebrated freewheeling energy.
Back to the live arena came Jealous Again, Hard To Handle, She Talks To Angels and Twice As Hard, songs that somehow bottled up the band’s influences — Led Zeppelin, the Rolling Stones and Little Feat among them — but still refreshingly their own.
The follow-up, A Pound Of Feathers, comes tearing out of the blocks with the rocket-fuelled, riff-driven Profane Prophecy, setting the tone for another of The Black Crowes’ “love letters to rock and roll”.
The album arrives with some sound advice — “This isn’t a record you play on Sunday morning, this is a f***ing Saturday night burner!”
In a world where smoothly produced pop dominates the airwaves, The Black Crowes are unashamedly sticking two fingers up at it.
“None of what’s going on in that world is relevant to me,” decides Chris, “and rock ’n’ roll is still huge for millions and millions of people.”
He is talking to me via video call from Aspen, Colorado, the premier ski resort in the States, playground of the rich and famous.
“My wife is an avid skier. She’s the Franz Klammer of the family,” he reports with a reference to the Austrian downhill legend.
“I get to do the cooking, the reading and the hanging out.” (And talking to people like me about The Black Crowes). Brother Rich is at home in Nashville and begins his call by apologising for being under the weather.
“I’m going to be coughing randomly,” he says. “I’m in the middle of flu that’s going around.”
After clearing his throat, Rich, the less flamboyant one who lets his guitar wizardry do most of his talking, gamely picks up on Chris’s theme.
“When we got back together, we both agreed we needed to do it properly,” he affirms.
“We knew that bringing back a toxic dynamic wouldn’t be healthy for anyone.
“We couldn’t have the overarching idea that when Chris and Rich get together, it’s a bad thing.
“We’ve always written all the songs, we own the name so coming back with a more mature approach has been very helpful.”
Rich acknowledges that the music landscape for the older, wiser Black Crowes is vastly different from when they started out. “There’s a bunch of people in the industry who like to think rock ’n’ roll is dead,” he says.
“But then there’s a bunch of people trying to keep it alive. Guns N’ Roses, the Rolling Stones, Metallica and Def Leppard are still selling out stadiums.
“Tens of millions of people still want to see bands like them. Rock ’n’ roll is one thing that no one could tame.
“And it’s still like that for us. We can go into a studio with almost nothing and, in a week, make a record.
“There’s a human, organic quality to rock ’n’ roll. We don’t have auto-tune and we don’t have to set our s**t to a grid.”
Looking back at their unfettered past, Chris exclaims: “I have to say I’m so f***ing proud of The Black Crowes, man!
“Rich and I started this band when we were teenagers in Mom and Dad’s house, as a vehicle to write songs.
The Robinson brothers weren’t on speaking terms for five years after their so-called ‘contractual obligations’ tour ended in 2014Credit: GettyThe Black Crowes in 1998Credit: Getty
“And we found our way to being musicians and performers.”
Yet the creation of A Pound Of Feathers has still blown Chris away, most notably because of the stellar contributions from Rich.
The album was made in double-quick time, carried along by the brothers’ spontaneous fusion of riffs and lyrics.
Chris says: “I’ve been on stage and sat in studios my whole life with my brother playing amazing guitar.
“But, with this album, I sat there with my mouth hanging open.
“Granted I’m very close to the flame but everything he did, I was like, ‘Wow, this guy’s taking it to a new place.’”
During the sessions, The Black Crowes were visited by Chris’s friend, Todd Snider, the singer/songwriter who died last November from pneumonia aged just 59.
Chris cherished the chance to hang out with Todd — and to get some memorable feedback from him.
“He was a storyteller, a real poet, and he and I had a great friendship. He also really liked The Black Crowes.
“He asked if he could come and check out the recording. I went, ‘Dude, yeah fine, but you’re going to be the only one here’. So he sat there taking in me and Rich putting music together.
“At the end of the day, he said, ‘Are you f***ing warlocks? Is this some kind of ESP or is it a parlour trick? You don’t say anything yet, 30 minutes later, there’s this massive song blasting out of the speakers’.”
For Rich, the studio is his happy place. “I’ve always loved being in a studio,” he says.
“It’s where you bring to fruition all the things you have in your head.
“With this record, we came in without any concrete ideas. By allowing ourselves just to play in the sandbox, it became fun and exciting.”
Rich gives a shoutout to producer Jay Joyce, who also helmed Happiness Bastards.
He says: “Nine and a half times out of ten, he agrees with us when we’re excited about something.
“He’s there with us, not bogging us down by trying to insert himself when its unnecessary.”
So what of the songs? There’s the aforementioned opener Profane Prophecy which captures the unvarnished sound of The Black Crowes’ live mayhem, yet recorded in the calmer confines of a studio.
You hear Chris nodding to past rock ’n’ roll excesses by hollering, tongue firmly in cheek, “My pedigree in debauchery is my claim to fame.”
He smiles, “Of course I have to embrace that life. That’s why I sing, ‘I eat casino breakfast off the kitchen floor’.”
But he maintains that while giving “a vision of a debauched rock ’n’ roller”, he’s also “confusing fact with fiction”.
The four-minute shindig concludes with the ensemble chant of the phrase that yielded the album title, “a pound of feathers or a pound of lead”.
Chris got the line from In Here The World Begins, a song by long-defunct British electro-pop band Broadcast.
“I loved the phrase and what it could mean because a pound is a pound,” he says. “It doesn’t matter whether it’s lead or feathers. There’s some weird wisdom to it.”
We turn our attention to Cruel Streak, pounding rock underpinned by funky rhythm.
“I’m adjacent to funk at all times,” says Chris. “Growing up in Atlanta, there was this multiracial band called Mother’s Finest who played heavy funk with ‘Baby Jean’ Kennedy as lead singer.
“There’s a lot of Mother’s Finest in The Black Crowes.”
On the R&B-flavoured It’s Like That, which comes with heavy basslines and a hint of reggae, the brothers employed an amphibian guest, which, as Chris explains, fits with their anything goes attitude.
“I was staying in Nashville, and the doors were open. I heard this frog, so I recorded him. That’s my Nashville rasta frog on the solo.”
Rich says: “There are tree frogs all over the South. They were blaring one night and Chris said, ‘Man, I want to use that sound’.
Chris and Rich Robinson reflect on decades of chaos and creativity in the Black CrowesCredit: EL3
“So he took his phone and pressed record. We found the right space for it on the song.” On the loose, laidback country-tinged Pharmacy Chronicles, recalling the vibe of the Rolling Stones’ Exile On Main St., Chris sings “let the demons find you” because, he insists, we mustn’t think everything is “sugar-coated, glossy and gorgeous”.
“Especially something as messy as a 40-year career in rock ’n’ roll,” he adds. “I can’t believe some of the s**t I was doing. Get some surgical gloves and get to it!”
But Chris is not one to dwell on the past, with all its euphoric highs and crashing lows. “I am devoid of nostalgia,” he says.
“I like to think I interact with the world as a poet. I’m always writing — it could be because I overheard a conversation at an airport check-in.
“I’m no Bruce Springsteen,” he confesses. “But I connect with the world through whatever inspires me.”
And, as he puts it, “a lot of the darkness that is the United States right now” informs A Pound Of Feathers.
It explains why final track Doomsday Doggerel with its line “a front row seat to the end of times” is in stark contrast to the closing song on Happiness Bastards.
“On that last record, Kindred Friend was a beautiful pastoral thing with harmonica, about me and Rich, the band and our audience,” says Chris.
“Doomsday Doggerel is much darker. We haven’t remembered lessons from our past and the f***ing racism means we’re operating at a very low frequency.
“I just hope that someone can play this record on a Saturday night, keep out the low frequency and get a better hum going.”
Chris and Rich reunited after having gone their separate ways for years
As Pharmacy Chronicles ebbs to a close, you hear a defiant chorus of “the good times never end”.
As far as Chris and Rich and the rest of The Black Crowes family are concerned, rock ’n’ roll is the perfect antidote to personal and universal turmoil.
“We’re loud, we can be sloppy but we are like an old cartoon of two people fighting on a train,” says Chris.
“The train goes round a bend, leaning all the way over a cliff, but then it comes back up. That’s us.”
THE BLACK CROWES
A Pound Of Feathers
★★★★☆
The Black Crowes’ new album A Pound of Feathers is out in the UK on 13 March 2026
Nicole Kidman poses in a bath for VarietyCredit: Nino Munoz for VarietyNicole is snapped in a white shirt ahead of the OscarsCredit: Nino Munoz for Variety
The 2003 Best Actress winner, 58, said she was doing well despite the end of her 19-year marriage.
She said: “I am, because I’m always going to be moving toward what’s good.
“What I’m grateful for is my family and keeping them as is and moving forward. That’s that. “Everything else I don’t discuss out of respect. I’m staying in a place of, ‘We are a family,’ and that’s what we’ll continue to be.
“My beautiful girls, my darlings, who are suddenly women.”
According to documents, both Nicole and Keith will retain ownership of the properties already in their possession and the rest will be split to their mutual satisfaction.
It is believed the majority of the exes’ properties were all jointly purchased following their wedding in 2006.
The most recent purchase came in 2023 in the form of a £5.7m three-bed apartment in Sydney‘s exclusive Landmark Latitude complex – their sixth property in the same high rise.
They have another £13.3m wrapped up in the complex.
Nicole and Keith first bought into the apartment block in 2009, picking up a sizeable 420-square-metre pad overlooking Sydney’s famous harbour for a cool £4.45m.
A further £5.2m was splashed on a larger neighbouring apartment when that became available in 2012.
The couple bought into the 19th floor in 2011, paying £2m on a smaller space that Nicole used as a home office.
Nicole split from Keith Urban last yearCredit: Nino Munoz for VarietyThe actress insisted she is doing okay following her splitCredit: Nino Munoz for VarietyKidman on the cover of VarietyCredit: Nino Munoz for Variety
The World Health Organization has warned that “black rain” caused by Israeli strikes on Iran’s oil facilities could pose health risks, especially for children. Iranian authorities have advised residents stay indoors as fires and thick smoke worsen air quality.
NAOMI WATTS watched on proudly as her daughter showcased her model behaviour at Paris Fashion Week.
Rising fashion star Kai Schreiber – who came out as transgender last year – stole the spotlight as she towered over her Hollywood star mum at the Balenciaga show on Saturday.
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Naomi Watts supported daughter Kai Schreiber at Paris Fashion WeekCredit: GettyThe duo wore matching black ensemblesCredit: Getty
Wearing a sharp tailored two-piece teamed smokey eye make-up, 17-year-old Kai made an impact with her striking look.
Proud mum Naomi, 57, wore a matching black ensemble as she supported her daughter, who has been feted as a future top model.
Also on the runway was Rebel Yell punk star Billy Idol, 70, who had on a tasseled black leather poncho.
US model Paris Jackson, 27 — daughter of late pop star Michael — was also spotted in black outside her hotel.
Kai made her fashion runway debut atParis Fashion Weeklast year by walking for Valentino.
Kai’s parents have both conquered Hollywood and are known for TV and film.
Naomi and Liev – who also have son called Sasha, 17 – were together for 11 years before they amicably split in 2016.
Liev has since married Taylor Neisen, while Naomi went on to wed Billy Crudup.
Naomi often shares how proud she is of her daughter, in sweet posts on Instagram.
When the teenager turned 16, her mum penned a heartfelt message to her.
“Darling Kai. Happy sweet sixteen. Your sweetness is pure and I’m the luckiest mommy in the world and that world is SO lucky that you are here!” the proud mum wrote.
“You blow me away with your wild spirit, strength and yes your soft sweetness too. You even let me post a baby picture!
“I thank my lucky stars I get to be your mom [sic]. I Love you to the moon.”
Paris Jackson was also spotted in black outside her hotelCredit: SplashBilly Idol walked the runway in a tasseled black leather poncho.Credit: Getty
