childs

Tino Sunseri is spending the next two weeks in Costa Mesa while a large chunk of his heart resides on the East Coast.

That’s where the new UCLA offensive coordinator’s wife and 3-month-old son are living with one set of grandparents, allowing Tino to focus the best he can on training camp with the Bruins.

The first-time father is buoyed both by what he’s seeing with his team and reports about his infant, who giggled for the first time the other day. Santino Michael Sunseri Jr. already has a nickname — “We’re calling him Sonny, like ‘The Godfather,’ ” Tino cracked, referring to Santino “Sonny” Corleone from the movie — and curiously studies his father in FaceTime sessions.

“Right now,” Tino said Saturday morning, “he’s kind of giving me that look, like, ‘Hey, I know your voice, but who are you right here?’”

There’s also plenty of getting to know you between Sunseri and his new quarterback.

Nico Iamaleava enrolled in June after transferring from Tennessee, making this the fifth consecutive season that Sunseri will be working with a new quarterback. In 2021, Sunseri’s first season as quarterbacks coach at James Madison, veteran quarterback Cole Johnson led the Dukes to the semifinals of the Division I-AA playoffs.

A year later, Sunseri worked with Todd Centeio, a transfer from Colorado State who led James Madison to the Sun Belt Conference’s East Division title. In 2023, Sunseri and Jordan McCloud, a transfer from Arizona, helped the Dukes notch another division title.

Last season might have been Sunseri’s most impressive working with a newbie quarterback. Kurtis Rourke, a transfer from Ohio, led Indiana to a historic season that included an 11-2 record and appearance in the College Football Playoff.

Sunseri’s first impressions of Iamaleava align with the sort of immediate success he’s enjoyed with other quarterbacks.

“He’s a self-driven person,” Sunseri said. “He has a certain standard of how he wants to be able to operate each day. And the great thing about my past is I’ve been around a lot of guys that have the same kind of feel and thought process.

“So the only thing you’ve got to do with these guys is you’ve got to be able to give them the information, and you’ve got to keep being able to stimulate them to be able to make sure that every single day, there’s something that they’re being able to attack and chase, and there’s not one day that he hasn’t come in here that he’s not focused on being able to become the best player that he can be for UCLA.”

In the limited media viewing period Saturday, Iamaleava had more success on the ground than through the air, faking a handoff and cutting to his right for a touchdown run. The only pass he threw, intended for Ezavier Staples, was broken up by defensive back Jamir Benjamin in the end zone.

Iamaleava has impressed Sunseri with a relentless approach — whenever he’s not practicing or working out, he’s studying the offense.

“It’s infectious to him; he can’t get enough of it,” Sunseri said. “And when you have those kind of guys, you can start to be able to see how they can be able to develop, and now you can be able to start to be able to formulate a mindset and starting to be able to see where they think, how they think and start to be able to have it to where you can really understand how to coach them.”

Having such a condensed window to work with Iamaleava before the season opener against Utah on Aug. 30 at the Rose Bowl isn’t a concern to Sunseri.

“It’s not about us being able to install the offense,” Sunseri said, “it’s about being able to make sure that it’s not too much too fast to where he can be able to grasp it, because we’re not playing next week, we’re playing in three weeks — it’s still a ton of time for us to be able to utilize.”

Those wondering what UCLA’s offense will look like might have to wait until the season opener because Sunseri isn’t divulging much besides its goal to stretch a defense so that it must account for “every single blade of grass.” Sunseri did suggest that there will be an ample amount of running the football.

“Let me say this: We’re gonna be a physical football team,” said Sunseri, whose first coaching stops came as a quality control coach at Florida State and Tennessee and a graduate assistant at Alabama. “It’s where I’ve always been raised, coming from the SEC, you’ve got to run that ball, and me being a Nick Saban disciple, that’s just my thought process, right?”

A speedy duo

UCLA running back Jaivian Thomas carries the ball during preseason training in Costa Mesa on Friday.

(Nate Donlevy / UCLA Athletics)

Jaivian Thomas, the transfer running back from California, is so fast that his father called him “The Jet” growing up.

During informal sprints with his new team, Thomas said fellow running back Anthony Woods stayed with him step for step.

So does that make this a twin-jet offense?

“Ant got gas,” Thomas said of his teammate, “but I feel like I’m the fastest in the room.”

The hope is that alongside returners Jalen Berger and Anthony Frias II, the Bruins can spread their carries and wear down defenses. While Thomas and Woods are the speedsters of the group, Berger and Frias might feature slightly more power to their rushing styles.

Berger said he had fully recovered from the sprained ankle he suffered against Iowa last season that hindered him over the season’s final four games. Thomas was the Golden Bears’ leading rusher last season, averaging 6.3 yards per carry while gaining 644 yards and scoring seven touchdowns.

Coach DeShaun Foster called Thomas a threat to score every time he touched the ball. If all goes as planned, multiple running backs will cross the goal line while challenging defenses.

“It allows those guys to be able to stay fresh, and as those defenses align, they’re playing 40, 50, 60 snaps in the game, and you’re getting to the fourth quarter, those guys are a little worn out,” Sunseri said of playing a bevy of running backs. “So then whenever you put a guy in with fresh tires, then he could be able to have it to where he’s running through a couple of those tackles, maybe he’s able to continue to be able to play at a different speed than those [defensive] guys in the game.”

Parents have been urged to pack a simple item in their holiday suitcase as it could “save a child’s life.” The advice has been issued by an NHS GP ahead of peak travel season

It’s getting to that time of year when holiday season is quickly approaching, and you’re going to be thinking about what to pack. If you’re a parent, you may want to pay attention, as people are being urged to pack a simple item that could “save a child’s life.”

The advice has been issued by NHS GP, Dr Shireen, who often shares vital health advice on TikTok. According to her, you need to ensure you have one very important item of clothing, as it could make a big difference to children’s safety when they’re having fun and relaxing near the pool.

In a candid video, she explained: “If you’re planning to go near any pools this summer, please watch this video, particularly if you have young children. The colour of the swimming costume will literally help save their lives if they are in trouble.

“So, there are some colours that, when they’re submerged under water, literally will camouflage with the water, and disappear. That means, if a child is drowning, it will make it so much harder for you to find them, to spot them and to save them.

“On the other side, there are some colours that really show up brightly. And I’m quickly going to go through them with you so, when it comes to you doing your shopping for your clothes for your children and also for yourselves, [you’re] making the right choices.”

According to Dr Shireen, bright colours like red and yellow are good options to go for. Orange and neon colours are also said to be better.

The ones you need to “worry about”, according to the doctor, are light blue shades, green and grey as they “completely disappear” in the water, which makes it so much harder for children to be spotted.

While it’s fine to allow little ones to pick patterns that they like, she said it’s wise to be mindful of what sorts of colours you’re picking out. The key, according to her, is opting for shades that help to make them more visible.

Little you may know, Dr Shireen’s advice is actually super important. When your children go in the pool, bright, neon colours like orange, pink and yellow are thought to be the “most effective at enhancing visibility in the water”, and can even help save lives by making it easier to spot swimmers in distress.

In contrast, dark colours such as navy blue or black tend to blend in with the water, therefore making it much harder to spot when someone is in need of help. The video has been viewed dozens of times since it was shared, with some admitting they had no idea the colour of a swimsuit was so important.

One replied: “So informative. Thank you.” Another added: “This is so smart. I didn’t even think about this.”

A third said: “Amazing advice.” The GP was praised for sharing the top travel tip, as so many people weren’t aware of its importance.

NHS advice about water safety states: “Supervise children at all times when they are in or around a water source. Think about water safety in the home – children can drown rapidly and in small volumes of water.

“Ensure paddling pools are always emptied when not in use, or securely covered over. Make your pond safe – use a rigid metal grille across it, fence it off or fill it in.

“Consider teaching your child to swim – get details about public swimming baths, including swimming lessons. Be extra vigilant on holiday – beach and pool conditions and safety standards vary considerably throughout the world.”

Vera, the heroine of Gary Shteyngart’s sixth novel, “Vera, or Faith,” is a whip-smart 10-year-old Manhattanite, but she’s not quite smart enough to figure out her parents’ intentions. Why is dad so concerned about “status”? Why does her stepmom call some meals “WASP lunches”? How come every time they visit somebody’s house she’s assigned to see if they have a copy of “The Power Broker” on their shelves? She’s all but doomed to be bourgeois and neurotic, as if a juvenile court has sentenced her to live in a New Yorker cartoon.

Since his 2002 debut, “The Russian Debutante’s Handbook,” Shteyngart has proved adept at finding humor in the intersection of immigrant life, wealth and relationships, and “Vera” largely sticks to that mix. But the cynicism that has always thrummed underneath his high-concept comedies — the dehumanizing algorithms, the rapacious finance system — is more prominent in this slim, potent novel. Vera is witnessing both the slow erosion of her parents’ marriage along with the rapid decline of democracy in near-future America. Her precocity gives the novel its wit, but Shteyngart is also alert to the fact that a child, however bright, is fundamentally helpless.

Not to mention desperate for her parents’ affection, which is in short supply for Vera. Her father, the editor of a liberal intellectual magazine, seems constantly distracted by his efforts to court a billionaire to purchase it, while her stepmom is more focused on her son’s ADHD and the family’s rapidly dwindling bank account. Things are no better outside in the world, where a constitutional convention seems ready to pass an amendment awarding five-thirds voting rights for “exceptional Americans.” (Read: white people.) Vera, the daughter of a Russian father and Korean mother, may be banished to second-class citizenry.

Even worse, her school has assigned her to take the side of the “five-thirders” in an upcoming classroom debate. So it’s become urgent for her to understand the world just as it’s become inexplicable. Shteyngart is stellar at showing just how alienated she’s become: “She knew kids were supposed to have more posters on their walls to show off their inner life, but she liked her inner life to stay inside her.” And she seems to be handling the crisis with more maturity than her father, who’s drunk and clumsy in their home: “If anyone needed to see Mrs. S., the school counselor with the master’s in social work degree, it was Daddy.”

It’s a challenge to write from the perspective of a child without being arch or cutesy — stories about kids learning about the real world can degrade to plainspoken YA or cheap melodrama. Shteyngart is striving for something more supple, using Vera’s point of view to clarify how adults become victims of their own emotional shutoffs, the way they use language to at once appear smart while covering up their feelings. “Our country’s a supermarket where some people just get to carry out whatever they want. You and I sadly are not those people,” Dad tells her, forcing her to unpack a metaphor stuffed full of ideology, economics, self-loathing and more.

Every chapter in the book starts with the phrase “She had to,” explaining Vera’s various missions amid this dysfunction: “hold the family together,” “fall asleep,” “be cool,” “win the debate.” Kids like her have to be action-oriented; they don’t have the privilege of adults’ deflections. Small wonder, then, that her most reliable companion is an AI-powered chessboard, which offers direct answers to her most pressing questions. (One of Shteyngart’s most potent running jokes is that adults aren’t more clever than computers they command.) Once she falls into a mission to discover the truth about her birth mother, she becomes more alert to the world’s brutal simplicity: “The world was a razor cut … It would cut and cut and cut.”

Shteyngart’s grown-up kids’ story has two obvious inspirations: One, as the title suggests, is Vladimir Nabokov’s 1969 novel “Ada, or Ardor,” the other Henry James’ 1897 novel “What Maisie Knew.” Both are concerned with childhood traumas, and if Shteyngart isn’t explicitly borrowing their plots he borrows some of their gravitas, the sense that preteendom is a crucible for experiencing life’s various crises.

In its final chapters, the novel takes a turn that is designed to speak to our current moment, spotlighting the way that Trump-era nativist policies have brought needless harm to Americans. A country can abandon its principles, he means to say, just as a parent can abandon a child. But if “Vera” suggests a particular vision of our particular dystopian moment, it also suggests a more enduring predicament for children, who live with the consequences of others’ decisions but don’t get a vote in them.

“There were a lot of ‘statuses’ in the world and each year she was becoming aware of more of them,” Vera observes. Children will have to learn them faster now.

Athitakis is a writer in Phoenix and author of “The New Midwest.”

TOWIE star Amy Childs’ friends are worried about her relationship after she postponed her wedding to fiancé Billy Delbosq for the second time

Amy Childs has left friends and fans worried after calling off her wedding to fiancé Billy Delbosq for the second time, sparking rumours of relationship troubles among those who are close to her. The former beautician, who shot to fame on The Only Way Is Essex nearly 15 years ago, became a household name thanks to her larger-than-life personality — and introducing the public to the concept of ‘vajazzling’.

After a romantic past full of ups and downs, Amy, 34, seemed to have finally found lasting love with Billy, a fellow reality star who once appeared on Channel 4 ’s First Dates. The couple got engaged in 2023 after welcoming twins Billy River and Amelia Mae.

But last month she postponed their wedding again, after already delaying it last year over doubts about whether Billy was truly ready to tie the knot.

This latest cancellation has caused speculation that not all is well in their relationship. Friends close to the couple have voiced their fears, with one source telling the Daily Mail : “Billy has always been a player. He’s one of the biggest players in Essex…now there are fears that all is not well, that something could have happened between them.”

Fuel was added to the fire when Amy was spotted in Brentwood looking visibly thinner and not wearing her engagement ring. However, another source close to the couple insisted the pair are still going strong, and suggested she only removed the ring to work out.

In the paparazzi snaps that sparked concern, she was indeed dressed in gym gear. However, Amy and Billy were also seen at Stansted Airport on Thursday while en route to Spain for TOWIE filming, looking “preoccupied and unsmiling”. One pal admitted: “They usually seem so happy together. This time they looked really down in the dumps, neither particularly looked like they wanted to be there.”

Behind the scenes, Amy has been privately coping with a family crisis. She recently told The Mirror that her mum Julie, who has also made appearances on TOWIE, suffered from a heart attack in April and had to be rushed to hospital for emergency surgery.

She added: “It has been intensely stressful. None of us was expecting Mum to have a heart attack – it turned our world upside down.

“It was so frightening. She had a stent put in and was in hospital for six days. She’s now home but she’s being monitored daily and is on a lot of medication. It’s so tough for her – she sometimes struggles to walk upstairs.”

Amy and Billy made the difficult decision to postpone their September wedding at Cliveden House in Berkshire. The TOWIE star explained: “It’s upsetting, but I know we’ve made the right decision. Right now, we’re focused on looking after Mum.”

In response to the online abuse over her weight loss, Amy hit back, saying: “People don’t know what is going on behind closed doors…To be honest I do feel better when I’m a bit heavier than I am at the moment. There’s so much going on – it’s the result of pure stress.”

Despite facing these heart breaking family challenges, Amy is still hopeful that her and Billy will be able to get married abroad next year, and have planned for their kids to play a special role in the wedding. She concluded: “We just want it to be amazing, not rushed.”

Like this story? For more of the latest showbiz news and gossip, follow Mirror Celebs on TikTok , Snapchat , Instagram , Twitter , Facebook , YouTube and Threads .