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Jude McAtamney, Charlie Smyth and Mark McNamee have missed out on making the final roster for their respective NFL teams, leaving them open to be picked up by another franchise.

Former Gaelic footballers McAtamney, Smyth and McNamee were waived by the New York Giants, New Orleans Saints and Green Bay Packers.

McAtamney lost out to veteran Graham Gano as the New York Giants finalised their 53-man roster for the new season, which begins next week.

The County Derry man handled all kicking duties in the pre-season victories over the New York Jets and New England Patriots, kicking 10 extra points and a field goal between both games, while playing in the second half of the pre-season opener against the Buffalo Bills.

Last season, McAtamney was called from the practice squad into the Giants team for the regular season game against the Washington Commanders when Gano sustained an injury and the New York franchise may wish to recall him to the practice squad for the coming season if his pre-season form does not attract an offer from another team.

County Down’s Smyth missed out on the New Orleans Saints’ final roster for the second season with Blake Grupe again selected at number one.

Smyth, however, is eligible to return to the practice squad in the international player exemption slot.

NEW YORK — When the court lights flicker on at the U.S. Open, tennis stars shine under illumination designed to cut light pollution.

The wedge-shaped lamps around the USTA Billie Jean King National Tennis Center in Flushing Meadows direct light onto the players without spewing it into the surrounding skies.

The stadium complex is the only professional sports venue certified by a group that’s trying to preserve the night sky around the world. Across North America and Canada, schools and local parks have also swapped out their lights on baseball fields, running tracks and other recreation grounds to preserve their view of the stars and protect local wildlife.

Night lights can disrupt bird migration and confuse nocturnal critters like frogs and fireflies. Lights on sports fields are especially bright and cool, and often cast their glare into neighborhoods.

In renovations over the last decade, the U.S. Tennis Assn. swapped metal halide bulbs for shielded LED lights. The complex’s 17 tournament courts — including Arthur Ashe Stadium — and five practice courts were approved as dark sky-friendly last year.

USTA officials wanted the best lighting possible on their courts, which also happened to be friendly to dark skies. Their lighting company suggested striking a balance that would satisfy crowds and TV crews while cutting down spillover into the surrounding environment.

“This is an international event that has an impact on the community,” said the USTA’s managing director of capital projects and engineering, Chuck Jettmar. “Let’s minimize that and make sure that everybody’s happy with it.”

Designing lights for dark skies

U.S. Open qualifying matches last week were punctuated by players grunting, crickets chirping and audiences cheering. Rows of lights stood like sentries above, adorned with flat visors that guided the glow onto the action.

The lights at Flushing Meadows glow at a quarter of their brightness when the courts are rented for play during the year. They’re approved by DarkSky International, a nonprofit that gives similar designations to cities and national parks. The group widened its focus to include sports arenas in recent years and has certified more than 30 venues since 2019 — including high school football fields and youth soccer fields.

“We live in a world where we need to engage with one another in the nighttime environment, and that’s OK,” said DarkSky spokesperson Drew Reagan. “That’s a beautiful thing and there’s a way to do that responsibly.”

The organization typically approves proposals at sports fields before any light fixtures are installed or replaced. Once construction is complete, a representative measures the glow and glare against a set of guidelines that benefit the night.

Renovating a field with dark skies in mind can cost about 5% to 10% more than traditional sports lighting, according to James Brigagliano, who runs DarkSky’s outdoor sports lighting program. Venues may require a few extra fixtures since the light shining from them is more targeted.

Most arenas make the change during scheduled maintenance and renovation, working with sports lighting company Musco. The company lights more than 3,000 venues a year, including college football stadiums, tennis courts and rail yards.

At Superstition Shadows Park in Apache Junction, Ariz., kids play T-ball and baseball in the evenings, when the darkness offers a brief respite from the summer heat. The city’s parks and recreation department replaced its already-aging lights with shielded, dark sky-friendly fixtures last year with federal and local government funding.

People venture to Apache Junction partly because “they can get out of the city and still see stars,” said the city’s parks and recreation director, Liz Langenbach. The city is at the edge of the Phoenix metro area, bordered by rolling mountains and sweeping deserts.

“The choices we make on lighting, I think, affect all of that,” Langenbach said.

At Université Sainte-Anne in Canada, students run on a new track and soccer field outfitted with lights that DarkSky approved last year. Researchers at the university study native, nocturnal animals like the northern saw-whet owl.

The lights are “good for everyone,” said university spokesperson Rachelle LeBlanc. “For tourism, for our students, for our neighbors, for the animals that we share our campus with.”

How to cut light pollution

Night lights harm the surrounding environment no matter how shielded they are. DarkSky-approved fields still allow a small fraction of their light to be pointed up because it’s necessary to keep track of flying balls.

“You can have the absolute best, most carefully designed stadium lighting in the world, and you’re still creating light pollution,” said Travis Longcore, an urban light pollution expert at UCLA.

The U.S. Open courts are side-by-side with bright lights from Manhattan and Queens — so they can only darken a slice of the sky. But DarkSky says every light fixture makes a difference, and one professional arena can influence others.

“I’m not saying we as humans have to turn all the lights off,” said Longcore. “I think you have to make improvements from where you are.”

Ramakrishnan writes for the Associated Press. The Associated Press Health and Science Department receives support from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute’s Department of Science Education and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. The AP is solely responsible for all content.

A fight over taxes consumers pay for cannabis products has prompted a standoff between unusual adversaries: child-care advocates and the legal weed industry.

On July 1, California’s cannabis excise tax increased from 15% to 19% as part of a political deal struck in 2022 to help stabilize the fledgling legal market. But the industry now says the increase is untenable as it faces a sharp decline in revenue and unfair competition from the growing illicit market.

An industry-sponsored bill moving through the Legislature — and already passed by the Assembly — would eliminate the tax increase and lower the rate back to 15% for the next six years. This would reduce by $180 million annually the tax revenue that the state contributes toward law enforcement, child care, services for at-risk youth and environmental cleanup.

The losses include about $81 million annually that would have specifically funded additional subsidized child-care slots for about 8,000 children from low-income families.

“They are choosing the cannabis industry over children and youth,” said Mary Ignatius, executive director of Parent Voices California, which represents parents receiving state subsidies to help pay for child care.

Child care faces setbacks

The tension over taxes for legal weed versus child care — both industries in crisis — highlights the inherent pitfalls of funding important social services with “sin taxes,” whether it’s alcohol, weed or tobacco — funding that experts say is often unstable and unsustainable.

Engage with our community-funded journalism as we delve into child care, transitional kindergarten, health and other issues affecting children from birth through age 5.

The measure’s next stop is the Senate. All bills in the Legislature must be passed by Sept. 12, and the governor must sign them by Oct. 12.

“We can both support the legal cannabis industry and protect child care. If the measure reaches the governor’s desk and is signed into law, we will work with the Legislature to ensure there are no cuts to child care due to this policy change,” said Diana Crofts-Pelayo, a spokesperson for Gov. Gavin Newsom.

But it’s unclear where money to backfill the losses would come from, as the state grapples with declining finances and federal funding cuts.

The money from cannabis taxes represents a fraction of California’s $7-billion annual child care budget. But as federal cuts to social services for low-income families, including Head Start, continue, any potential loss creates a sense of panic among child care advocates who say California ought to be shoring up revenue options right now — not reducing them.

“Every single dollar needs to remain in the programs that are serving our children and families. What may seem like a small amount to some is everything for advocates who are fighting for it,” said Ignatius.

The past decade has been a time of progress for child care advocates, as the state rebuilt a child care industry decimated by cuts during the Great Recession. California has more than doubled spending on child care since the recession low, added about 150,000 new subsidized child care slots, eliminated the fees paid by families, increased pay for child care workers and added a new public school grade level for 4-year-olds.

But despite these efforts to bolster the market, California’s child care industry still suffers from low pay for workers, unaffordable costs for families, and a shortage of spaces for infants and toddlers.

The waiting list for subsidized child care slots is still so long that some parents have taken to calling it the “no hope list,” said Ignatius. Those who join the list know they could wait years before a spot opens up, and by that time their child may already be in kindergarten or beyond.

Jim Keddy, who serves on an advisory committee to help determine what programs the tax will finance, opposes the proposed reduction.

“If you don’t work to promote and hold on to a funding stream for children, someone eventually takes it from you,” said Keddy, who is also executive director of Youth Forward, a youth advocacy organization.

The cannabis industry, however, argues that while the causes the tax supports may be worthwhile, market conditions are so abysmal that it cannot weather an increase.

Legal cannabis industry struggles to remain afloat

“It is sad that the cannabis industry is being pit against social programs, childhood programs and educational programs,” said Jerred Kiloh, president of United Cannabis Business Assn. and owner of the Higher Path dispensary in Sherman Oaks. “The reality is, if our legal industry keeps declining, then so does their tax revenue.”

In 2022, when the cannabis industry agreed to increase the excise tax, quarterly cannabis sales were at their peak. The agreement offered the new industry temporary relief by eliminating the cultivation tax passed by voters under Proposition 64, the 2016 initiative that legalized cannabis. In exchange, state regulators would be able to increase the excise tax after three years to make the change revenue neutral.

But since then, sales have plunged to their lowest levels in five years, due in part to the growing illicit market that is siphoning off sales from legal dispensaries.

In L.A., Kiloh said that between state and local taxes, his legal dispensary customers end up paying 47% in taxes on their purchase. But if they shopped instead at any of the thousands of stores in L.A. selling cannabis products without a license, they could avoid state and local cannabis taxes entirely.

“A 30% increase in an excise tax that is already egregious is just kind of the breaking point for a lot of consumers,” said Kiloh.

Even before the excise tax hike went into effect, just 40% of the cannabis consumed in California was obtained from the legal market, according to the California Department of Cannabis Control.

The measure to drop the excise tax, AB564, received widespread support from Assembly members, including stalwart supporters of early childhood education like Assembly Majority Leader Cecilia Aguiar-Curry (D-Winters), chair of the Legislative Women’s Caucus.

“Revenues from legal sales of cannabis are already dropping and if we keep raising the tax they’ll drop even more. That penalizes cannabis businesses who are doing the right thing and working within the legal market. And, it makes illegal sales from cartels and criminals more competitive,” she said in a statement. “We need to fund our kids’ education through the State General Fund, but if we want to supplement education and youth programs, cannabis tax dollars will only exist if we steady the legal market and go after those illegal operators.”

How reliable are sin taxes?

Lucy Dadayan, a researcher who studies sin taxes at the Tax Policy Center, a nonpartisan think tank based in Washington, D.C., said the California predicament reflects a larger problem with sin taxes.

If a sin tax is successful and consumption drops — as it has with tobacco — “the tax base shrinks. And in the case of cannabis, there’s the added wrinkle that a high tax rate can push consumers back into the illicit market, which also reduces revenue,” she said.

This is not the first time services for the state’s youngest children have been affected by reductions in a sin tax.

In 1998, California voters slapped cigarettes with a hefty surcharge to pressure smokers to give up their habit. The state used the money to fund “First 5” organizations in every county, which are dedicated to improving the health and well-being of young children and their families. But the less people smoked over time, the less money was available for early childhood programs, and the First 5 system now finds itself confronting an existential crisis as it faces a rapidly declining revenue source.

Meanwhile, the critical social services like child care that come to depend on sin taxes tend to get more and more expensive, creating a “mismatch” in the tax structure versus the need, said Dadayan.

“In the short term, these taxes can raise a lot of money and help build public support for legalization or regulation. But in the long term, they can leave important programs vulnerable because of shifting consumption patterns,” she said.

This article is part of The Times’ early childhood education initiative, focusing on the learning and development of California children from birth to age 5. For more information about the initiative and its philanthropic funders, go to latimes.com/earlyed.

US Vice President JD Vance hit the road on August 21 to promote President Donald Trump’s legislative accomplishment, the One Big Beautiful Bill Act tax and spending bill.

The law permanently extended tax cuts from a 2017 law Trump signed, which would have expired at the end of 2025 had Congress not reauthorised them. The law also included some new tax cuts, including for tips, overtime and Americans 65 and older.

Speaking in Peachtree City near Atlanta, Vance said, “We had the biggest tax cut for families that this country has ever seen.”

The tax cuts were significant, but they weren’t the biggest in US history, which was a phrase Trump has often used to inaccurately describe his 2017 tax cut law. The 2025 tax cuts rank either third-biggest since 1980 or tied for seventh, depending on the yardstick.

At the same time, many Americans could see relatively modest changes to the taxes they owe starting in 2026, because the 2025 law mostly extended existing tax cuts.

The White House did not provide a response before publication.

Comparing historical tax cut laws

We examined the tax revenue decreases from major laws passed since 1980. (On balance, most tax laws prior to 1980 either raised taxes or cut them modestly.)

Tax bill dollar amounts tend to rise over time because of inflation, so we looked at tax cuts as a percentage of gross domestic product (GDP), which evens out the differences over time. And because some early laws have tax cut data available only for the first five or six years of the law’s life, we compared laws by looking at the cumulative tax savings during a law’s first five years in effect.

We found that the law with the biggest tax savings was 1981 legislation passed by the Democratic Congress and signed by President Ronald Reagan, who won office promising large tax cuts. That law cut taxes by 3.5 percent of the nation’s cumulative five-year GDP.

A 2012 bill passed by the Republican Congress and signed by President Barack Obama ranked second. That bill, which cut taxes by 1.7 percent of GDP, extended the tax cuts passed in 2003 under President George W Bush.

Based on current projections, Trump’s 2025 law ranks third, at 1.4 percent of GDP when factoring in Trump’s 2017 cuts.

Trump’s 2017 law ranks fourth at 1 percent, tied with a 2010 law Obama signed that extended Bush’s 2001 tax cuts. Bush’s 2001 and 2003 tax cuts ranked sixth and seventh, with 0.7 percent and 0.5 percent, respectively.

If considering only new tax cuts and not the re-upped 2017 tax cuts, then Trump’s 2025 law would tie for seventh at 0.5 percent of GDP.

Joseph Rosenberg, a senior fellow at the Urban Institute-Brookings Institution Tax Policy Center, said that it’s legitimate to measure the scale of the cuts in the 2025 tax law either way.

What will Americans see in their taxes starting in 2026?

There could be a disconnect between the historical scale of Trump’s 2025 bill and the impact that Americans will notice when filing 2026 taxes.

Because Americans are already paying the lower rates that began in 2017 and that the 2025 law extended, they won’t necessarily notice a sizeable reduction in taxes owed.

“For most families, they are going to see a child tax credit that increases by a maximum of $200 per child, from $2,000 to $2,200,” said Margot Crandall-Hollick, principal research associate at the Urban-Brookings Tax Policy Center. “Some are going to pay a little less because of the tips and overtime provisions and a slightly higher standard deduction.”

The law preserves a more generous standard deduction that had been set to expire and increases it slightly to $15,750 for single filers and $31,500 for joint filers in 2025, to be indexed to inflation annually.

At the same time, Crandall-Hollick said, some families, especially those with lower incomes, will pay higher taxes because of the expiration of health insurance premium tax credits, which were not extended by the Big Beautiful Bill.

Aug. 22 (UPI) — Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell on Friday did not give a clear indication of the central bank’s plans to possibly cut interest rates amid pressure from President Donald Trump but spoke to the difficult conditions affecting decisionmakers.

Speaking from the annual Economic Policy Symposium in Jackson Hole, Wyoming, Powell said “in the near term, risks to inflation are tilted to the upside, and risks to employment to the downside” referring to two factors the Fed uses to determine if rates should change or stay as is, the latter of which is considered a barrier to inflation.

“In terms of the Fed’s dual-mandate goals, he labor market remains near maximum employment, and inflation, though still somewhat elevated, has come down a great deal from its post-pandemic highs. At the same time, the balance of risks appears to be shifting,” he said.

Mentioning “risks” was the closest Powell came to declaring rate cuts are in the works, which some investors are expecting to be enacted when the Federal Open Market Committee next meets in September.

Powell noted that while the Fed’s dual mandate requires “balance,” but also added that “the stability of the unemployment rate and other labor market measures allows us to proceed carefully as we consider changes to our policy stance.

“The Fed also announced Friday that the Federal Open Market Committee, or FOMC, which decides interest rates, has approved its latest updated “Statement on Longer-Run Goals and Monetary Policy Strategy,” which explains how it handles monetary policies and uses it to guide policy actions.

In a press release, the committee stated that it’s “prepared to act forcefully to ensure that longer-term inflation expectations remain well anchored.”

“Therefore, the Committee’s policy decisions reflect its longer-run goals, its medium-term outlook, and its assessments of the balance of risks, including risks to the financial system that could impede the attainment of the Committee’s goals,” the committee further stated.

The Trump administration has canceled a sexual education grant to California worth about $12.3 million on the grounds that it included “radical gender ideology” after state officials refused to revise the materials.

The funding helps pay for sex education programs in juvenile justice facilities, homeless shelters and foster care group homes, as well as some schools, reaching an estimated 13,000 youths per year through 20 agencies.

State officials did not have an immediate response Thursday morning to the federal announcement, which was linked to a 60-day compliance deadline.

“California’s refusal to comply with federal law and remove egregious gender ideology from federally funded sex-ed materials is unacceptable,” said Acting Assistant Secretary Andrew Gradison, of the Administration for Children and Families. “The Trump Administration will not allow taxpayer dollars to be used to indoctrinate children. Accountability is coming for every state that uses federal funds to teach children delusional gender ideology.”

State officials had taken the position that its materials are accurate and did not violate the terms of the federal grant.

California is not being accused of failing to carry out the abstinence and contraception instruction funded by the grant. Rather, the state has included additional content that the Trump administration defines as objectionable and “outside the scope” of the grant’s purpose.

A June 20 letter to a senior California official cited, as one of several examples, sample wording from a middle school lesson:

“We’ve been talking during class about messages people get on how they should act as boys and girls — but as many of you know, there are also people who don’t identify as boys or girls, but rather as transgender or gender queer. This means that even if they were called a boy or a girl at birth and may have body parts that are typically associated with being a boy or a girl, on the inside, they feel differently.”

The California Department of Public Health responded in an Aug. 19 letter that it “will not make any such modifications at this time” because its materials already had been approved by the same agency that is now demanding change. In addition, officials described the materials as “medically accurate” and relevant to the instructional goals. California also challenged whether the Trump administration had authority to cancel the grant in this manner.

The amount of money at stake is small compared with other issues that are being litigated between California and the Trump administration, but the dispute embodies now-familiar legal parameters that have resulted in more than three dozen lawsuits.

The grant cancellation also represents another front in the conflict between the Trump administration and California related to LGBTQ+ issues. These culture war-fueled disputes date back substantially to Trump’s Jan. 20 executive order that recognized two sexes, male and female, a dictum that has moved across all departments under his jurisdiction.

In youth sports, this divide has unfolded with Trump threatening to withhold vast sums of federal funding unless California bars transgender athletes from girls’ and women’s sports.

California has responded by creating dual-award categories for women’s sporting events, so that the success of a trans athlete, in a track-and-field competition for example, would not prevent another athlete from winning an award. The compromise does not address the issue of trans athletes in women’s team sports, such as volleyball.

The Trump administration does not accept these steps taken by California as compliance with its directives.

Within the classroom, the Trump policy opposes curriculum that allows for more than a binary — male or female — expression of gender. Historically, federal authority over local curriculum has been limited, but Trump has been quick to use federal funding as leverage.

In this case, it’s the Administration for Children and Families at the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services that has been applying pressure.

The children and families department administers a grant program that annually distributes $75 million nationally “to educate adolescents on … both abstinence and contraception for the prevention of pregnancy and sexually transmitted infections, including HIV/AIDS,” according to federal statute.

For a three-year period, through the next fiscal year, California has been allotted funding worth more than $18.2 million, according to Health and Human Services. Under the federal decision, the state is expected to lose $12.3 million that it has not yet received, covering multiple years.

The federal grant supports the California Personal Responsibility Education Program, or CA PREP, which provides “comprehensive sexual health education to adolescents via effective, evidence-based or evidence-informed program models,” according to a statement from the state.

“Data show that participants who completed CA PREP had a better understanding of sexual and reproductive health topics and improved health outcomes,” the health department stated.

The Trump administration does not deny that the federal government had previously approved the California materials, but said the Biden administration “erred in allowing PREP grants to be used to teach students gender ideology.”

California law requires school districts to provide students with comprehensive sexual health education, along with information about HIV prevention, at least once in high school and once in middle school.

The Trump administration has asserted complete authority over federal grants, including those in progress. Many of its grant cancellations are being challenged in court. Some have been allowed to take effect; others have been blocked. In some instances, Congress has narrowly approved grant cancellations, including for foreign aid and to support the public broadcasting network.

Aug. 18 (UPI) — Air travelers going through Wilmington International Airport in North Carolina now can sign up for U.S. customs’ Global Entry program, which allows for quicker processing for pre-approved, low-risk travelers.

U.S. Customs and Border Protection officials said in a statement an enrollment event for its Global Entry program will be held September 8 to the 12th at North Carolina’s Wilmington International Airport.

The scheduled process in September for conditionally approved U.S. and non-American citizens as they seek to travel in and out of the country will be from 8 a.m. EDT to 4 p.m. on the reported days Monday to Friday.

Required documents for U.S. citizens include a valid government-issued passport and a secondary form of photo ID, such as a state-issued driver’s license.

For non-U.S. citizens and lawful permanent residents, a passport is required, along with a secondary photo ID, a valid U.S. visa printed in the passport or a machine-readable lawful permanent resident card.

CBP’s trusted traveler program allows for quicker processing for pre-approved, low-risk travelers.

Officials added that applicants may complete required interviews upon their return from a foreign location “at participating airports without a scheduled appointment.”

The global entry program established in 2008 allows a client to enter the United States using a kiosk, which identifies fingerprints electronically and saves hours waiting in line at customs.

The program was initially deployed to a small number of large U.S. airports — such as New York’s JFK International and Washington-Dulles in the nation’s capital — and by 2014 expanded largely due to its own success.

Monday’s announcement followed Friday’s similar announcement by CBP in the Great Lakes region that a separate no-appointment-needed Global Entry enrollment event will be in Detroit on Wednesday.

Wilmington International has never seen international flights until last week’s revelation that Avelo Airlines will begin flights in December to the popular vacation destination in Punta Cana in the Dominican Republic on the island of Hispaniola.

The interviews at CBP’s office at ILM will be at: 1921 Hall Dr in Wilmington.

EX-England footie ace Andy Carroll has revealed he is back with girlfriend Lou Teasdale after a stormy split — and vowed to cut down on booze to save their relationship.

Opening up about his feelings for stylist Lou in an exclusive interview with the Sun on Sunday, Andy said: “I love Lou and I love her family. We row like any couple.”

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The pair have been dating since his split last summer from ex-wife and former Towie star Billi Mucklow, 37. They are currently divorcing.

The 36-year-old former Premier League star said: “Things have been difficult for me and I’m going through a divorce.

“Some of our rows have been about alcohol, as Lou has been teetotal for 14 years and I have a beer or wine at dinner and a drink after the game, but it’s not a problem in my life.

“I’m a professional footballer and that’s not the case. I play sport every single day so my level of fitness is really good. I play football every day so I’m fit.”

The Sun revealed on Wednesday the couple had split, with Andy unfollowing celebrity make-up artist Lou, 41, on social media.

But now he has told The Sun on Sunday that after a misunderstanding in Spain, he and Lou have patched things up.

Former Liverpool and Newcastle striker Andy, who now plays for non-league Dagenham & Redbridge FC, said: “We’re better off together and we’re trying to work through our difficulties.”

In June, we reported Carroll was twice quizzed by police over bust-ups with Lou during a break on Greek party island Mykonos.

He was questioned about rows with her at a packed beachside restaurant and then at their hotel.

He was taken to the police station after the second incident.

Speaking about the restaurant incident now, Andy — pictured with Lou, above, as he signed for his new club last month — insisted: “There was no alcohol involved. We argued about me having three coffees in the morning. She was worried I was addicted to coffee and it went from there.”

A joint statement from them at the time said: “Whilst having a private dinner in a restaurant on a quiet holiday in Mykonos, we had a heated discussion of the sort that most couples have had on occasion.

“It quickly became apparent to the police that there was no reason for them to be there.”

It added: “As far as we are concerned, the situation has been blown out of all proportion by an interested member of the public.

“No one was arrested and no one was charged with anything.

“We are very happy, in love and looking forward to our future together and we are disappointed that a private disagreement has become a public matter.”

I don’t want to be with Lou anymore… she gives me ultimatums about everything

What Andy told us last week

Andy returned to England last month, having left French fourth-tier side Bordeaux to play for Dagenham & Redbridge and to be close to his children, who live in Essex.

He said: “I just want to focus on my kids. They’re more important than anything. I’m loving life back in England.

“Obviously when I was working in France, I was there alone, and I was out with the lads a lot. Now I’m back home with the kids and it’s just a different way of life.”

Last September, the Sun on Sunday reported Andy and Billi, who have three children, were divorcing after two years of marriage.

The couple started dating in 2013, soon after he joined West Ham.
And he popped the question during a romantic holiday in Rome in 2014.

That year Billi said: “He is one of the most genuine and caring people I have ever met.”

Gateshead-born Carroll, who has two children from a previous relationship, has often been in the news over his romps, brawls and court cases.

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He said meeting Billi turned his life around.

Carroll’s boyhood dreams came true when he began his professional football career with Newcastle United in 2006.

The big centre-forward was soon a hit with Toon fans, following in the footsteps of another local idol Alan Shearer.

In 2009-10, Carroll scored 17 goals in 39 games, and 11 in nine games the following season.

In 2011, he earned a £35million transfer to Liverpool, a then record fee for a British player.

At his peak he was picked for England in nine games between 2010-2012, including scoring against Sweden at Euro 2012.

I love Lou and I love her family, we row like any couple

What he told us this week

He was sold by Liverpool to West Ham but struggled with a series of injuries.

His career saw him moving on to a succession of clubs including back to Newcastle, later to Reading and then West Brom.

Carroll’s career, although full of ups and downs, has brought him enormous sums of money.

In May 2019, he was listed as the 14th wealthiest sports person aged 30 or under in The Sunday Times Rich List.

His fortune at the time was said to have increased to £19million.

For Kalpesh Patel, Diwali, the festival of lights celebrated across India, might well mark lights out for his eight-year-old diamond cutting and polishing unit.

The 35-year-old employs about 40 workers who transform rough diamonds into perfectly polished gems for exports at the small factory in Surat, a city located in the western Indian state of Gujarat.

His business has survived multiple speed bumps in recent years. But United States President Donald Trump’s mammoth 50 percent tariffs on imports from India might be the final nail in the coffin for his unit, part of an already struggling natural diamond industry, he said.

“We still have some orders for Diwali and will try to complete them,” he told Al Jazeera.

Diwali, arguably India’s single biggest festival, scheduled for late October this year, usually sees domestic sales of most goods soar. “But we might have to shut the business even before the festival, as exporters might cancel the orders due to high tariffs in the US,” Patesh said.

“It is becoming increasingly difficult to pay the salaries and maintain other expenses with falling orders.”

He is among the 20,000-odd small and medium traders in Surat, known as the “Diamond City of India”, which together cut and polish 14 out of every 15 natural diamonds produced globally.

The US is their single largest export market. According to the Gem and Jewellery Export Promotion Council (GJEPC), India’s apex body for the industry, the country exported cut and polished gems worth $4.8bn to the US in the 2024-25 financial year, which ended in March. That is more than one-third of India’s total exports of cut and polished diamonds, at $13.2bn over the same period.

Dimpal Shah, a Kolkata-based diamond exporter, told Al Jazeera that orders have already started getting cancelled. “Buyers in the US are refusing to offload the shipped products, citing high tariffs. This is the worst phase of my two-decade-old career in diamonds.”

US imposes penalty

A 25 percent reciprocal tariff on all Indian goods, which Trump announced on April 2, came into effect on August 7, after talks between the two countries failed to yield a trade deal by then. Negotiations are continuing.

Meanwhile, on August 6, Trump announced an additional 25 percent tariff, taking the total tariff rate to 50 percent. He termed the additional tariff that would come into effect from August 27 as a penalty for India’s continued buying of Russian oil, as the US president tries to push Moscow into accepting a ceasefire in Ukraine.

For the gems industry, which already faced a pre-existing 2.1 percent tariff, the effective tariff now amounts to 52.1 percent.

Ajay Srivastava, the founder of Global Research Trade Initiative (GTRI), a trade research group, termed the Trump government’s additional hike as an act of “hypocrisy”, citing how the US itself continues to trade with Russia, and how China – Russia’s biggest oil buyer – faces no similar penalty.

“Trump is targeting India out of frustration as it refused to toe the US line on the Russia-Ukraine conflict, and for its refusal to open its agriculture and dairy sector,” he added, referring to broader ongoing trade talks and differences over US demands for greater access to critical Indian economic sectors.

Yet, whatever the reasons for Trump’s tariffs, they are hurting a diamond industry already bleeding from multiple hits.

Diamond sector badly hit

More than 2 million people are employed in diamond polishing and cutting units in Surat, Ahmedabad and Rajkot cities in Gujarat — and many have already suffered salary cuts in recent years, first because of the COVID-19 pandemic, and then Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine.

“The pandemic led to economic slowdown affecting the international markets in Hong Kong and China,” Ramesh Zilriya, the president of Gujarat’s Diamond Workers Union, told Al Jazeera. The “Western ban on rough diamond imports from Russia due to the Russia-Ukraine war and the G7 ban on Russia also affected our business”, he added.

Russia has historically been a major source of raw diamonds.

Zilriya claimed that 80 diamond workers have died by suicide over the past two years because of this economic crisis.

“The situation in the international market led to the wages of the workers getting halved to approximately 15,000-17,000 rupees ($194) per month, which made survival difficult in the face of rising inflation,” he said.

Once the Trump tariffs fully kick in, Zilriya fears that up to 200,000 people in Gujarat may lose their livelihoods.

Already, more than 120,000 former diamond sector workers have applied for benefits. A 13,500-rupee ($154) allowance per child, to support their families, was promised in May by the state government to those who have lost jobs due to the tumult in the sector in recent years.

But the tariffs, pandemic and war are not alone to blame for the crisis: Lab-grown diamonds are also slowly eating into the market of their natural counterparts.

“Unlike natural [diamonds], the lab-grown diamonds are not mined but manufactured in specialised laboratories and priced at just 10 percent of the natural ones. It is difficult even for a seasoned jeweller to identify the natural and lab-grown with a naked eye. The taste of consumers is now shifting to lab-grown [diamonds], as they are cheap,” said Salim Daginawala, the president of the Surat Jewellers Association.

Decline in exports

In the 2024-25 financial year, India imported rough diamonds worth $10.8bn, marking a 24.27 percent decline from the $14bn imported in 2023-24, as per the statistics by the GJEPC.

The exports of cut and polished natural diamonds similarly witnessed a 16.75 percent decline, with exports declining to $13.2bn in 2024-25 as compared with $16bn in the preceding year.

“This move [the tariffs] would have far-reaching repercussions on the Indian economy that might disrupt critical supply chains, stalling exports and threatening thousands of livelihoods. We hope to get a favourable reduction in tariffs; otherwise, it would be difficult to survive,” said Kirit Bhansali, the chairman of the GJEPC.

The tariffs could also hurt US jewellers, warned Rajesh Rokde, the chairman of the All India Gems and Jewellery Domestic Council (GJC), a national trade federation for the industry.

“The US has around 70,000 jewellers who would also face a crisis if the jewellery becomes expensive,” Rokde added.

A domestic solution?

Traders say that the need of the hour is to increase domestic demand for diamonds and diversify to new markets.

A stronger domestic market “would not only contribute to the local economy, but would also create jobs for several thousands of people”, said Radha Krishna Agrawal, the director of Narayan das Saraf Jewellers in Varanasi city, in the northern state of Uttar Pradesh.

The tariffs, he said, could prove a “blessing in disguise” if they end up reducing the dependence of India’s gems industry “on other countries”.

Bhansali said that the domestic gems and jewellery market was growing, and expected to reach $130bn in the next two years, up from $85bn at the moment. The industry is also looking for new markets, including Latin America and the Middle East.

Gold already offers an example of a strong domestic market, cushioning the impact of hits on exports, said Amit Korat, the president of the Surat Jewellery Manufacturers Association.

But for now, the diamond sector in India has no such shield. It needs to be saved, urgently, said Patel, the Surat business owner on the cusp of shutting down his polishing and cutting unit.

Without help, he said, “the business will lose its shine forever”.

Drone footage showed workers in India’s Uttarakhand state building a makeshift bridge across a gorge to reestablish ground access to communities cut off by deadly flash flooding and landslides earlier this week. Rescuers have been using helicopters to evacuate those trapped in the Himalayan region.

EPA

Inflation

NEW YORK — On a sweltering summer day, children leap between rocks along the Bronx River while cyclists pedal on newly paved paths. Kayaks rest on what was once an industrial dumping ground, now transformed into a bustling promenade along the city’s only freshwater river.

The Bronx River Greenway, a series of stitched-together waterfront parks built atop once largely abandoned and polluted wasteland, is a hard-fought victory for the country’s poorest congressional district — one that locals call a “beacon of environmental justice” built by federal dollars and water-pollution settlements from the borough’s wealthier neighbors.

Now, like thousands of nonprofits around the country, this organization’s future is in jeopardy. The Trump administration’s sweeping federal grant cuts have left nonprofits nationwide and the communities they serve in precarious straits. But few places face as stark a reckoning as the Bronx, where federal funding has proved indispensable for revitalizing green spaces, protecting survivors of domestic violence, and preventing youth violence.

Over 84% of the 342 nonprofits based in the Bronx rely on federal grants now at risk, according to an analysis by the Urban Institute. It’s a significant increase from the 70% of groups vulnerable to government defunding statewide.

In all but two of the country’s 437 congressional districts, the typical nonprofit could not cover its expenses without government grants. Nonprofits have increasingly served as contractors for government services — like operating homeless shelters — since the 1960s.

In the Bronx, if such grants were to disappear entirely, the borough’s nonprofits could face a collective deficit of nearly 30% — cuts that have begun to force layoffs and austerity on dozens of groups connecting Bronxites to low-cost health care, food assistance, and preschool slots.

“When America sneezes, the Bronx gets the flu,” said U.S. Rep. Ritchie Torres, the Democrat who represents the district. “I think we in the Bronx feel we have been and will continue to be the hardest hit by the impact of a Trump presidency.”

From revival to reversal

Nestled in a corner of parkland atop the site of an abandoned amusement park, the headquarters of the Bronx River Alliance is among the borough’s greenest buildings, boasting nature classrooms, samples of the river’s flora and fauna, and a storage space teeming with kayaks and canoes.

In March, the group received formal notice that it would lose $1.5 million in federal grants promised under the Inflation Reduction Act last year for improving water quality and climate-resilience projects. After years of rising momentum, cubicles now sit empty. Leaders held off on hiring in anticipation of cuts, and now they don’t know if they’ll be able to fill those roles.

“I’ve met some of the folks who were pulling cars out of the river in the ’70s and ’80s,” said Daniel Ranells, the group’s deputy director of programs. Back then, the area was a “dumping ground” so inundated with industrial waste, tires, abandoned cars, ovens, and microwaves that “folks didn’t really understand there was a river there.”

That has shifted dramatically in recent years thanks in part to decades of federal investment. Just south of its headquarters, the organization restored salt marshes along the riverbanks of a shuttered concrete plant.

In 2007, the first beaver appeared on the Bronx River in over 200 years — named “José the Beaver” in honor of former Congressman José E. Serrano, who helped direct millions in federal funds to groups dedicated to the river’s restoration.

“The Bronx River is a shining light of environmental justice,” Ranells said, and millions in federal funding over the years has helped “make it a destination” after years of neglect.

Progress frozen

Now staffers at the Bronx River Alliance describe a sense of “whiplash” in seeing hard-fought funds dry up and grant language scrubbed of any allusions to racial or environmental justice.

The Bronx River Alliance has joined other nonprofits in suing the Trump administration to unfreeze funds, but the uncertainty has already disrupted years of planning, a reality that has rippled across the neighborhood, leaving few organizations untouched.

Up the street from the Alliance, the office of the Osborne Association, a group that has worked to prevent youth violence for nearly a century, has grown quieter. In April, an email from the Bureau of Justice Assistance stated the remaining $666,000 of a $2 million grant “no longer effectuates department priorities.”

The cut thrust the nonprofit into “triage mode,” said Osborne president Jonathan Monsalve, who was forced to lay off three staffers and reduce the number of participants in a diversion program offering young adults facing gun charges an alternative to jail time.

“It’s a lifeline for young people, and it’s no longer there for 25 more of them,” Monsalve said. “Without another alternative, it’s 25 young people that will see prison or jail time, and that’s incredibly frustrating.”

Why the Bronx bears the brunt

The Department of Justice has canceled over $810 million in similar grants to nonprofits working in violence prevention. The Environmental Protection Agency attempted to cancel $2 billion in grants for environmental justice work.

Nonprofit leaders say the cuts hit hardest in the places that can afford them the least. In the Bronx, almost 30 percent of residents live in poverty, the vast majority of whom are Black or Latino, and nearly one in six schoolchildren experience homelessness every year.

“We’ve had decades of disinvestment in these communities, and we had been starting to see some meaningful investment and community-based solutions that were actually working,” said Monsalve. “And then all of a sudden that support just gets yanked away.”

The federal government, he said, is essentially telling these communities: “You aren’t a priority anymore. You don’t fit the plan.”

For decades, a million-dollar federal grant allowed the victim-service organization Safe Horizon to operate a program that stationed domestic violence advocates in the borough’s criminal court.

When the grant came up for renewal this year, it came with new restrictions that CEO Liz Roberts described as “so extreme, so broad, so radical” that the organization chose to walk away rather than accept conditions which would have prohibited supporting transgender survivors or treating domestic violence as a systemic issue.

It was an agonizing decision given the volume of domestic violence in the Bronx, Roberts said.

It means that hundreds of survivors “may not have the opportunity to talk to an advocate about their options, about their rights, or about their safety,” she said.

Filling the void

Roberts said she’s bracing for more cuts — federal funds make up about 24% of the group’s budget — that could force the closure of shelters or reductions to a citywide hotline.

As nonprofits nationwide grapple with similar losses, Roberts said private philanthropy and local governments will need to “make some smart and thoughtful and principled decisions about where they can help to fill those gaps.”

In places like the Bronx, finding alternative funding is especially challenging. “The not-for-profit sector is often fragile, and nowhere more so than the Bronx,” Torres said of the district he represents, where organizations tend to be more dependent on government funding than wealthier enclaves.

“Organizations spent hundreds of thousands of dollars simply to apply for a contract and hired staff and made all these plans only to see the written contract disappear,” Torres said. “It’s deeply destabilizing.”

Sara Herschander is a senior reporter at the Chronicle of Philanthropy. This article was provided to the Associated Press by the Chronicle of Philanthropy as part of a partnership to cover philanthropy and nonprofits supported by the Lilly Endowment. The Chronicle is solely responsible for the content.

MASERU, Lesotho — The southern African nation of Lesotho has had its U.S. export tariff reduced from a threatened 50% to 15%, but its crucial textile industry still faces massive factory closures, officials said Friday.

Despite a reduction announced by President Trump, the country’s textile sector says it remains at a competitive disadvantage and faces ongoing factory closures and job losses.

In April, the Trump administration announced a 50% tariff on imports from Lesotho, the highest among all countries.

The tariffs were paused across the board, but the anticipated increase wreaked havoc across the country’s textile industry, which is its biggest private-sector employer with more than 30,000 workers.

About 12,000 of them work for garment factories exporting to the U.S. market, supplying American retailers such as Levi’s and Wrangler.

The Associated Press reported this week that clothing manufacturer Tzicc has seen business dry up ahead of the expected tariff increase, sending home most of its 1,300 workers who have made and exported sportswear to American stores, including JCPenney, Walmart and Costco.

David Chen, chairperson of the Lesotho Textile Exporters, has warned that the U.S. government’s move to reduce the tariffs offers little relief for the struggling industry as their competitors have lesser tariffs.

“Other countries which we are competing against are already being charged 10%, which makes it difficult for us to compete on an equal footing,” said Chen, singling out the East African country of Kenya as its strongest competitor with a more favorable 10% tariff.

“As a result, many factories will have to shut down,” Chen said. “They had already been forced to lay off workers when the tariffs were first announced in April.”

According to the Office of the U.S. Trade Representative, in 2024, U.S.-Lesotho bilateral trade stood at $240.1 million. Apart from clothing, Lesotho’s exports also include diamonds and other goods.

Lesotho is classified as a lower-middle-income country by the World Bank, and nearly half of its 2.3 million population live below the poverty line, while a quarter are unemployed.

Lesotho’s minister of Trade, Industry and Business Development, Mokhethi Shelile, said that while several meetings with U.S. trade representatives led to a reduced tariff, more needed to be done to lower it further.

“We remain committed to pushing for a further reduction to the minimum tariff level of 10%, which is essential for our textile sector to compete effectively in the U.S. market,” he said. “I have already communicated with the U.S. Embassy regarding continued negotiations.”

Lesotho’s neighbor and trading partner, South Africa, is also reeling after Trump announced a reciprocal 30% tariff for the country, which is expected to significantly affect its agriculture and manufacturing sectors, among others.

Phakela writes for the Associated Press.

A FANCY coffee shop in northern Italy has been swamped with protests after a fed-up customer revealed she was charged extra for having her croissant cut in half.

The woman, who has not been named in local media, visited Audrey Patisserie in Oderzo on Sunday for breakfast, ordering two coffees and a pastry.

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But when she asked staff to slice the croissant so she could share it with her mother, she later discovered an extra €0.10 (around 9p) charge on the bill.

Fuming, she shared the receipt online, writing: “It’s not about the cost, it’s the principle.”

Her post spread like wildfire, sparking an avalanche of fury from social media users.

One user blasted: “You have to hate your customers to charge them €0.10 to cut a croissant in half.

“A total lack of elegance, refinement, and empathy.

“They should bring hotel management students to your restaurant to show them how not to treat your customers. Pathetic.”

Another piled on: “Disgusting cappuccino and they ask 10 cents to cut a croissant in half, never again, how squalid.”

A third raged: “€0.10 what a disgrace… just to cut a croissant!!!”

The backlash left café owner Massimiliano Viotto under siege, as his shop was bombarded with negative reviews.

He said: “We were flooded with one-star reviews from people who have never even visited our shop.

“Our Google rating dropped from 4.5 to 3.5, but we’re confident it will recover with time and dedication.”

Viotto denied the charge was a rip-off, even though it doesn’t appear on the menu, claiming it covers the use of an extra plate and napkin and the “skill” needed to cut a pastry.

Bafflingly, a photo from the café shows a staff member simply snipping through a croissant with a pair of scissors while steadying it with a fork.

He insisted: “It’s not a scam. It is a conscious choice that we defend with pride.”

The row adds to Italy’s growing reputation for bizarre summer surcharges.

Last year, a woman in Arezzo revealed she was slapped with a £50 fee to cut her own birthday cake in a restaurant.

And it’s not the only baffling bill making headlines.

A man has told how he was left scratching his head after a local restaurant added a mysterious “S Charge” to his tab.

The 2.75% extra fee — around 70 cents — appeared despite him paying in cash, meaning it couldn’t be a card surcharge.

Posting the receipt online, he wrote: “After eating at a local restaurant I noticed a charge on the receipt I did not recognize and have never seen before.

“I emailed the contact listed on their website a week ago but never received a response.

“Can someone tell me what is the S Charge (2.75%)? Can’t be a credit card up charge since I paid cash.”

The post sparked heated debate, with most guessing it was some form of service charge.

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Sweat covers Isaac Barnes’s face under his beekeeper’s veil as he hauls boxes of honeycomb from his hives to his truck. It is a workout in what feels like a sauna as the late-morning temperatures rise.

Though Barnes was hot, his bees were even hotter. Their body temperatures can be up to 15 degrees Celsius (27 degrees Fahrenheit) higher than the air around them. As global temperatures rise, scientists are trying to better understand the effects on managed and wild bees as they pollinate crops, gather nectar, make honey, and reproduce.

They noticed flying bees gathering nectar avoided overheating on the hottest days by using fewer but harder wingbeats to keep their body temperature below dangerous levels, according to a study published last year. Scientists also say that bees, like people, may cope by retreating to a cooler environment such as the shade or their nest.

“Just like we go into the shade, sweat, or we might work less hard, bees actually do the exact same thing so they can avoid the heat,” said Jon Harrison, an environmental physiologist at Arizona State University and one of the study’s authors.

Generally, most bees are heat-tolerant, but as the climate warms, some experts think their ability to fend off disease and gather food might become more difficult. Habitat loss, increased use of pesticides, diseases, and lack of forage for both managed and wild bees are all listed as potential contributors to the global decline of bees and other pollinators.

Earlier this year, preliminary results from the annual US Beekeeping Survey found that beekeepers lost almost 56 percent of their managed colonies, the highest loss since the survey started in 2010.

Almost all of the managed honeybee colonies in the United States are used to pollinate crops such as almonds, apples, cherries, and blueberries. Fewer pollinators can lead to less pollination and potentially lower yields.

Back at Isaac Barnes’s hives in Ohio, thousands of honeybees fly around as he gathers boxes to take back to his farm for honey production. Nearby, a couple of his bees land on milkweed flowers, a rare bit of plant diversity in an area dominated by maize and soya bean fields.

For Barnes, who operates Honeyrun Farm with his wife, Jayne, one of the challenges heat can pose to his 500 honeybee hives is fending off parasitic mites that threaten the bees. If temperatures get too hot, he cannot apply formic acid, an organic chemical that kills the mites. If it is applied when it is too hot, the bees could die.

Last year, they lost nearly a third of the 400 hives they sent to California to help pollinate commercial almond groves. Barnes thinks those hives may have been in poor health before pollination because they were unable to ward off mites when it was hot months earlier.

It is only in the last decade that people have become aware of the magnitude of the pollinator decline globally, said Harrison, of Arizona State University. Data is limited on how much climate change and heat stress are contributing to pollinator decline.

The Trump administration’s proposed budget would eliminate the research programme that funds the US Geological Survey Bee Lab, which supports the inventory, monitoring and natural history of the nation’s wild bees. Other grants for bee research are also in jeopardy.

US Senator Jeff Merkley of Oregon said his country’s pollinators are in “grave danger”, and he will fight for the federal funding. Pollinators contribute to the health of the planet, the crops we grow and the food we eat, he said.

“Rather than taking bold action to protect them, the Trump administration has proposed a reckless budget that would zero out funding for critical research aimed at saving important pollinators,” he said in a statement to The Associated Press news agency.

Harrison said his research on this topic would come to a halt if cuts are made to his federal funding, and it would generally be more difficult for scientists to study the disappearance of bees and other pollinators and improve how they prevent these losses. Not being able to manage these pollinator deaths could cause the price of fruits, vegetables, nuts, coffee and chocolate to rise or become scarce.

“Hopefully, even if such research is defunded in the US, such research will continue in Europe and China, preventing these extreme scenarios,” said Harrison.

Ken Burns has made more than 30 documentaries and won multiple Emmys.

But without funding from public television, his educational programming such as “The Civil War” and “Baseball” might never have existed, he told “PBS News Hour” in an interview Thursday.

Even today, the acclaimed filmmaker whose works — including his upcoming project “The American Revolution” — are broadcast on PBS, said his films get around 20% of their budgets from the Corp. for Public Broadcasting, the body Congress recently voted to defund.

Projects that receive a higher percentage of their funding through public media “just won’t be able to be made,” Burns said. “And so there’ll be less representation by all the different kinds of filmmakers. People coming up will have an impossible time getting started.”

The U.S. Senate this week passed the Trump administration’s proposal to cancel $9 billion in federal funding previously allocated for foreign aid and public broadcasting, and the House of Representatives approved the package after midnight Friday, sending it to President Trump’s desk.

The Corp. for Public Broadcasting, which administers the funds for NPR radio stations and PBS TV affiliates, is on track to lose $1.1 billion that had previously been budgeted for the next two years.

The impact of those cuts will be deeply felt across both NPR and PBS, leaders of both organizations told The Times. Layoffs and reduced programming are expected, and the blows will disproportionately strike smaller markets that rely more heavily on federal funding.

“This is going to hit hardest in the places that need it the most,” said Gabriel Kahn, a professor at the USC Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism.

Stations in smaller markets are staffed significantly less than stations in larger cities, often because of the disparity in funding. The Corp. for Public Broadcasting acted as “the great equalizer,” Kahn said, padding the budgets of smaller stations so they could continue operating.

“It’s just going to be increasingly lonely out there as these voices, who were of the community and generally very well trusted, are going to disappear,” Kahn said. “Because within a year, you’re not going to be able to hear these things on the radio anymore in a lot of places.”

The cuts fulfill a longtime dream of conservatives and libertarians, who bristle at the notion of public funds supporting media organizations, especially ones they view as left-leaning. Republicans have for decades called for cuts to public broadcasting because of their perceived liberal slant of its programming.

Trump has called NPR and PBS government-funded “left-wing propaganda.”

But several prominent voices in media and politics were quick to call attention to the harm the cuts will have, especially on communities where the local stations rely heavily on federal funding.

“A PBS station is really like the public library. It’s one of those important institutions that may be the only place where people have access to local news,” Burns said. “There’s a kind of sense of local accountability, and as news becomes nationalized and even internationalized, there’s a loss there.”

PBS President Paula Kerger expressed similar concerns.

“Many of our stations which provide access to free unique local programming and emergency alerts will now be forced to make hard decisions in the weeks and months ahead,” Kerger said in a statement Thursday.

Alaska Sen. Lisa Murkowski, one of two Senate Republicans to vote against the package, said she strongly opposes the cuts to public media in a statement after the vote. She referenced a 7.3 magnitude earthquake in Alaska this week that triggered a tsunami warning as an example of the public service stations provide.

“My colleagues are targeting NPR but will wind up hurting — and, over time, closing down — local radio stations that provide essential news, alerts and educational programming in Alaska and across the country.”

A devastating blow to SoCal stations

Public media outlets in Southern California’s urban areas, which can turn to wealthy locals for donations, are less dependent on federal funding than stations in smaller markets. But they will still feel an immediate loss.

Washington, D.C.-based NPR has two major affiliates serving the Los Angeles area: LAist, or KPCC-FM (89.3), and KCRW-FM (89.9).

LAist, based in Pasadena, was set to receive $1.7 million, about 4% of its annual budget. Alejandra Santamaria, president and chief executive of LAist, said the money is equivalent to 13 journalist positions at the local news operation. KCRW in Santa Monica was expecting $264,000 from the Corp. for Public Broadcasting.

PBS SoCal, which operates member stations KOCE and KCET in Orange and Los Angeles counties, respectively, is facing a loss of $4.3 million in federal funding, according to Andy Russell, president and chief executive of the stations.

Connie Leyva, executive director of KVCR Public Media in San Bernardino, which operates PBS and NPR affiliates, said earlier this week that the Senate action will mean losing $540,000, about 6% of its operating budget. Thus, she has to consider cutting five positions on an already lean staff.

Kahn, the USC professor who is also the publisher and editor of Crosstown L.A., a nonprofit newsroom focused on local reporting and data journalism, said the cuts could have unintended consequences for Trump’s own voters.

“The irony, of course, is that these are areas that generally support Trump with high margins, and they’re are also areas that have the greatest allegiance to their local public radio station,” he said.

Rep. Robert Garcia (D-Long Beach) is calling on Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. to explain why the Trump administration has repeatedly ordered cuts to HIV/AIDS programs both at home and abroad.

In a letter to Kennedy dated Thursday, Garcia asserted that the cabinet secretary has a history of peddling misinformation about the virus and disease, and that the planned cuts — which he called “alarming and unprecedented” — would cost lives.

“We are concerned that your motivations for disrupting HIV funding and delaying preventative services and research are grounded not in sound science, but in misinformation and disinformation you have spread previously about HIV and AIDS, including your repeated claim that HIV does not cause AIDS,” wrote Garcia, the ranking Democrat on the House Oversight Committee.

A Health and Human Services spokesperson said Kennedy remains committed to science-based public health, that critical HIV/AIDS programs will continue under his leadership, and that ongoing investments in such work demonstrate that commitment.

Both President Trump and Kennedy have previously defended the sweeping cuts to Health and Human Services programs and staff under Kennedy’s leadership. Agency spokespeople have said they would allow for a greater focus on Kennedy’s priorities of “ending America’s epidemic of chronic illness by focusing on safe, wholesome food, clean water, and the elimination of environmental toxins.”

Kennedy has said the department under his watch “will do more — a lot more — at a lower cost to the taxpayer.”

Garcia’s letter — which he co-wrote with Rep. Raja Krishnamoorthi (D-Ill.), the ranking Democrat on the Health Care and Financial Services subcommittee — requested that the health department produce a list of all HIV/AIDS-related funding it has cut and an explanation for how those funds were identified for elimination, as well as other documentation and communications around several of the largest cuts.

The letter is the latest attempt by Democrats, in coordination with health experts and LGBTQ+ organizations, to challenge what they see as an inexplicable yet coordinated effort by the Trump administration to dismantle public health initiatives aimed at controlling and ultimately ending one of the most devastating and deadly epidemics in human history.

It comes the same day that Senate Republicans agreed to a Trump administration request to claw back billions of dollars in funding for public media and foreign aid, but declined an earlier White House request to include in those cuts about $400 million in HIV/AIDS funding for the President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief, or PEPFAR, which is credited with saving millions of lives in some of the poorest nations around the world.

The House had previously voted for an earlier version of the measure that did cut the funding for PEPFAR, which was started by President George W. Bush in 2003. However, senators pushed for the restoration of the funding before agreeing to sign the broader rescission package.

The House must now approve the Senate version of the measure by Friday for it to take effect.

In an interview with The Times, Garcia said he has long viewed Kennedy as a dangerous “conspiracy theorist” who has “peddled in all sorts of lies” about HIV, vaccines and other medical science. Now that Kennedy is Health secretary, he said, the American people deserve to know whether national and international health decisions are being driven by his baseless personal beliefs.

“Folks need to understand what he’s trying to do, and I think that he has to be responsible and be held accountable for his actions,” Garcia said.

In their letter, Garcia and Krishnamoorthi noted that recent scientific advancements — including the creation of new preventative drugs — are making the eradication of HIV more attainable than ever. And yet Kennedy and the Trump administration are pushing the nation and the world in the opposite direction, they said.

“Since taking office, the Trump Administration has systematically attacked HIV-related funding and blocked critical HIV-related services and care for those who need it most,” Garcia and Krishnamoorthi wrote. “These disruptions would threaten Americans most at risk of contracting HIV, and many people living with HIV will get sicker or infect others without programs they rely on for treatment.”

The letter outlines a number of examples of such cuts, including:

• The elimination of the HIV prevention division of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and termination or delay of billions of dollars in HIV prevention grants from that office.
• The termination of a $258-million program within the National Institutes of Health to find a vaccine to prevent new HIV infections.
• The termination of dozens of NIH grants for HIV research, particularly around preventing new infections among Black and Latino gay men who are disproportionately at risk of contracting the virus.
• The targeting of HIV prevention initiatives abroad, including PEPFAR.
• The U.S. drawing back from the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria.

Many in the medical and foreign aid community expressed grave concerns about Kennedy being appointed as Health secretary, in part because of his past remarks about HIV/AIDS. Kennedy told a reporter for New York Magazine as recently as June 2023 that there “are much better candidates than H.I.V. for what causes AIDS.”

In their letter, Garcia and Krishnamoorthi called out a specific theory shared by Kennedy that the recreational drug known as “poppers” may cause AIDS, rather than the HIV virus, writing, “We are deeply concerned that the Trump Administration’s HIV-related funding cuts are indiscriminate, rooted in a political agenda, and not at all in the interest of public health.”

Kennedy’s skepticism about the link between HIV and AIDS conflicts with well established science that has long been accepted by the medical establishment, and by the federal government. Studies around the world have proved the link, and found that HIV is the only common factor in AIDS cases.

In August 2023, about a week before Kennedy threw his support behind Trump, his presidential campaign addressed the controversy surrounding his “poppers” comment, stating that Kennedy did not believe poppers were “the sole cause” of AIDS, but contended they were “a significant factor in the disease progression” of early patients in the 1980s.

Garcia and Krishnamoorthi also noted a successful effort by local officials and advocates in Los Angeles County to get about $20 million in HIV/AIDS funding restored last month, after it and similar funding nationwide was frozen by the Trump administration.

The restoration of those funds followed another letter sent to Kennedy by Rep. Laura Friedman (D-Glendale) and other House members, who cited estimates from the Foundation for AIDS Research, known as amfAR, that the nationwide cuts could lead to 127,000 additional deaths from AIDS-related causes within five years.

Garcia and Krishnamoorthi cited the same statistics in their letter.

In his interview with The Times, Garcia, who is gay, also said the LGBTQ+ community “is rightly outraged” at Kennedy’s actions to date and deserves to know if Kennedy “is using his own conspiracy theories and his own warped view of what the facts are” to dismantle public health infrastructure around HIV and AIDS that they fought for decades to build.

Cutting the County Championship from 14 games to 12 is the “only reasonable option” to protect welfare and improve standards, according to the Professional Cricketers’ Association (PCA).

A review into the structure of the domestic game, aiming to implement changes next season, is due to conclude in the coming weeks.

A reduction in the T20 Blast from the current system of two groups playing 14 games, to three groups playing 12 games, is set to be agreed.

But the future of the Championship is less clear, with a number of options on the table.

The status quo of 10 teams in the top flight and eight in the second tier could remain. The divisions could be flipped, to eight in Division One and 10 in Division Two. Either structure could include 14 or 12 games per season.

Another option would be to have a 12-team top flight, split into conferences of six, with a second tier of six teams.

The champions would be decided by a play-off between the winners of the two top-tier conferences, with one of the two promotion places from the second tier decided by a play-off between teams finishing second and third.

This system would mean 12 games for every county and a 13th for those involved in play-off matches.

The PCA prefers the conference model, but would also support the traditional divisional structure, as long as either is played over 12 games per county.

It points to research carried out among players, where 83% said the current schedule caused concern for their physical wellbeing and 67% have worries for the mental health.

“The schedule has always been a contentious issue,” said PCA chair and Warwickshire seamer Olly Hannon-Dalby.

“The feeling in recent seasons due to ever-increasing intensity of fixtures has led the game to a position where positive action has to be taken immediately and as an opportunity for the game to grow.

“A change in format of the County Championship to 12 league games is the only reasonable option and would breathe new life into what I believe would become the best red-ball competition in the world.”

Public media outlets around the country were preparing for the worst. Early Thursday morning, the worst arrived.

The U.S. Senate voted to approve the Trump White House’s proposal to claw back $9 billion in federal funding previously allocated for foreign aid and public broadcasting. The 51-48 Senate vote means that the Corp. for Public Broadcasting, which administers the funds for NPR radio stations and PBS TV affiliates, is on track to lose $1.1 billion that had been budgeted for the next two years.

The House of Representatives is expected to give final approval for the Trump administration’s request later Thursday.

The reaction from NPR was swift. The Washington, D.C.-based nonprofit has two major affiliates serving the Los Angeles area: LAist, or KPCC-FM (89.3), and KCRW-FM (89.9).

In a statement after the vote, NPR Chief Executive Katherine Maher warned of dire consequences for smaller communities that depend on public broadcasting outlets. “Nearly 3-in-4 Americans say they rely on their public radio stations for alerts and news for their public safety,” she said.”We call on the House of Representatives to reject this elimination of public media funding, which directly harms their communities and constituents, and could very well place lives at risk.”

PBS leaders sounded a similar alarm.

“These cuts will significantly impact all of our stations, but will be especially devastating to smaller stations and those serving large rural areas,” PBS President Paula Kerger said in a statement. “Many of our stations which provide access to free unique local programming and emergency alerts will now be forced to make hard decisions in the weeks and months ahead.”

PBS and NPR have both filed suit against President Trump and other administration officials over the president’s May executive order calling for the funding cutbacks. They say the order is a case of “viewpoint discrimination” driven by the White House’s unhappiness with the content of public media. Trump has called NPR and PBS government-funded “left-wing propaganda.” Republicans have for decades called for cuts to public broadcasting because of the perceived liberal slant of its programming.

Public media outlets in Southern California’s urban areas are less dependent on federal funding than stations in smaller, rural markets, which don’t get the same kinds of donations from wealthy locals, for example. But they will feel an immediate impact as the money TV and radio stations expected from Corp. for Public Broadcasting in October is now on the verge of disappearing.

Connie Leyva, executive director of KVCR Public Media in San Bernardino, which operates PBS and NPR affiliates, said earlier this week that the Senate action will mean losing $540,000, about 6% of its operating budget. Thus, she has to consider cutting five positions on an already lean staff.

In addition to serving the Inland Empire, KVCR operates a service called First Nations Experience (FNX), which produces programming for and about Native Americans and world Indigenous cultures. Such initiatives are endangered by the funding cuts.

“We just created an app, which is free to download and get Indigenous material wherever you are,” Leyva said. “But without funding, how do we continue to keep that relevant and fresh?”

Leyva said KVCR will likely have to reduce its block of PBS children’s TV programming that reaches her community through over-the-air antennas. “I heard one senator say, ‘You can have Disney or Nickelodeon,’” she said. “He doesn’t understand you have to purchase that. All of our programming is free, and these cuts harm our poor communities.”

LAist, based in Pasadena, was set to receive $1.7 million, about 4% of its annual budget. Alejandra Santamaria, president and chief executive of LAist, said the money is equivalent to 13 journalist positions at the local news operation.

“We have to make some tough choices,” Santamaria said.

Santamaria said the station has already reached out to donors to cover the expected shortfall. “We may not ever again get federal funding, so you have to fundraise the money to fill that gap in perpetuity,” she said.

Classical California, which operates radio stations KUSC-FM (91.5) in Los Angeles and KDFC-FM (90.3) in San Francisco, receive around $1 million annually in government funding. KCRW in Santa Monica, which produces tastemaking noncommercial music programs as well as news content, was expecting $264,000 from the CPB.

July 14 (UPI) — The 50% tariffs proposed by Donald Trump could cut Brazil’s gross domestic product by between 0.3 and 0.8 percentage points in 2025, according to Brazilian economists and consulting firms.

The final impact will depend on how Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva‘s administration responds and whether Brazil can redirect its exports.

Brazil’s annual export loss could range from $12 billion to $17 billion, representing 3.6% to 5% of the country’s total exports, according to Rogério Marin, CEO of Tek Trade and president of the Foreign Trade Companies Union of Santa Catarina, in comments to the Brazilian digital outlet Agricultura y Negocios.

Marin estimates an annual negative impact on GDP of between 0.6% and 0.8%.

According to XP, one of Brazil’s major investment and financial services firms, the tariffs could reduce GDP growth by 0.3 percentage points in 2025 and 0.5 percentage points in 2026, with Brazilian exports to the United States projected to fall by $6.5 billion in 2025 and $16.5 billion the following year.

Agribusiness firm FGVAgro said in a statement that the proposed 50% tariff would particularly impact the agricultural sector, which accounts for 30% of exports to the U.S. market.

“Food exports are estimated to fall by as much as 75%, which could cause a contraction of up to 0.41% in Brazil’s GDP. Domestic consumption is also projected to decline by as much as $13 billion,” the firm said.

Brazil’s National Confederation of Industry, or CNI), and other business groups have urged a diplomatic resolution. “A rupture in the relationship with the United States would cause serious harm to our economy,” said Ricardo Alban, president of the CNI, who called for “intensifying negotiations to reverse this decision.”

The American Chamber of Commerce for Brazil, Amcham Brasil, has urged avoiding a trade war, saying it “has no winners.” The group argues that the arbitrary imposition of tariffs serves neither side’s interests and instead creates uncertainty that discourages investment and economic growth.

Brazil maintains a strong trade relationship with the United States, exporting about $41 billion annually, primarily in industrial and agricultural goods. That volume represents roughly 1.7% of Brazil’s GDP.

“Brazilian industry — especially manufacturing — has broken export records to the United States in recent years, underscoring the importance of maintaining a stable trade environment,” said Marcos Santos Carena, director of the Business Observer, a consulting firm that operates in Brazil, Colombia and the United States.

The announced tariffs could significantly impact several sectors of Brazil’s economy. Experts warn that about 40% of the affected exports are manufactured goods with limited potential to be redirected to other markets.

The agricultural and agribusiness sectors could be among the hardest hit, as the United States is a key market for products such as coffee and orange juice. One-third of the coffee and half of the orange juice consumed in the United States comes from Brazil, Santos Carena said. Other agricultural exports could also be affected.

In the aerospace sector, Embraer — the Brazilian aircraft manufacturer — has been identified as one of the companies that could be hit hardest, with sharp declines in its market value. The tariffs could hurt the competitiveness of its exports to the United States.

Brazil’s steel and aluminum industries are already subject to additional tariffs, and a new 50% levy would make these exports unviable, according to industry representatives.

Although the United States accounts for a small share of Brazil’s mining exports — about 4% — the tariffs could affect sales of gold, natural stones, ornamental rocks, iron ore, kaolin and niobium.

Other exports that could be affected include engines and generators, parts for industrial machinery, data processing equipment, measuring instruments, wood and forest products — such as pulp and fiberboard — and meat.

In a meeting lasting more than four hours at the Palácio da Alvorada on Sunday, Lula convened his cabinet ministers — including those from finance, industry, agriculture, and foreign affairs — along with the Central Bank president and Senate leaders to coordinate a response to the tariffs announced by President Donald Trump.

Among the agreed measures was the creation of a committee led by Vice President Geraldo Alckmin. The group, which includes business leaders, will bring together affected sectors to develop joint proposals and advise the president before any official announcement.

The government pledged to issue a decree by Tuesday outlining legal and technical criteria for triggering countermeasures if the U.S. tariffs take effect Aug. 1, as Trump promised.

While officials have not ruled out reciprocal action, Lula’s administration said its priority is negotiation, multilateral diplomacy — through channels such as the World Trade Organization — and non-tariff solutions.