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Booking your holiday on a specific day could actually make your trip cheaper when compared to the rest of the week – and it’s good news for those who want short breaks

There’s a lot to think about when it comes to booking a holiday. Once you’ve chosen where you’d like to go, you have to consider what time of year you’d like to travel, how long you want to go for, and whether you want an all-inclusive resort holiday or want to get out and experience a new culture.

But what you might not have considered before is the exact day of the week you want to fly out. Most people will either pick the start of the week if they’ve taken time off from work, or will opt to travel on the weekend in order to squeeze a couple of extra days out of their trip.

According to one travel expert, however, travelling on specific days of the week could actually make your holiday cheaper or more expensive – and it’s not always a good idea to avoid the weekends.

A holiday expert named Rob, who is an insider for On The Beach, shared a TikTok video in which he looked through the On The Beach data for 2026 holidays and found that some days of the week are cheaper to travel on.

He stipulated that the data he looked at was specifically for couples’ holidays in 2026, but said that “it goes to show that picking the right date can save you a lot of money”.

Rob ran through the days of the week, starting with the most expensive day to travel – Wednesday.

Explaining why this is, he said: “It’s probably because midweek flights are packed with business travellers, so that pushes the price up, especially on short-haul flights. So that’s your baseline, and one to avoid if you can.”

Next, saving just 1% in comparison to Wednesday, is Tuesday, and the third most expensive day to travel is Saturday. Sunday is marginally cheaper as the middle day on the list, coming in at the fourth cheapest and fourth most expensive.

Speaking about Sunday, Rob said: “Sunday gives you about a 5% saving versus Wednesday. Not to be sniffed at, 5% can be a big difference. Hotels love a Sunday check-in, [as there are] quieter lobbies and fewer crowds, and often, because of this, [there are] lower rates. Plus, you skip the weekend airport chaos.”

The third cheapest day to travel is actually a Monday, as Rob said people “tend to hate the idea” of travelling on a Monday on a psychological level, as it reminds people of going to work.

Second place went to Thursday, as you miss out on the weekend rush, but coming in first place, and saving a whopping 13% compared to those travelling on Wednesday, is actually Friday.

While travelling on a Friday might seem like it would be expensive because it’s so popular, Rob said that’s actually why it’s cheap – as there are more flights and more package deals available.

He said: “There are more flights. Airlines put on more leisure routes because there’s more demand, which means prices get driven down. It’s also the day most hotels want you to check in, meaning more package deals, more discounts, and overall better value.”

Rob ended his video by stating that his data is “foolproof” and booking a holiday on a Friday won’t always work out cheaper, but it’s certainly worth a look if you’re planning a holiday for 2026.

From the hot tub in the Dodger Stadium clubhouse, Yoshinobu Yamamoto saw his interpreter on his way to take a shower.

Yamamoto called out to him.

“What are those colors?” Yamamoto asked him.

Yoshihiro Sonoda, 48, wore only a pair of boxers that depicted a rabbit with rainbow-colored lasers shooting out of its eyes.

Sonoda explained bashfully, “These are my shobu pantsu.”

For more than a year, Sonoda had worn shobu pantsu — or game underwear — for each one of Yamamoto’s starts.

Sonoda chuckled as he recalled the incident. Several weeks have passed since then, and the superstitious interpreter still wears his lucky boxers on days Yamamoto pitches.

When Yamamoto takes the mound for the Dodgers against the Toronto Blue Jays on Saturday in Game 2 of the World Series, beneath Sonoda’s team-issued sweatpants will be the rabbit and rainbow-colored lasers.

The kid is a little different.

Sonoda recalled thinking that last year on the first day of spring training. On a grass field near the players’ parking lot, he watched Yamamoto throw javelins as part of his workout routine.

When the Japanese right-hander was finished, Sonoda started collecting the projectiles.

Yamamoto stopped him.

“Please, you’re my interpreter,” he said. “You’re not my servant.”

Yamamoto picked up his javelins and carried them back to the clubhouse.

In the months that followed, Sonoda noticed how Yamamoto treated others. He wasn’t kind only to other players. He was also conscientious of the organization’s rank-and-file employees.

“He pretends he’s not watching, but he’s watching,” Sonoda said. “He seems like he’s not listening, but he’s listening.”

Every day the Dodgers are on the road, Yamamoto has Starbucks coffee delivered to the team hotel. He always orders something for Sonoda.

“I think Yamamoto is quite the gentleman, quite the high character,” manager Dave Roberts said. “He treats everyone from Hiro to myself to all the support staff with the highest of respect.”

Two days into the job as Yamamoto’s interpreter, Sonoda wanted to resign.

A former collegiate judo standout in Japan, Sonoda spent the previous two decades working in the entertainment industry as a lighting engineer, his credits including “Men in Black,” “The Amazing Spider-Man,” “Succession” and “Nurse Jackie.”

He had no previous experience as an interpreter and was by no means a baseball expert. He was apart from his wife, who remained in her native Texas.

“I don’t want to quit, but I can’t do this,” Sonoda told traveling secretary Scott Akasaki.

Akasaki, who was once an interpreter for Hideo Nomo, asked Sonoda to reconsider.

Dodgers pitcher Yoshinobu Yamamoto, left, speaks to reporters with his interpreter, Yoshihiro Sonoda, in a press conference before Game 1 of the 2024 NLDS against the San Diego Padres.

(Ashley Landis / Associated Press)

“You can learn about baseball if you study it,” Sonoda recalled being told by Akasaki. “But Yoshinobu chose you for a reason, and that’s something no other person has.”

Sonoda never shared his insecurities with Yamamoto, instead throwing himself head first into his work. He was taught how to interpret ball-tracking data by assistant pitching coach Connor McGuiness and performance science manager Tyler Duncan. He consulted with veteran interpreters, including Shingo Horie of the San Diego Padres and Hiro Fujiwara of the New York Mets.

Last year at World Series media day, Yamamoto was asked about Sonoda.

“We were both rookies this year,” Yamamoto said. “Sonoda-san especially, he came from a different industry and I would think he endured a lot of hardship. But he didn’t let on about that being the case.”

Standing by Yamamoto’s side, Sonoda fought back tears.

Sonoda has a small notebook in which he tracks every pitch thrown by Yamamoto. In a night game in Baltimore last month, Sonoda took notes as usual, jotting down pitches types and their locations.

Yamamoto carried a no-hitter into the ninth inning.

When there were two outs, Sonoda had Shohei Ohtani on one side of him and trainer Yosuke Nakajima on the other.

Sonoda stopped taking notes.

“I thought I should prepare to celebrate,” he said.

Jackson Holliday homered, and the no-hitter was gone.

Sonoda blamed himself.

“If only I had taken notes on that at-bat …” he said.

Sonoda was a significantly better interpreter this season than he was last season. On his commutes to Dodger Stadium, he listens to audio of Horie interpreting for Yu Darvish or Fujiwara for Kodai Senga.

Yamamoto noticed.

“His efforts in the shadows have been to where I can feel them,” Yamamoto said. “He’s a very pure and straightforward person. I think he’s really wonderful.”

Last year, Sonoda received a set of national-park-themed underwear from his wife, who knew of his affinity for the outdoors. The Yellowstone Park pair featured a roaring bear, which reminded Sonoda of Yamamoto screaming on the mound. Sonoda started wearing the boxers on days Yamamoto pitched, switching to a different pair for the next start if he lost or didn’t pitch well.

A new season called for a new set of underwear, but a stretch of inadequate run support prompted Sonoda to unretire a pair he wore on the Dodgers’ World Series run last year, the ones with the rainbow-emitting rabbit.

“I’m very superstitious,” Sonoda said.

Sonoda is also grateful.

“I think there are 14 or 15 Japanese interpreters in the majors leagues,” he said. “I feel like I’m the most blessed.”

Blessed because Akasaki talked him out of resigning. Blessed because of the baseball education he received from McGuiness and Duncan. Blessed because he has mentors such as Horie and Fujiwara. And above all, blessed because he was paired with a player whom he considers as good a person as he is a pitcher, the kind of high-character individual for whom he would wear radiant underwear in the off chance it could improve his fortune.

John Carpenter has this one recurring nightmare.

“I’m in a huge, massive town I don’t really know,” he says, “and I’m looking for the movie district. And inevitably all the theaters are closed down. They’re all closed down. That’s what the dream is.”

I’m visiting Carpenter at his longtime production house in Hollywood on one of L.A.’s unjustly sunny October afternoons. A vintage “Halloween” pinball machine and a life-size Nosferatu hover near his easy chair. I tell him I don’t think Freud would have too much trouble interpreting that particular dream.

“No, I know,” he says, laughing. “I don’t have too much trouble with that either.”

Nonetheless, it truly haunts him — “and it has haunted me over the years for many dreams in a row,” he continues. “I’m either with family or a group, and I go off to do something and I get completely lost. [Freud] wouldn’t have too much trouble figuring that out either. I mean, none of this is very mysterious.”

Carpenter is a gruff but approachable 77 these days, his career as a film director receding in the rearview. The last feature he made was 2010’s “The Ward.” His unofficial retirement was partly chosen, partly imposed by a capricious industry. The great movie poster artist Drew Struzan died two days before I visited — Carpenter says he never met Struzan but loved his work, especially his striking painting for the director’s icy 1982 creature movie “The Thing” — and I note how that whole enterprise of selling a movie with a piece of handmade art is a lost one.

“The whole movie business that I knew, that I grew up with, is gone,” he replies. “All gone.”

John Carpenter with John Mulaney, appearing as a part of “Everybody’s in L.A.” at the Sunset Gower Studios in May 2024.

(Adam Rose / Netflix)

It hasn’t, thankfully, made him want to escape from L.A. He still lives here with his wife, Sandy King, who runs the graphic novel imprint Storm King Comics, which Carpenter contributes to. He gamely appeared on John Mulaney’s “Everybody’s in L.A.” series on Netflix and, earlier this year, the Los Angeles Film Critics Assn. gave him a Career Achievement Award — a belated lovefest for a veteran who was sidelined after “The Thing” flopped, cast out into indie darkness and was never personally nominated for an Oscar.

The thing that does keep Carpenter busy these days (other than watching Warriors basketball and playing videogames) is the thing that might have an even bigger cultural footprint than his movies: his music. With his adult son Cody and godson, Daniel Davies, Carpenter is once again performing live concerts of his film scores and instrumental albums in a run at downtown’s Belasco this weekend and next.

The synthy, hypnotic scores that became his signature in films like “Halloween” and “Escape from New York” not only outnumber his output as a director — he’s scored movies for several other filmmakers and recently made a handshake deal in public to score Bong Joon Ho’s next feature — but their influence and popularity are much more evident in 2025 than the style of his image-making.

From “Stranger Things” to “F1,” Carpenter’s minimalist palette of retro electronica combined with the groove-based, trancelike ethos of his music (which now includes four “Lost Themes” records) is the coin of the realm so many modern artists are chasing.

Very few composers today are trying to sound like John Williams; many of them want to sound like John Carpenter. The Kentucky-raised skeptic with the long white hair doesn’t believe me when I express this.

“Well, see, I must be stupid,” he says, “because I don’t get it.”

“The true evil in the world comes from people,” says Carpenter. “I know that nature’s pretty rough, but not like men.

(Jason Armond / Los Angeles Times)

Carpenter is quick to put himself down. He always says that he scored his own films because he was the only composer he could afford, and that he only used synths because they were cheap and he couldn’t properly write music for an orchestra. When I tell him that Daniel Wyman, the instrumentalist who helped program and execute the “Halloween” score in 1978, praised Carpenter’s innate knowledge of the “circle of fifths” and secondary dominants — bedrocks of Western musical theory that allowed Carpenter’s scores to keep the tension cooking — he huffs.

“I have no idea what he’s talking about,” Carpenter says, halfway between self-deprecation and something more rascally. “It all comes, probably, from the years I spent in our front room with my father and listening to classical music. I’m sure I’m just digging this s— out.”

Whether by osmosis or genetics or possibly black magic, Carpenter clearly absorbed his powers from his father, Dr. Howard Carpenter, a classically trained violinist and composer. Classical music filled the childhood home in Bowling Green and for young John it was all about “Bach, Bach and Bach. He’s my favorite. I just can’t get enough of Johann there.”

It makes sense. Bach’s music has a circular spell quality and the pipe organ, resounding with reverb in gargantuan cathedrals, was the original synthesizer.

“He’s the Rock of Ages of music,” says Carpenter, who particularly loves the fugue nicknamed “St. Anne” and the Toccata and Fugue in D Minor. “Everybody would go back to Mozart or Beethoven. They are astonishing — Beethoven is especially astonishing — but they’re not my style. I don’t feel it like I do with Bach. I immediately got him.”

Carpenter was also a film score freak since Day 1. He cites the early electronic music in 1956’s “Forbidden Planet” and claims Bernard Herrmann and Dimitri Tiomkin as his two all-time favorites. Just listen, he says, to the way Tiomkin’s music transitions from the westerny fanfare under the Winchester Pictures logo to the swirling, menacing orchestral storm that accompanies “The Thing From Another World” title card in that 1951 sci-fi picture that Carpenter remixed as “The Thing.”

“The music is so weird, I cannot follow it,” he says. “But I love it.”

Yet Carpenter feels more personally indebted to rock ‘n’ roll: the Beatles, the Stones, the Doors. He wanted to be a rock star ever since he grew his hair long and bought a guitar in high school. He sang and performed R&B and psychedelic rock for sororities on the Western Kentucky campus as well as on a tour of the U.S. Army bases in Germany. He formed the rock trio Coupe de Villes with his buddies at USC and they made an album and played wrap parties.

He also kept soaking up contemporary influences, listening to Warren Zevon’s “Werewolves of London” while location scouting for “Halloween.” Peter Fonda later introduced Carpenter to Zevon and he wanted the director to adapt the song into a film that never happened (starring Fonda as the werewolf, but “this time he gets the girl,” Carpenter recalls). In the ’80s he blasted Metallica with his two boys and he still loves Devo.

It’s incredibly rare for a film director to score their own films, rarer still for one to spend decades on stage as a performing musician. The requisite personalities would seem diametrical.

“My dad was a performing musician, so it was just part of the family,” Carpenter says. However, until 2016, when Carpenter first toured with his music, he was consumed with stage fright. “I had an incident when I was in a play in high school,” he says. “I went up and I forgot my lines. Shame descended upon me and I had a tough time. I was scared all the time.”

The director credits his touring drummer, Scott Seiver, for helping him beat it.

“Your adrenaline carries you to another planet when that thing starts,” he sighs with pleasure. “You hear a wall of screaming people. It’s a big time.”

He pushes back against the idea that directors “hide behind the camera.”

“The pressure, that’s the biggest thing,” Carpenter says. “You put yourself under pressure from the studio, you’re carrying all this money, crew, you want to be on time.”

He remembers seeing some haggard making-of footage of himself in post-production on “Ghost of Mars” in 2001 and thinking: Oh my God, this guy is in trouble. “I had to stop,” he says. “I can’t do this to myself anymore. I can’t take this kind of stress — it’ll kill you, as it has so many other directors. The music came along and it’s from God. It’s a blessing.”

John Carpenter is grateful but he doesn’t believe in God. He believes that, when we die, “we just disperse — our energy disperses, and we return to what we were. We’re all stardust up there and the darkness created us, in a sense. So that’s what we have to make peace with. I point up to the infinite, the space between stars. But things stop when you die. Your heart stops, brain — everything stops. You get cold. Your energy dissipates and it just… ends. The End.”

This is not exactly a peaceful thought for him.

“I mean, I don’t want to die,” he adds. “I’m not looking forward to that. But what can you do? I can’t control it. But that’s what I believe and I’m alone in it. I can’t put that on anybody else. Everybody has their own beliefs, their own gods, their own afterlife.”

He describes himself as a “long-term optimist but a short-term pessimist.”

“I have hope,” he says, “put it that way.” Yet he looks around and sees a lot of evil.

“The true evil in the world comes from people,” says Carpenter, who has long used cinematic allegories to skewer capitalist pigs and bloodthirsty governments. “I know that nature’s pretty rough, but not like men. You see pictures of lions taking down their prey and you see the face of the prey and you say: ‘Oh, man.’ Humans do things like that and enjoy it. Or they do things like that for power or pleasure. Humans are evil but they’re capable of massive good — and they’re capable of the greatest art form we have: music.”

The greatest?

“You don’t have to talk about it. You just sit and listen to it. It’s not my favorite,” he clarifies, alluding to his first love, cinema — “but it’s the one that transcends centuries.”

Music has always been kinder to him than the movie business. That business recently reared its ugly head when A24 tossed his completed score for “Death of a Unicorn.” (At least he owns the rights and will be putting it out sometime soon.) In addition to the high he gets from playing live, he is currently working on a heavy metal concept album complete with dialogue. It’s called “Cathedral” and he’ll be playing some of it at the Belasco.

It’s essentially a movie in music form, based on a dream Carpenter had. Though not one he finds scary. What scares Carpenter, it seems, is not being in control.

That happened to him in the movie world, it’s happening more and more as what he calls the “frailties of age” mount and it happens in that nightmare about getting lost in a big city and not finding any theaters.

“But I can’t do anything about it,” he says. “What can I do? See, the only thing I can do is what I can control: music. And watching basketball.”

Here are the key events from day 1,337 of Russia’s war on Ukraine.

Here is how things stand on Thursday, October 23, 2025:

Fighting

• Russia’s Ministry of Defence said its forces captured the village of Pavlivka in Ukraine’s southeastern Zaporizhia region, as well as Ivanivka village in the Dnipropetrovsk region. The ministry also said it struck Ukrainian energy infrastructure in what it claimed was a response to Ukrainian attacks on Russian civilian targets.
• Russian attacks throughout Ukraine on Wednesday killed six people, including two children, and forced nationwide power outages, Ukrainian officials said.
• Ukraine’s air force said Russia launched 405 drones and 28 missiles at Ukraine in an overnight attack targeting energy infrastructure. Ukraine downed 16 Russian missiles and 333 drones, while other missiles eluded defences and directly hit targets, the air force said.
• Ukrainian Energy Minister Svitlana Hrynchuk said Russia is implementing a methodical campaign to destroy Ukraine’s energy system and is targeting repair teams working at energy facilities with secondary attacks after initial strikes.
• Russian drones attacked Kyiv for a second night on Wednesday, injuring four people, Tymur Tkachenko, head of the city’s military administration, said early on Thursday. Tkachenko said drones damaged several dwellings and other buildings, including a kindergarten.
• Ukraine’s military said it struck a weapons and ammunition plant in the Russian region of Mordovia and an oil refinery in Dagestan in overnight attacks.
• Russian Vice Admiral Vladimir Tsimlyansky said Russia’s army would seek to use reservists to defend civilian infrastructure such as oil refineries after a sharp rise in Ukrainian drone attacks deep into the country over recent months.
• Russian President Vladimir Putin oversaw a test of Russia’s nuclear forces on land, sea and air to rehearse their readiness and command structure, according to reports. The test included the launch of a land-based Yars intercontinental ballistic missile, the launch of a Sineva ballistic missile from a nuclear submarine in the Barents Sea, and the launch of nuclear-capable cruise missiles from strategic bombers.

Sanctions

• United States President Donald Trump imposed Ukraine-related sanctions on Russia for the first time in his second term, targeting oil companies Lukoil and Rosneft as his frustration grows with President Putin over the failure to implement a ceasefire.
• The US Department of the Treasury said it was prepared to take further action and called on Moscow to agree immediately to a ceasefire in its war in Ukraine.
• “Given President Putin’s refusal to end this senseless war, Treasury is sanctioning Russia’s two largest oil companies that fund the Kremlin’s war machine,” US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said in a statement. “We encourage our allies to join us in and adhere to these sanctions.”
• Trump also said he expected to reach a trade agreement with Chinese President Xi Jinping, adding that he would raise concerns about China’s purchases of Russian oil during their meeting in South Korea next week.
• European Union countries also approved a 19th package of sanctions on Moscow that includes a ban on Russian liquefied natural gas (LNG) imports.
• The LNG ban will take effect in two stages: Short-term contracts will end after six months, and long-term contracts from January 1, 2027.
• Britain has issued a special licence allowing businesses to work with two German subsidiaries of the sanctioned Russian oil giant Rosneft, as they are under German state control. Last week, Britain announced new sanctions against Rosneft and Lukoil, Russia’s two largest oil firms, accusing them of helping fund the Kremlin’s invasion of Ukraine.
• Ukraine is urging European countries not to limit its use of a proposed $163bn loan based on frozen Russian state assets, arguing that it needs to be able to buy non-European arms, repair war damage from Russian attacks and compensate victims. Some EU states have suggested the funds be spent mainly on European-made weapons to boost their defence industries.
• Russia has no plans to seize any European assets, including companies and banks, but will consider its position if the EU confiscates frozen Russian sovereign assets, Russian Deputy Finance Minister Alexey Moiseev said.

Ceasefire talks

• President Trump said he cancelled a planned summit with President Putin due to a lack of progress in diplomatic efforts to reach peace in Ukraine and a sense that the timing was off.
• “We cancelled the meeting with President Putin – it just didn’t feel right to me,” Trump told reporters at the White House. “It didn’t feel like we were going to get to the place we have to get. So I cancelled it, but we’ll do it in the future,” Trump said.
• Trump also expressed frustration with the stalled negotiations, saying, “Every time I speak with Vladimir, I have good conversations, and then they don’t go anywhere. They just don’t go anywhere”.
• Ukraine’s President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said Trump’s call for Ukraine and Russia to freeze the war at its current front lines was “a good compromise”, but he doubted that Putin would support it.

Military and financial aid

• Trump said a news report on the US giving approval for Ukraine to use long-range missiles deep into Russia was false, adding the US “has nothing to do with those missiles”.
• Sweden has signed a letter of intent that could see it supply up to 150 of its domestically produced Gripen fighter jets to Ukraine, Swedish Prime Minister Ulf Kristersson said after meeting President Zelenskyy.
• Zelenskyy said Ukraine aims to receive and start using Swedish Gripen jets next year. “For our army, Gripens are a priority. It is about money, about manoeuvres,” he said.
• Norway is donating another 1.5 billion Norwegian crowns ($149.4m) to Ukraine for the purchase of natural gas to secure electricity and heating, the Norwegian government said.

Netflix on Tuesday said its third-quarter revenue jumped 17% to $11.5 billion, powered by the hit animated film “KPop Demon Hunters.”

The Los Gatos-based streamer reported a net income of $2.5 billion during the third quarter, up 8% from the same period a year ago but well below the $3 billion analysts had projected, according to FactSet.

Revenue was in line with analyst estimates and was boosted by increased subscriptions, pricing adjustments and more ad revenue.

The company said it incurred a $619-million expense related to a dispute with Brazilian tax authorities.

“Absent this expense, we would have exceeded our Q3’25 operating margin forecast,” Netflix said in a letter to shareholders on Tuesday. “We don’t expect this matter to have a material impact on future results.”

Netflix shares, which closed Tuesday at $1,241.35, fell 5% in after-hours trading.

As it continues to dominate the streaming market with more than 301 million subscribers, Netflix has been investing in a diverse slate of content, including new movies rolling out in the fourth quarter such as Guillermo del Toro’s “Frankenstein,” as well as the final season of sci-fi hit “Stranger Things” and family-friendly games for the TV such as Boggle.

“KPop Demon Hunters” has garnered more than 325 million views in its first 91 days on the service. The movie, about a trio of powerful singers who hunt demons, was released in June.

It bested 2021 action film “Red Notice,” which had been previously its most watched film in its first 91 days on Netflix with 230.9 million views.

On Tuesday, Netflix also announced a licensing deal with toymakers Hasbro Inc. and Mattel Inc. to make toys including dolls, action figures, youth electronics and other items related to “KPop Demon Hunters.”

Popular TV shows launched in the third quarter include the second season of the Addams family spinoff series “Wednesday” and the second season of drama “My Life With the Walter Boys.”

“When you have a hit the size of ‘KPop Demon Hunters,’ it stirs the imagination of where you can take this,” said Ted Sarandos, co-chief executive of Netflix, in an earnings presentation.

He said the film benefited from Netflix’s platform, allowing superfans to repeat view it and make it appealing for audiences to watch in theaters as well. “We believe this film, ‘KPop Demon Hunters,’ actually worked because it was released on Netflix first,” Sarandos added.

The company said in the fourth quarter it expects revenue to grow another 17% due to growth in subscriptions, pricing and ad revenue.

For the full year, Netflix is forecasting revenue of $45.1 billion, up 16%, and said it is on track to more than double it ad revenue in 2025.

Like other entertainment companies, Netflix has been taking steps to diversify its business in a challenging landscape, as production costs for TV and movies increases and studios consolidate.

“With entertainment industry employment becoming more precarious, Netflix is slyly pivoting its content strategy to rely more on live sports, YouTubers, creators and podcasters,” said Ross Benes, a senior analyst with research firm Emarketer in a statement.

But some investors still remain skeptical about the future of subscription streaming services, as the technology behind video generation tools powered by AI get more sophisticated, making it easier to replicate visual effects and customize content to viewers.

“Netflix’s core lay-back easy-to-watch scripted content is potentially most at risk by the emergence of generative AI compared to peers,” said John Conca, analyst with investment research firm Third Bridge. “Netflix will need to channel its earlier days and find a way to remain nimble, even though it’s now the 800-pound gorilla in this space to deal with this threat.”

On Tuesday, Netflix said it is using generative AI to improve the quality of its recommendations and content discovery on its platform. Creators on Netflix are also using AI tools for their projects, including filmmakers for comedy “Happy Gilmore 2” using generative AI and volumetric capture technology to de-age characters.

Here are the key events from day 1,336 of Russia’s war on Ukraine.

Here is how things stand on Wednesday, October 22, 2025:

Fighting

• A “massive” Russian attack killed four people and injured seven in the town of Novhorod-Siverskyi, in Ukraine’s Chernihiv region, Governor Viacheslav Chaus wrote in a post on Telegram.
• Chaus said that Russian forces launched about 20 Shahed drones in the attack and that there was “a lot of destruction in the city”.
• Russian attacks killed two people and injured one person in the city of Kostiantynivka in Ukraine’s Donetsk region, the head of the Kostiantynivka City Military Administration, Serhii Horbunov, wrote in a post on Facebook.
• A Russian drone attack injured nine people in Ukraine’s Sumy region, Governor Oleh Hryhorov said.
• A Ukrainian attack killed one person and injured five in settlements in a Russian-occupied part of the Kherson region in southern Ukraine, the Russian-installed governor, Vladimir Saldo, said.
• A Ukrainian drone attack killed one person in the village of Novostroyevka-Pervaya in Russia’s Belgorod Region, Russia’s state TASS news agency reported, citing regional authorities.
• Russian attacks on energy facilities left hundreds of thousands of Ukrainians without electricity in Ukraine’s Chernihiv region, the Ministry of Energy of Ukraine said on Tuesday.
• More than 1,000 people were left without electricity due to a Ukrainian attack on the Kamianka-Dniprovska area of the Russian-occupied Ukrainian Zaporizhia region, TASS reported, citing local officials.
• Ukrainian forces struck the Bryansk chemical plant in Russia, Ukraine’s General Staff said in a post on Facebook, adding that the “outcome of the strike is being assessed”.

Politics and diplomacy

• A senior White House official told Al Jazeera that “there are no plans for [US President Donald] President Trump to meet with Russian President Vladimir Putin in the immediate future”, days after Trump suggested a meeting could take place in Hungary “within two weeks or so”.
• Speaking to reporters in the Oval Office, Trump said of developments: “I don’t want to have a wasted meeting… I don’t want to have a waste of time, so I’ll see what happens.”
• Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov also implied that any potential meeting could take time, saying “preparation is needed, serious preparation”.

• However, Putin’s special envoy for investment and economic cooperation, Kirill Dmitriev, said on X late on Tuesday that the “media is twisting comment about the ‘immediate future’ to undercut the upcoming Summit”, adding that “preparations continue” for the meeting between Trump and Putin.

Media is twisting comment about the “immediate future” to undercut the upcoming Summit. Preparations continue. 🕊️🇷🇺🤝🇺🇸

👇https://t.co/lb81a3Tdxo https://t.co/RYrJI6yONs

— Kirill Dmitriev (@kadmitriev) October 21, 2025

• Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said in his nightly address that Moscow’s dwindling interest in the presidential meeting came after the US appeared to back away from considering supplying long-range Tomahawk missiles to Ukraine.
• “As soon as the issue of long-range mobility became a little further away for us – for Ukraine – Russia almost automatically became less interested in diplomacy,” Zelenskyy said.

Regional Security

• A man who shot and wounded Slovak Prime Minister Robert Fico last year has been found guilty of terrorism charges and handed a 21-year jail sentence. The shooter said he opposed the approach taken towards Ukraine by Fico, who ended state military assistance to Ukraine and sought closer ties with Moscow.

In a continuing crackdown by the Southern Section against against students and parents who are supplying inaccurate information on transfer paperwork, Orange Lutheran High announced Tuesday that it has declared a football player ineligible and will forfeit its first two games of the season. The school self-reported the violation after an investigation that lasted for weeks.

More than 40 students this fall have been given penalties of two years without being able to play for violating CIF rule 202, which involves providing false information. In September, the Southern Section disqualified 19 players from the Bishop Montgomery football program for a total of 24. The school canceled its varsity season.

Players at Long Beach Millikan, Long Beach Poly, Compton, Victor Valley and Bellflower have also been hit with two-year penalties.

The Orange Lutheran student will be ineligible only until next season because the transfer did not submit fraudulent paperwork.

The Southern Section has deployed new investigative techniques to checker transfer paperwork submitted by schools.

Orange Lutheran principal Jack Preus and football coach Rod Sherman informed players and parents on Tuesday. Preus said as a result of this experience, his school will institute a “more rigorous process” of reviewing bills and visiting homes of transfer students before sending in paperwork for a valid change of residence.

Schools have started to submit transfer paperwork for basketball players, with the season beginning on Nov. 17, and that will be a good indication whether athletic directors and parents have learned lessons from what has been happening to football players.

A big change is that the Southern Section has been declaring players ineligible after accepting a school’s decision declaring the athlete eligible with a valid change of residence. If additional information becomes available, whether the student was cleared for a valid change of residence, they can be switched to ineligible. Same with students cleared after sit-out period athletes.

“We’re going to be different and do it right,” Sherman said.

Southern Section commissioner Mike West said last month, “We’ve had a real influx of fraudulent paperwork. It’s been significant and very disheartening.”

Orange Lutheran drops to 2-6 overall but is still considered a likely Division 1 playoff participant with its strength of schedule. It forfeited wins to Miami Northwestern and Rancho Cucamonga.

WHILE the UK threatens to be a washout, we’ve found the place in the Mediterranean least likely to have rain in October.

The place in question is the Algarve in Portugal, and the best news is that Brits can be there in less than three hours and flights cost as little as £15 for a one-way ticket, even during half-term.

The Algarve in Portugal is the driest place in the country thanks to its Mediterranean climate that’s influenced by dry winds from the northeast and hot air from the Sahara.

During October temperatures in the Algarve range from 15C all the way to 23C.

The southern spot has between seven and eight hours of sunshine a day on average, throughout the month.

Next week, during October half-term, Brits can fly to Faro, also known as the ‘gateway of the Algarve’ from Birmingham, Liverpool, Bristol, Newcastle, London Stansted and Glasgow from £15 with Ryanair.

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Albufeira

One of the most well-known spots in the region is the coastal city of Albufeira with sandy beaches and a lively nightlife strip.

Believe it or not, Albufeira was a former fishing village, and despite all the built up areas, there’s still an old town to explore.

Some of the best beaches are Praia dos Pescadores’, also known as Fisherman’s Beach, and Praia da Falésia.

There’s also a busy marina, and visitors can take boat trips out for dolphin-watching and exploring the Benagil Caves.

Albufeira is popular with tourists, but that’s not necessarily a bad thing as you’ll find plenty of hotels, waterparks, restaurants and bars.

However, if you’re looking to escape the tourist traps one local suggested heading just outside of Albufeira to the fishing village of Olhos de Água.

Angela Antor, who is a watermelon farmer told Sun Travel: “There you can enjoy a nice evening drink and watch the sun go down whilst the fisherman take to the sea.

“And in the traditional village of Ferragudo you can enjoy the catch of the day in riverside restaurants straight from the fishing boats.”

Faro

Faro is the capital of southern Portugal’s Algarve and is considered the ‘gateway’ region.

Deputy Travel Editor Kara Godfrey visited Faro, and discovered very few tourists. She added: “Most people skip Faro to head further into the Algarve.

“But there are some fantastic islands just off the coast where you will see barely any tourists. Ilha Deserta, also known as Barreta, takes just 20 minutes by boat, with tickets a few euros.

“Some call it the Caribbean of Portugal – something I agree with thanks to its golden sandy beaches. There is nothing on the island apart from the fabulous restaurant Estamine – a must visit serving up locally caught food”.

Other highlights in Faro include the 18th-century Capela Dos Ossos on Largo do Carmo within the walled city.

Translated as the Chapel of Bones, the ancient walls are decorated with pieces from over 1,250 human skeletons.

As for the best beach, Kara said: “Praia de Faro, on the island Ilha de Faro, is considered the best beach in the Faro region by locals, but few tourists have heard of it.

“The gold sands stretch for five kilometres with views of the sea on one side and a natural park on the other.”

Lagos

Lagos has become one of the most visited cities in the Algarve, mostly thanks to the number of tourist-friendly beaches.

Some of the most popular are Praia de Dona Ana, Ponta da Piedade and Praia do Camilo.

Sun Travel chatted to some locals about the Algarve and Ana Veiga, travel and food writer and the co-founder of We Travel Portugal, said: “Lagos is a brilliant town that has long attracted surfers to the west Algarve, but recently has become a prime destination for visitors of all types.

“It has incredible hiking trails, water and beach sports, and a historic old town to explore, plus its proximity to the west Algarve is great for explorers that want to see the wild coastline with cliffs and big waves.”   

Salem Haire, who lives in Lagos, said: “Pomò La Pasta Italiana has the best Italian food – people will wait more than two hours to eat there (speciality mains from €19), and there’s a local Portuguese kitchen called Tasca de Lota that’s my personal favourite (mains from €11 and bottles of wine from €13).

“Also in Lagos, Go Bao has delicious bao buns for those who are tired of Portuguese food (buns from €5), and Gelicia has amazing Italian gelato, with vegan and gluten free options too.”

Portimao 

Portimão is the second-largest city in the Algarve so there’s plenty to explore, like beaches such as Praia da Rocha – a lively resort town.

It’s known for having a vast sandy beach with water sports, as well as lots of restaurants and bars.

Inês Tito, a Portugal and Algarve trip planner, said: “Portimão, near the Praia De Rocha, is the perfect place for beach holidays. There are plenty of accommodation options, some only a few steps from the beach, so you won’t have any issue in finding a place to stay.

As for places to stay, Inês said: “Or the Bela Vista Hotel & Spa – Relais & Châteaux in Portimão is a beautiful boutique hotel set in a 19th palace overlooking Praia da Rocha.”

Silves

Silves doesn’t have beaches as it’s inland, but there’s still plenty to do, and last year it was named one of the cheapest places to visit.

The city used to be the capital of the Algarve, and it’s around an hour away from Faro.

It’s a great place for an affordable break, with the average price of a hotel being around £73, while a beer can cost as little as £2.50.

In Silves, you’ll find cobbled streets with independent shops selling gifts, and ceramics, and plenty of cafes.

Compared to the other destinations in the Algarve, Silves is likely to be quieter than the others.

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Here are the key events from day 1,335 of Russia’s war on Ukraine.

Here is how things stand on Tuesday, October 21, 2025:

Fighting

• Russian forces launched several attacks on Ukraine’s Kherson region, killing one person and injuring three others, the Kherson Regional State Administration wrote in a post on Telegram.

• A Russian attack on the Ukrainian border region of Chernihiv cut off power to parts of northern Ukraine, including the main town outside the decommissioned Chernobyl nuclear power station, officials said, according to the Reuters news agency.

• The 7th Corps of Ukraine’s Air Assault Forces reported in a post on Facebook that a Russian assault group killed several Ukrainians during an attack on the Ukrainian city of Pokrovsk in recent days, without providing further details of the number of people killed or when the attack occurred.
• Russian forces launched an attack on a coal enrichment plan in Ukraine’s Dnipropetrovsk region, private Ukrainian energy company DTEK wrote in a post on Telegram.
• In the Russian border region of Belgorod, two people were killed in a Ukrainian drone attack on the village of Yasnye Zori, Governor Vyacheslav Gladkov wrote in a post on Telegram.

Politics and diplomacy

• Speaking at the White House on Monday, United States President Donald Trump said of Ukrainians’ prospects in the war: “They could still win it”, but added, “I don’t think they will”.
• US Secretary of State Marco Rubio spoke with Russian Minister of Foreign Affairs Sergey Lavrov, and discussed “advancing a durable resolution to the Russia-Ukraine war, in line with Trump’s vision,” according a summary of the call released by the US State Department.
• Russian lawmakers have drafted a law mandating life imprisonment for anyone involving minors in sabotage and lowering the threshold for criminal responsibility for such crimes to 14 years old, citing rising threats from Ukraine and NATO countries.

Budapest talks

• French President Emmanuel Macron told reporters in Slovenia that Ukraine and European countries should be included in upcoming talks between Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin in Hungary.
• “From the moment they discuss the fate of Ukraine, the Ukrainians should be at the table. From the moment they discuss what impacts the security of Europeans, the Europeans should be at the table,” Macron said.
• Macron also said that Ukraine’s allies, known as “the coalition of the willing”, are planning their own meeting in London on Friday, with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy present.
• Speaking to reporters on Monday, Zelenskyy said he is hoping to be invited to Budapest, whether the invitation is “in a format where we meet as three or, as it’s called, shuttle diplomacy”.

Weapons

• Zelenskyy said that his country is still “working with the United States” to secure “the necessary number of Patriot systems”, saying that he spoke with weapons companies on a recent visit to Washington, DC, and that support is needed at the “political level in Washington”.

PARIS — The Louvre remained closed Monday, a day after historic jewels were stolen from the world’s most-visited museum in a daring daylight heist that prompted authorities to reassess security measures at cultural sites across France.

The museum’s staff asked dozens of visitors who were queuing in front of the glass pyramid entrance to leave. In a message posted on social media, the Louvre said visitors who have booked tickets will be refunded. It did not provide additional details.

On Sunday, thieves rode a basket lift up the Louvre’s facade, forced a window, smashed display cases and fled with priceless Napoleonic jewels, officials said. The theft occurred about 30 minutes after the museum opened, with visitors already inside, and was among the highest-profile museum thefts in living memory.

It unfolded just 270 yards from the Mona Lisa, in what Culture Minister Rachida Dati described as a professional operation that lasted just a few minutes.

French Justice Minister Gerald Darmanin acknowledged security failures on Monday.

“One can wonder about the fact that, for example, the windows hadn’t been secured, about the fact that a basket lift was on a public road,” he said on France Inter radio. “Having (previously) been interior minister, I know that we cannot completely secure all places, but what is certain is that we have failed.”

Interior Minister Laurent Nunez ordered prefects across France to immediately reassess security measures protecting museums and other cultural sites and enhance them if needed.

Culture Minister Rachida Dati said investigators are working on evidence found at the scene.

“We did find motorcycles and they have a license plate,” Dati said on news broadcaster CNews. “I also want to pay tribute to the security officers who prevented the basket lift from being set on fire. One of the criminals tried to set it on fire, but they forced him to flee. This allowed us to recover evidence at the scene.”

Officials said the heist lasted less than eight minutes in total, including less than four minutes inside the Louvre. “They went straight to the display windows, they knew exactly what they wanted. They were very efficient.” Dati said.

Dati stressed that a decade-long “Louvre New Renaissance” plan that was launched earlier this year includes security improvements.

“When the Louvre Museum was designed, it was not meant to accommodate 10 million visitors,” she said.

The $760-million plan is intended to modernize infrastructure, ease crowding and give the Mona Lisa a dedicated gallery by 2031.

Sunday’s theft focused on the gilded Apollo Gallery, where the Crown Diamonds are displayed. Alarms brought Louvre agents to the room, forcing the intruders to bolt, but the robbery was already over.

A worker in the Louvre filmed a person in the Apollo Gallery on Sunday morning wearing a yellow jacket and standing by a glass encasing, according to video viewed and verified by BFM television. It is unclear whether the person is one of the suspects.

Eight objects were taken, according to officials: a sapphire diadem, necklace and single earring from a matching set linked to 19th-century French queens Marie-Amélie and Hortense; an emerald necklace and earrings from the matching set of Empress Marie-Louise, Napoleon Bonaparte’s second wife; a reliquary brooch; and Empress Eugénie’s diadem and her large corsage-bow brooch, a prized 19th-century imperial ensemble.

One object, the emerald-set imperial crown of Napoleon III’s wife, Empress Eugénie, containing more than 1,300 diamonds, was later found outside the museum, French authorities said.

Corbet writes for the Associated Press.

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Ukraine attacks Russian gas processing plant as Zelenskyy calls for more international pressure on Putin.

Here is how things stand on Monday, October 20, 2025:

Fighting

• The General Staff of Ukraine’s Armed Forces said in a post on Facebook that it struck a gas processing plant in Russia’s Orenburg region, causing explosions and “a large-scale fire”.
• Kazakhstan’s Ministry of Energy said that the Orenburg gas processing plant, the largest facility of its kind in the world, had been forced to suspend its intake of gas from Kazakhstan following the Ukrainian drone attack.
• Orenburg Governor Yevgeny Solntsev had said earlier on Sunday that the plant, which is run by state-owned gas giant Gazprom, had been partially damaged, and that the drone attack caused a fire at a workshop at the facility. The blaze was later put out, Russian media outlet Kommersant reported, citing the operator.
• Ukraine’s General Staff also said that its forces hit the Novokuybyshevsk oil refinery in Russia’s Samara region.
• Russian forces launched a “massive” attack on a coal mine in Ukraine’s Dnipropetrovsk region, private Ukrainian energy company DTEK wrote in a post on Telegram, adding that 192 mineworkers, who were underground during the incident, were being evacuated.
• Russia’s Ministry of Defence said it shot down 323 Ukrainian drones, two guided bombs, and three rocket launchers in a 24-hour period, according to Russia’s state TASS news agency.
• Russia launched more than 3,270 attack drones, 1,370 guided aerial bombs, and nearly 50 missiles against Ukraine in the past week, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy wrote in a post on Facebook.

Politics and diplomacy

• United States President Donald Trump pressed Zelenskyy to give up territory to Russia during a White House meeting on Friday that left the Ukrainian delegation disappointed, Reuters reported, citing two unidentified officials.
• The Financial Times also reported that the meeting was tense, saying that Trump told Zelenskyy that Russian President Vladimir Putin would “destroy” Ukraine if Kyiv did not accept Moscow’s terms for ending the war.
• Polish President Donald Tusk wrote on X on Sunday that “none of us should put pressure on Zelenskyy when it comes to territorial concessions”.
• Zelenskyy told NBC that more pressure is needed on Putin, since the Russian leader is “more strong than Hamas”.
• The Ukrainian president also said that he should be included in upcoming talks between Putin and Trump in Hungary.
• In an interview on Fox News on Sunday morning, Trump again indicated that he was not willing to send more arms to Ukraine, saying: “We have to remember one thing. We need them for ourselves too. You know, we can’t give all of our weapons to Ukraine.”
• Germany’s Federal Foreign Office announced that it was temporarily recalling its envoy to Georgia, saying in a post on X that the country’s “leadership has for months been agitating against the EU, Germany and the German ambassador personally”.

A theme of Celtic’s season has been Rodgers bemoaning their transfer business and a perceived lack of quality brought into the club.

He has regularly been asked about and pointed out the goals that have been taken out of his squad with the sales of Kyogo Furuhashi last January and Nicolas Kuhn in the summer, in addition to Jota’s long-term injury absence.

Sebastian Tounekti and Michel-Ange Balikwisha arrived to bolster Rodgers’ attacking options after they had already been dumped out of Champions League qualifying by Kazakh champions Kairat, while Kelechi Iheanacho arrived on a free after the window had closed.

And after they failed to fire in attack once again, Rodgers appeared to criticise the quality within his squad.

“I think the challenge from the summer, now leading into here, where we lost a lot of firepower, a lot of goals out on the team,” he said.

“And there’s no way you’ll go into a race and be given the keys to a Honda Civic and say, ‘I want you to drive it like a Ferrari’. It’s not going to happen.”

He insists it is up to him to find “solutions” to their goal-scoring issues, be it through changes to personnel or formation.

“Until something changes, I have to find the solutions,” he added.

“Because like I said, goals, speed, everything has come out of the team and we need to find a way to be better.

“We had the opportunities to do what we needed to do. It didn’t happen, so now it’s finding ways, whether it’s 4-3-3, whether it’s 3-4-3, whether it’s 3-5-2. We’re trying to look at all these different permutations within the team.”

Oct. 19 (UPI) — On this date in history:

In 1781, Britain’s Lord Charles Cornwallis surrendered with more than 7,000 troops to Gen. George Washington at Yorktown, Va., effectively ending the American War of Independence and guaranteeing the colonialists freedom from the crown.

In 1789, John Jay, one of the founding fathers and president of the Continental Congress, was sworn in as first chief justice of the Supreme Court of the United States.

In 1812, Napoleon’s beaten French army began its long, disastrous retreat from Moscow.

In 1964, under the leadership of new Communist Party Chief Leonid Brezhnev, the Kremlin moved toward patching up its grievances with Red China.

File Photo by Frank Cancellare/UPI

In 1973, the Israeli military was pitched in a two-front battle against Arab forces, in the south against Egypt, and in the north against the armies of Syria, Iraq and Jordan. Subsequently, Saudi Arabia threatened a total cutoff of oil shipments to the United States unless they halted all military aid to Israel. This standoff would lead to the 1973 oil crisis.

In 1982, carmaker John DeLorean was arrested in Los Angeles and charged in a $24 million cocaine scheme aimed at salvaging his bankrupt sports car company. He was tried and acquitted.

File Photo by Phil McCarten/UPI

In 1987, U.S. Navy ships bombarded an Iranian oil platform in retaliation for a missile attack on a U.S.-flagged ship and Iran threatened a “crushing response,” warning the United States “has got itself into a full-fledged war.”

In 1994, a terrorist bombing killed more than 20 people on a bus in Tel Aviv, Israel.

In 2003, Pope John Paul II beatified Mother Teresa before hundreds of thousands of pilgrims packed into St. Peter’s Square in Vatican City. This was the last formal step before her sainthood in 2015.

In 2009, the U.S. government announced it would no longer prosecute people who use or sell marijuana for medicinal purposes if they are complying with state laws.

In 2013, a violin played by the musical conductor of the Titanic as the ship sank after hitting an iceberg in the North Atlantic in 1912 sold for more than $1.7 million at an auction in London.

In 2024, the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame inducted Cher, Mary J. Blige, Ozzy Osbourne, the Dave Matthews Band, Foreigner, Peter Frampton, Kool & the Gang and A Tribe Called Quest.

File Photo by Rocco Spaziani/UPI

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Here are the key events from day 1,333 of Russia’s war on Ukraine.

Here is how things stand on Sunday, October 19, 2025:

Fighting

• Russia’s Ministry of Defence claimed that its forces captured the village of Pleshchiivka in the Donetsk region in eastern Ukraine. There was no immediate reaction from Ukraine on the latest claim of territorial gain by Moscow.

• The Russian Defence Ministry had earlier announced the capture of one village in the Dnipropetrovsk region and two in the northeastern Kharkiv region, closer to the Russian border.

• Two internally-displaced people were killed in a Ukrainian drone attack on a Russian-occupied part of the Kherson region in southern Ukraine, the Russian-installed regional governor, Vladimir Saldo, said on the Telegram messaging platform.

• Three people were killed and five others injured following an explosion at an industrial plant related to weapons production in the southwest Russian city of Sterlitamak, Radiy Khabirov, the governor of Bashkortostan, said in a statement on Telegram.

• The chief of the United Nations nuclear watchdog, Rafael Grossi, announced on X that repairs have begun on damaged power lines at Ukraine’s Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant. Authorities had warned that a four-week outage of power at the plant was endangering the safety of the Russian-controlled facility, which needs power to ensure that reactors are kept cool to avoid a dangerous meltdown.

Politics and diplomacy

• Austria’s Federal Ministry for European and International Affairs announced that it is supporting the European Union’s decision to impose new sanctions against Russia, which require a unanimous vote and have been stymied due to Vienna’s earlier opposition to the plan.

• Ukrainians said they were disappointed that the United States may not provide Kyiv with long-range Tomahawk missiles, the Associated Press news agency reported, after Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy met with US President Donald Trump in Washington, DC, on Friday.

Regional security

• Exiled Belarusian opposition leader Sviatlana Tsikhanouskaya on Saturday urged Trump to step up efforts to support democracy in her country, arguing that a free Belarus was in Washington’s interests.

Thousands converged on New York’s Times Square Saturday for a ‘No Kings’ protest against President Donald Trump. It was part of a nationwide event that comes amid military crackdowns in US cities, deportations and revenge indictments of political foes and in the wake of the Gaza peace deal.

TOMMY Fury parked his G Wagon in a disabled bay while on a day out with partner Molly-Mae Hague.

The boxer and TV personality, 26, headed on a family trip in Manchester with Molly-Mae and their two-year-old daughter Bambi.

Love Island alums Tommy and Molly-Mae looked relaxed as the trio arrived at a park.

Molly-Mae wore a pair of black trousers, which were accompanied by an oversized grey jumper.

As for Tommy, he opted for tracksuit bottoms, a long-sleeved black top along with a black gilet.

He could be seen playfully holding Bambi and also carrying her, as she looked into the distance.

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Elsewhere, Molly-Mae, 26, marked series two of her Prime Video series Behind It All being released.

It comes as she recently revealed why she’s refusing to put her £600k engagement ring back on – despite reuniting with Tommy.

The couple originally split over cheating allegations last summer, but ultimately got back together officially in May.

Speaking in series two episode one, the fashion designer explained that she wanted some kind of gesture from Tommy before wearing the ring again.

She said: “I’m not putting my ring back on yet just because I don’t feel quite ready.

“And also because I would kinda quite like for him to make a kind of a gesture.

“Not ask me again. That’s a lot but just a nice dinner or something.

“Just to like have that moment of ok, I’ll wear my ring again.”

Following this, Molly-Mae added the two were back together, although still living apart.

Meanwhile, Tommy has denied the cheating allegations but revealed that alcohol played a major part in their split last summer.

Tommy spoke about his lowest points in an interview and revealed he feared his drinking would see him end up in a ditch.

He said: “The turnaround point was in December I thought ‘I can’t do this anymore, I cannot do it’.

“I was like ‘something needs to change’ or else I’m going to end up in a ditch because that was the way I was going.

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“I often said that to my brother most night and my mates, they all know that.”

Tommy and Molly-Mae have been rebuilding their relationship since they kissed at Man Utd star Luke Shaw’s Hogmanay party in Cheshire last year.

Max Muncy stood in the middle of what is normally an underground batting cage. But on Friday, moments after the Dodgers completed a four-game sweep of the Milwaukee Brewers in the National League Championship Series, it had been transformed into the most exclusive drinking spot in the city, the place where the players came to toast their return to the World Series.

Cheap champagne and even cheaper beer flowed freely — mostly over people’s heads — before forming deep puddles on some plastic sheeting that had hastily been laid along the floor.

“You never get tired of this. You can’t ever take this for granted,” Muncy, the Dodger third baseman said, as he clutched a lit cigar in one hand and two red Budweiser bottles in the other. “This is the whole reason that you play baseball. You want to be in this moment.

“You want to play postseason baseball. And to be able to do it for as many times as I’ve done it, it’s just truly a blessing.”

The moment Muncy referred to is the alcohol-infused postseason series victory celebration, a tradition that dates to the 1960 World Series when members of the Pittsburgh Pirates chose not to drink the champagne that had been wheeled into their victorious clubhouse, but began spraying it on one another instead.

As baseball’s postseason format expanded, so did the number of champagne celebrations; Friday’s was the Dodgers’ fifth in 29 days and 10^th in less than two years. And it may not be the last since they’ll open the World Series next weekend with a chance to become the first repeat champion this century.

“It’s a grown man acting like a little kid. You look forward it,” reliever Blake Treinen, who has played for seven playoff teams in his career, said as he leaned on a giant red cooler stuffed with mostly empty bottles of champagne.

When the Dodgers qualified for the playoffs last month, they toasted that achievement at home, then toasted themselves again six days later in Arizona when they clinched the division title. This month they’ve beaten the Cincinnati Reds in the wild-card series, the Philadelphia Phillies in the Division Series and now the Brewers in the LCS.

And with each victory, the celebrations have grown in fervor and joy.

“It gets better and better each round,” pitcher Tyler Glasnow agreed.

As soon as Caleb Durbin’s fly ball settled in Andy Pages’ glove near the right-field bullpen gate Friday night, extending the Dodgers’ season while ending the Brewers’, fireworks filled the air and Randy Newman’s “I Love L.A.” blared from the stadium’s sound system. As a small army of workers rushed to set up a temporary wooden stage behind second base, the players pulled on gray t-shirts with words National League Champions and the script Dodgers set against a baseball diamond outlined in yellow.

On their heads they wore black caps that read World Series 2025. But the public ceremony on the stage, in which chairman Mark Walter was presented with the league championship trophy and Shohei Ohtani was handed the series MVP trophy, was short and tame compared to raucous fiesta that started in the batting cage a few minutes later.

Dodgers star Shohei Ohtani celebrates in the clubhouse after the team’s NLCS-clinching win over the Brewers at Dodger Stadium on Friday night.

(Robert Gauthier / Los Angeles Times)

“These kinds of celebrations, you can never have too many,” infielder Miguel Rojas shouted in Spanish over a loud soundtrack of percussive music that played in a loop. “A moment like this is really important, really beautiful.

“Five times this year. We’ve got one to go.”

A few feet away outfielder Teoscar Hernández surrounded himself with a handful of journalists in an unsuccessful attempt to hide from the champagne sprays directed at him by teammates.

“I don’t think there’s anybody that gets tired of this. I’m not tired,” he said. “I want to get one more, and then five more next year.

“This is the only time that you can get to celebrate something, to be free, not thinking about your job, not thinking about what you got to do tomorrow.”

As the party began to wane and players left the batting cage to join their families in a quieter gathering on the field, Muncy looked down at the thick victory cigar between his fingers and turned reflective. The celebration wasn’t about champagne or beer or victory cigars. It wasn’t even about winning.

It was more about surviving the crucible of the longest schedule in pro sports and celebrating that with the people who were with you every step of the way.

“It’s amazing, is what it is,” he said. “This is one of the best parts about being in the postseason. You grind with your teammates and your brothers for seven, eight months, all the way back to spring training.

“This is just like a culmination of all your collective efforts.”

Who wouldn’t want drink to that?

Oct. 18 (UPI) — On this day in history:

In 1776, the border between Maryland and Pennsylvania was established. Dubbed the “Mason-Dixon” line, it became the unofficial boundary between North and South.

In 1851, Moby-Dick by Herman Melville was published. A small band of Herman Melville devotees orated their way through the 135-chapter opus, which took 22 hours and 38 minutes to complete.

In 1867, the United States completed its purchase of Alaska for $7.2 million, taking possession of the territory from Russia. It would be 92 years before Alaska was admitted to the Union.

In 1898, the United States took control of Puerto Rico one year after Spain had granted self-rule to the Caribbean nation.

File Photo by Monika Graff/UPI

In 1922, the British Broadcasting Corp. was established.

In 1931, Thomas Alva Edison, one of the most prolific inventors in history, died in West Orange, N.J., at the age of 84.

In 1959, the Soviet Union announced that Luna 3, an unmanned space vehicle, had taken the first pictures of the far side of the moon. In 1987, a former Mexican spy claimed his intelligence unit stole the Soviet satellite while it was on tour in Mexico in 1959, providing the United States with valuable intelligence.

In 1974, the jury in the Watergate cover-up trial heard a tape recording in which U.S. President Richard Nixon told aide John Dean to try to stop the Watergate burglary investigation before it implicated White House personnel.

File Photo by Kevin Dietsch/UPI

In 1991, Israel and the Soviet Union agreed to renew full diplomatic relations for the first time since 1967.

In 2002, North Korea revealed it was working on a secret nuclear weapons program. U.S. intelligence officials concluded critical equipment for it came from Pakistan.

In 2007, former Pakistani Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto returned home after eight years in exile to triumphant fanfare that gave way to panic when a suicide bomber killed more than 140 people in her convoy. She wasn’t hurt in that attack but was assassinated on Dec. 27 of that year in Rawalpindi.

In 2011, Gilad Shalit, a 25-year-old Israeli soldier kidnapped by the militant Palestinian group Hamas in a high-profile incident, was freed after being held for more than five years. His release came in exchange for 1,000 Palestinians who had spent years in Israeli jails.

In 2024, the electric grid on the island of Cuba went entirely offline after the failure of a major power plant east of Havana. Power returned four days later. The outage was one of several blackouts from 2024 to 2025 amid an economic crisis.