Kylie Cantrall loves having a day off in the Valley.
In Sunday Funday, L.A. people give us a play-by-play of their ideal Sunday around town. Find ideas and inspiration on where to go, what to eat and how to enjoy life on the weekends.
Born and raised in the L.A. area, Cantrall has been working in entertainment since launching a YouTube channel at 7 years old. At 21, she’s been rising through Hollywood’s ranks, doing everything from animated voices to toplining live-action series, all while garnering millions of social media followers. These days, she’s best known to the teen, tween and under set for her starmaking turn as “Red” in Disney’s “Descendants” franchise, with “Descendants: Wicked Wonderland,” which dropped last week. Ever the multi-hyphenate, Cantrall is also hoping her new eight-song EP — the aptly-titled “Valley Girl Problems,” which she’s been promoting with “Life of a Valley Girl” travelogs on TikTok — will help further her career in mainstream pop music.
Because of all that ambition, Cantrall is busy nearly all of the time. Except Sundays. “Sunday is my favorite day of the week,” she says, “and that’s because of all the things I get to do.”
Here’s everything Cantrall would do on a sunny Sunday.
This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
9 a.m.: Sleep, then hike
I’ll grab a yogurt for breakfast and then head out the door, on my way to Fryman Canyon for a little morning hike. That’s my go-to spot because I like that you can actually control how hard you want the workout to be. It’s not the craziest hike — it’s actually pretty calm — but there are a couple of incline points. It really is the perfect place for when you want to meet up with a friend and get some steps in, but you also don’t want to be dying while you’re trying to have a conversation.
Noon: Empanadas at the farmers market
After a hike, I’ll usually go to the Studio City Farmers Market. I’ll get a little vanilla latte with oat milk, and I’ll stop at this stand, King’s Empanadas, because they make my favorite empanada in L.A. I get the shredded chicken one, which is cute and tiny but really filling.
There’s another vendor there [Bautista Family Organic Ranch] that sells dates and they’re literally the best dates I’ve ever had in my life. They’re desserts, essentially. They’re so caramelly and sweet.
I always get berries at the market, too, like raspberries and blueberries. There’s another vendor [Thyme for Honey] who makes different flavors of granola and their coffee-flavored granola is so bomb that I’ll always get that too.
2 p.m.: Flea market finds
I’d probably meet up with a friend and go to the Silverlake Flea Market, which I’ve been really liking recently. It’s a bit of a drive for me since I’m in the Valley, though, like a cute 25 to 30 minutes.
At the Silverlake Flea Market, I’ve had a lot of luck with jewelry, like I’ve found a lot of really great rings, necklaces, and earrings, or little random other things. I always end up picking up a crystal too. It’s like an energy that just takes over me.
I might also luck out and find a cute baby tee. They have really good vintage artist T-shirts and I got a cute Janet Jackson Rhythm Nation tour shirt last time I was there.
4 p.m.: Matcha stop
After the Silverlake Flea [which is held in Atwater Village], I’ll go to a coffee shop that I’m obsessed with. It’s called Laveta, and they have the best matcha I’ve ever had. It’s got a good cream top, and the shop has a cool vibe and ambience.
6 p.m.: Fighting traffic with the top down
I like to go and frolic every now and then just to get out of my Valley bubble, but after Laveta I’d probably head home. I’m thinking I’d hit some 6 p.m. traffic, but I’d be listening to music with the top down in my Mini Cooper. Maybe some Sade, maybe some Brandy. I might throw in a little Kim Petras if traffic is clear, and I’m speeding down the freeway.
7 p.m.: Laundry and “The Morning Show”
I’d probably try to be home by 7 to do laundry. I’d watch “The Morning Show,” which is my favorite show right now. Maybe I’d do a face mask too.
For dinner, I’ll go pick up some Katsuya if I’m feeling crazy. Their spot in the Valley has my favorite sushi, and I’m a big sushi gal. I’ll get the Robert roll and maybe even a miso soup if I’m feeling crazy. I’ve got to add crispy rice with spicy tuna too.
After that, probably just more “Morning Show” and then I usually try to be in bed by 11 p.m.
The first day of the 2026 Commonwealth Games is upon us and it’s a busy enough Friday for various Team Northern Ireland athletes in Glasgow.
It’s an early start Gary Kelly who is in action in the men’s singles against New Zealand’s Shannon McIlroy at 08:30 BST after his win against Niue on Thursday.
Shauna O’Neill and Chloe Wilson will face Niue in the women’s pairs at 11:20 after their victory
At the Tollcross Swimming Centre, it is a morning full of heats from 10:30.
Victoria Catterson will be in the women’s 400m freestyle while Grace Davison and Lottie Cullen will get under way in the women’s 200m backstroke.
Conor Ferguson and Paddy Johnston will be in the 50m backstroke with Alana Burns-Aiken in the 50m butterfly and Adam Bradley in the 100m breaststroke.
Barry McClements will go in the men’s S10 100m butterfly while Team NI will take part in both the men’s and women’s 100m freestyle relay heats.
Should the various swimmers progress through their heats, the semi-finals or finals of all those events will take place that evening from 19:00.
At the SEC Centre, one of Team NI’s boxing contingent will be in action.
Louis Rooney fights in the men’s bantamweight 55kg round of 32 against Mathealira Seholoholo from Lesotho at 11:45.
From 13:00 at the Emirates Arena, Olympic champion Rhys McClenaghan alongside Ewan McAteer and Eamon Montgomery are in qualification action.
Burnham’s first day as prime minister in No 10 North will include talks with business leaders, including representatives of the Federation of Small Business, the Confederation of British Industry and the British Chambers of Commerce, about how to generate growth and investment.
Labour wants to create a plan that would pull from existing devolution strategy and local growth policy, to allow civil servants, mayors, councils and businesses to work together more closely.
Burnham’s first week in power has seen him make a series of interventions aimed at easing the cost of living, including announcing a 20% cut in business rates for pubs, social clubs and live music venues from April next year.
However, Conservative leader Kemi Badenoch has criticised his ambitions for being “too small”.
Speaking on Thursday, she urged him to tackle high energy costs for businesses as well as a gap in defence funding.
“When you are mayor of Manchester, you are handed a big pot of someone else’s money, and you decide where to spend it,” she said.
“I’m sure this is great fun. It can make you very popular. But it is not the same as being prime minister.
“Andy Burnham needs to do better. He is behaving like he’s still the mayor of Manchester. He is now the prime minister of the United Kingdom, he needs to start acting like it.”
Winning streaks bring a life of their own to a clubhouse, each day presenting another opportunity to extend the joy and methodically build a feeling of invincibility.
Inevitably the streak ends and everyone sighs, reflects and returns to work. The Boston Red Sox lost the second game of a doubleheader Wednesday to end a win streak that tied an 80-year-old club record when it reached 15 in the opener.
Boston interim manager Chad Tracy stepped into the clubhouse to say a few words afterward but saw veteran players Willson Contreras and Sonny Gray speaking to the team and allowed them the moment.
“We just won 15 games in a row, and I think all of us knew it was going to end at some point,” Tracy said.
Call it the “Tracy Turnaround” redux.
Tracy had never managed, coached or played at the major league level before replacing Alex Cora on April 25, but he was well-versed in experiencing the glorious ride of a winning streak and its abrupt end. His father, Jim Tracy, managed the Dodgers, Pittsburgh Pirates and Colorado Rockies from 2001-2012.
Like his son, Jim Tracy was given an interim manager title when he replaced Clint Hurdle in May 2009 after Colorado’s poor start. It took only a few weeks before the Rockies won 11 games in a row, 17 of 18 and finished 74-42 to make the playoffs.
This year’s Red Sox can only hope their U-turn under Chad Tracy mirrors his dad’s. Boston was 32-46 before winning 20 of 23, including the 15-game win streak.
No surprise that father and son discussed the similarities. Chad was a double-A first baseman with the Texas Rangers in 2009 and closely followed his dad’s fortunes.
“I remember the [Rockies’] run,” Chad said. “You know, we talk very basically about just, he’s excited [about the Red Sox]. He’s a baseball fan. He’s watching constantly, and he’s fired up for it. So, like, we haven’t done a whole lot of comparing to that, but he’s just — he’s a Boston Red Sox fan.”
Jim was rewarded by becoming the second interim manager in MLB history to win the Manager of the Year award. Chad could be in the running to be the third, especially if the Red Sox make the playoffs.
They already are only the sixth father-son combo to manage in the major leagues, following Bob and Aaron Boone, George and Dick Sisler, Bob and Joel Skinner, Buddy and David Bell, and Felipe Alou and Luis Rojas.
The achievement isn’t lost on Jim Tracy, who became so emotional upon learning his son was named interim Red Sox manager he pulled his car to the side of the road. He attended Chad’s first game, a victory over the Baltimore Orioles, on the top step of the dugout.
“One thing that jumped out at me,” Jim Tracy said, “was that when he was presented to the media, his body language in the dugout…. he was not overwhelmed or fazed with anything that was going on. He was ready to do whatever was asked of him.”
That Chad replaced Cora, who led the Red Sox to the 2018 World Series title in his first season, elicited mixed feelings. Cora played with the Dodgers from 1998-2004, including four seasons under Jim.
“It’s a wonderful day, but in some respects, it’s bittersweet,” Jim said the day of Chad’s managerial debut. “I’m proud of [Chad], but the Tracy family loves and respects Alex Cora.
“You have to go back with some special years I had in Los Angeles and Alex was very much a part of that. Bittersweet is the right word because Alex was so good to my son and took such good care of him. But it was reciprocated.”
WASHINGTON — The Dodgers arrived at the White House on Thursday to celebrate their 2025 World Series championship following an invitation from President Trump.
The ceremony took place in the Rose Garden, with manager Dave Roberts selected to give a speech on behalf of the team.
It was the back-to-back champions’ second visit in as many years, but this trip came with scheduling complications. The timing for a visit didn’t work out when the Dodgers were in town to play the Nationals in April for a day-game laden series. So, they used their single off day on a three-city East Coast trip to make a pit stop in Washington, wedging the visit between games against the Phillies and Mets.
The decision to again visit the White House raised debate among Dodgers fans, who argue Trump’s anti-immigration policies have harmed many of the team’s supporters. But Roberts has continually tried to downplay the political messaging associated with the visit.
Mookie Betts and Kiké Hernández did not join the team for the visit, with Betts telling reporters he preferred to spend the day with his family and Hernandez saying he had a rehab assignment conflict but wouldn’t have joined the team if he was available. Hernández previously offered his support to fans affected by ICE raids in Los Angeles, while Betts said he didn’t want his decision to be viewed as political.
“This took a long time to get both sides together, and, honestly, like I’ve always said, my company line, my personal line is I hope that we get this invitation every year,” Roberts said when the trip was finalized this month. “Because that’s the goal: to win a championship, to get this invitation to the White House. And I’m not a politician, and I’m doing something that teams have done for decades. And so that’s where I stand, really. I’m a baseball coach. That’s what I do.”
The visit falls days after Bloomberg reported that two insurance companies controlled by Dodgers chairman Mark Walter, as well as Guggenheim Partners, where Walter is chief executive, are being investigated by federal prosecutors for potential financial improprieties.
No charges have been filed. Representatives from the parent company of the insurance firms as well as from TWC Global — the Walter business empire that controls his sporting investments, including the Dodgers and Lakers — have told reporters they are cooperating with the investigation.
PHILADELPHIA — Shohei Ohtani wrapped up long toss in the Citizens Bank Park outfield Wednesday afternoon, turned and headed for the two-story bullpen stairs.
Ohtani had initially been scheduled to take the mound for the Dodgers Wednesday against the Phillies. But, with the date of his next pitching start up in the air, his bullpen session still drew a lot of eyes.
Ohtani threw off a mound Wednesday for the first time since receiving an Orthovisc injection in his left knee to lubricate the joint. The side session of about 30 pitches, running through multiple pitch types, was similar to a normal between-starts bullpen, pitching coach Mark Prior said.
“It looked good,” Prior said. “Feels good. We’ll see where he’s at tomorrow.”
Asked if Ohtani said his knee was feeling 100%, Prior said they didn’t get into specifics.
“Just said, ‘How did you feel throwing?’ He said it felt great,” Prior said.
Ohtani, who was in the lineup Wednesday as the designated hitter, was not made available to comment before the game.
It’s still unclear when Ohtani will pick up pitching duties again. But manager Dave Roberts ruled out Ohtani starting on the mound this weekend against the Mets.
“It’s day by day with him,” Prior said. “We’re present today. He threw a bullpen, see where he comes in … Friday, since we’re off [Thursday]. We’ll make determinations after that.”
This bullpen session was a chance for Ohtani to test his knee, which before the injection seemed to be aggravated by pitching.
“It’s a big sign,” Roberts said. “Because the grass, the flat ground, all of that stuff is well and good, the arm is fine. So it’s more of getting down the slope, throwing over your front side. That’s kind of the big test. Usually the bullpens are right around 88 (mph), so we’ll see where he’s at.”
Ohtani has already been out long enough that the Dodgers will have to be mindful of his workload whenever he rejoins the rotation. His last start on the mound was July 3 against the Padres.
“I still think it hasn’t been so long that the equity that he’s built up with the pitch count is that much compromised,” Roberts said. “But with that, I can’t foresee him running out there and throwing 100 pitches his first outing.”
If he’s sidelined for too long, he could have to gradually build up with each start. But it’s hard to pinpoint where that delineation lies.
“I think the easy answer is to say every pitcher is different,” Roberts said.
Over the weekend, the Academy Museumannounced that it will honor Mexican and Mexican American film history in an upcoming exhibition titled “Cinelandia: Celebrating Mexican American Cinema.”
Currently scheduled to open in September 2027 — likely to coincide with the onset of Hispanic Heritage Month — the showcase will span from the silent film era to the present day and examine movies from both sides of the border.
The idea for the exhibition was first discussed back in 2019 and work on it officially began in late 2022, Academy Museum associate curator Sophia Serrano told The Times.
The display will focus mostly on Mexican American cinema, but examines those films in conversation with Mexican features and other Spanish-language movies, made both in Hollywood and internationally.
Films included in the exhibit will be Day of the Dead flicks like “The Book of Life” and Disney’s “Coco” — as well as the Spanish-language version of the 1931 horror classic “Dracula,” plus director Luis Valdez’s “La Bamba” and “Zoot Suit.” Three groundbreaking works by Gregory Nava will also be honored: the Oscar-nominated “El Norte,” “My Family/Mi Familia” and the Jennifer Lopez-led biopic “Selena.”
Among the classic Mexican films included are the 1932 film “Santa,” which was the first Mexican narrative sound movie, as well as 1946’s “Enamorada.” Features from Mexico’s Oscar-winning “three amigos” of cinema — Guillermo del Toro, Alfonso Cuarón and Alejandro Iñárritu — will also be highlighted.
Along with curator Serrano, “Cinelandia” is guided by a 12-person advisory panel: cartoonist Lalo Alcaraz; UC Santa Cruz professor emeritus Rosa-Linda Fregoso; LACMA curator and head of contemporary art Rita Gonzalez; animator-director Jorge R. Gutiérrez; writer-director Cristina Ibarra; Pitzer College professor Jesse Lerner; director-writer Carlos López Estrada; University of Arizona assistant professor Orquidea Morales; director Gregory Nava; UCLA professor Chon Noriega; University of Texas at Austin professor Charles Ramirez Berg; and USC professor Laura Isabel Serna.
Given that L.A. County’s population is almost 50% Latino, Serrano noted that part of the exhibition’s aim is to connect to the millions of Latinos in the county and show how they’ve been critical in informing the cultural landscape of L.A.
“Mexican American cinema is … a big part of Los Angeles’ history,” Serrano said. “We want this exhibition to connect with the broader Los Angeles community, as well as illuminate the history behind many of the beloved films from Mexican American and Mexican filmmakers. The exhibition is designed to offer something for everyone and bring people of all ages and backgrounds together to celebrate this important cultural heritage.”
“Many of the films and artists featured in the exhibition draw attention to or push against these challenges in a variety of ways,” Serrano said. “A guiding principle of the exhibition is foregrounding the voices of film artists themselves via interviews, written quotes, and guest curations and collaborations alongside the hundreds of original objects that will go on display, and this aims to tell an earnest and engaging story about this history.”
“We are also aiming to show how vast the contributions of Mexican American artists are, and these histories are often unknown or underrecognized. It’s essential that the exhibition celebrates these moments of impact and influence in a dynamic and educational manner.”
“Cinelandia” isn’t the museum’s first foray into identity-based exhibitions centered on underrepresented populations. In 2022, the museum opened the “Regeneration: Black Cinema 1898-1971” exhibition which highlighted the work of Black creatives from filmmaking’s early days through the civil rights movement. The showcase — which closed in April 2023 — tackled such themes as the representation of Black people in early cinema (1897-1915), the era of “race films” made by Black filmmakers for Black audiences (1910s-1940s), musical films and stories born of the civil rights movement.
The museum’s ongoing showcase titled “Hollywoodland: Jewish Founders and the Making of a Movie Capital,” explores the stories of the Jewish filmmakers and studio founders who helped cement the L.A. area as the world capital of entertainment.
Paramount Skydance has notched a needed win as it continues to pursue its $111-billion deal to buy Warner Bros. Discovery.
On Wednesday, the European Commission gave its consent, allowing tech scion David Ellison’s industry-reshaping merger to move forward in the countries that make up the European Union.
Europe joins 64 other regulatory entities that have either approved the deal or chosen not to challenge it, Paramount said in a statement.
“These clearances recognize that the combination of Paramount and WBD will enhance consumer choice and enable a creative-first company to invest in more projects and bring stories to audiences worldwide,” Paramount said. “It will create a scaled media and entertainment company capable of competing with the tech companies that have come to dominate the industry.”
European regulators added just one condition: Paramount must end a partnership with Universal Pictures to share distribution of movies in Europe. Beyond that, regulators concluded that even with the proposed Paramount-Warner consolidation there were enough producers to avoid competitive harms.
“The Commission found that, at film production level, enough film studios remain as competitors,” the European Commission said in a statement. “These include other major US studios like Disney, NBC Universal … and Sony, along with smaller US studios such as Amazon MGM, A24 and Lionsgate, as well as European studios.”
But the merger would result in a “high concentration” of film distribution, the commission said, so Paramount would have 13 months to end its joint venture, United International Pictures, which distributes Paramount and Universal films to cinema owners in Europe.
Paramount must not “directly or indirectly … enter into any agreement or understanding with Universal to jointly co-distribute films” in the European countries for 10 years, the commission said.
Despite early concerns about potential dominance in the children’s television market, Paramount will not be required to divest Cartoon Network, a Warner asset, because of its ownership of Nickelodeon.
“The Commission found that streaming platforms offering children’s content will continue to act as a competitive constraint on the merged entity’s TV channels,” the agency said.
The European Commission joins regulators in Australia, Brazil, Canada, China, Saudi Arabia, Serbia and South Africa that have found the deal would not crush competition in their respective markets. Britain’s Competition and Markets Authority is still investigating the merger’s impacts.
Paramount secured the approval of the U.S. Justice Department last month. The company was hoping to close its blockbuster acquisition of Warner Bros., which owns HBO, CNN and the Burbank studios behind such popular characters as Batman, Superman, Harry Potter, Scooby-Doo, by the end of September to avoid a larger payout to Warner Bros. Discovery shareholders.
The European Commission’s approval came two days after Ellison’s firm was dealt a substantial setback.
A federal judge in Oakland on Monday issued a temporary restraining order preventing Paramount from finalizing the acquisition for at least 14 days as that antitrust case heats up. The decision came after 12 state attorneys general, led by California Atty. Gen. Rob Bonta, filed a lawsuit last week alleging the merger would violate U.S. antitrust rules.
District Judge Araceli Martínez-Olguín scheduled an Aug. 3 hearing to determine whether a longer-term pause is warranted. The states are expected to seek a preliminary injunction, which would tie up Paramount’s merger for months.
Paramount, in its statement, noted the European Commission’s conclusions “directly refute key assumptions that underpin the state AGs’ complaint seeking to block the transaction,” including whether big-budget or blockbuster films should be considered a market.
Wednesday’s approval “marks another significant milestone in bringing Paramount and Warner Bros. Discovery together,” Makan Delrahim, Paramount’s chief legal officer said in the statement. “We appreciate the Commission’s constructive engagement and thorough analysis throughout its review.”
Deal critic Alvaro Bedoya, a former Federal Trade Commission member who is now a senior adviser at the American Economic Liberties Project, offered a conflicting view.
“This is not remotely over. The United States is not Europe,” Bedoya said in a statement.
The Writers Guild of America joined the legal fray last week by filing its own antitrust complaint against Paramount, alleging the proposed union of two of Hollywood’s biggest studios would lead to fewer jobs and lower pay for writers. The WGA is also seeking an injunction.
The 37-page lawsuit filed by the state attorneys general alleges that Paramount’s proposed takeover — the largest Hollywood deal in decades — would violate the U.S. Clayton Antitrust Act, a century-old law to prevent mergers that weaken competition and raise costs for consumers.
In her order granting the states’ request for a temporary restraining order, Martínez-Olguín wrote: “The Transaction would also be difficult, if not impossible, to unwind if permitted to proceed given the anticipated consolidation of operations, sharing of business-sensitive information, and potential termination or reassignment of employees.”
Paramount faces a potential $7 billion payment to Warner Bros. should the company fail to close the transaction by next summer.
My theme park day begins with gunfire. A jailbreak! But shortly after, I‘m attending a wedding. Next I’m on a mission, helping the local postmaster justify his uncontrollable desire to open everyone’s packages, and trying to find a way to do so without telling a lie.
This is just another Sunday morning at Knott’s Berry Farm’s “Ghost Town Alive!,” a now-10-year-old interactive show — live-action role-playing game is more accurate — that has become the best summer offering at any theme park, and not just in SoCal but in America. There’s a daily story, including three editions of a single-page newsletter that are updated every day. There’s also lots of improv. Over the years, I’ve found myself on the prowl for mysterious elixirs, playing matchmaker, collaborating on group stories in a schoolhouse, doing police work, participating in a mustache contest or flashing a press badge.
“Ghost Town Alive!” ultimately is the promise of theme parks fulfilled, that is that we can enter a fantasy world and play as cartoonish, or maybe even idealized, versions of ourselves.
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It’s a rarity, an event with 46 actors — about 30 of whom appear each afternoon — who lead guests through scavenger hunts, puzzles or just conversations about life in Calico, the fictional town of Knott’s Berry Farm’s Ghost Town area. The cast ranges from those just out of college to those in their mid-70s, and no character is ever played by more than one actor. This gives Calico a sense of life, an illusion that it’s actually populated, but also allows actors to fully develop a personality and let their characters evolve.
Before creative director Andy Crocker was working on “Ghost Town Alive!,” she was visiting it as a fan. Crocker, an experiential designer who has worked on projects for companies as wide-ranging as the Los Angeles Public Library and Walt Disney Imagineering, specializes in particular on guest-to-actor interactions.
“Ghost Town Alive!” unfolds like a live-action role-playing game. But expect plenty of silliness.
(Allen J. Schaben / Los Angeles Times)
“I will never forget the first time I saw it as a guest,” Crocker tells me. “I came with my husband, and we did not bring our kid. We walked in, and I saw a little girl in a pink cowboy hat with a painted-on mustache following an outlaw off to jail. That outlaw was giving a gritty HBO performance. Wasn’t patronizing. Wasn’t talking down. He was giving her a hero moment, and I burst into tears. I didn’t know this was possible to do on this scale with such an institution. The empowerment that performer gave to that guest, I will never forget.”
To make a theme park feel personal is no easy feat. In fact, designers have long been trying to solve this problem, whether by creating interactive attractions that feel responsive to the guest, or short-lived experiments such as the late but great Star Wars: Galactic Starcruiser, colloquially known as the Star Wars hotel.
Crocker says others have asked for the “secret sauce” to “Ghost Town Alive!” They’ve tried — and are trying — but she’s not so sure the magic can be replicated. One, Knott’s is blessed with a real, 100-year-old Ghost Town. That allowed for the investment to be solely in the cast and performance rather than infrastructure. And yet actors, of course, aren’t cheap.
A single-page newspaper is printed three times a day during “Ghost Town Alive!”
(Todd Martens / Los Angeles Times)
“The amount of people that we have, that’s tough for a lot of places,” Crocker says. “They try to do it with less, and it doesn’t quite work.”
Speaking on a panel hosted by trade group the Themed Entertainment Assn., Jeff Tucker, Knott’s Berry Farm’s show writer, says one early mistake Knott’s made was thinking everyone who works in Ghost Town could partake. That meant, for instance, taping dialogue cues to cash registers in the saloon in the hopes that bartenders could become a character. The concept failed. “It’s a logistical nightmare,” he says. The lesson: Hire actors to perform. Let bartenders be bartenders and retail staff be retail staff.
Another reason Crocker tells me “Ghost Town Alive!” is so rare, and will remain so: It doesn’t rely on intellectual property, or a known franchise, which has become the lifeblood of modern theme parks. “With things that are heavy IP, it’s very tricky to control your IP and to allow for real play, guest agency, and, honestly, artist agency,” she says.
Evan Battle, center, who plays Deputy Chester Davenport, at Knott’s Berry Farm’s “Ghost Town Alive!” in 2024. The interactive theatrical experience allows guests to mingle with about 30 actors.
(Allen J. Schaben / Los Angeles Times)
That’s important, as “Ghost Town Alive!” can shift with the whims of the guest. There’s a core storyline this year. A rich, Beverly Hills-like family is revealed to be the true owners of Calico, and how the residents respond is the key narrative of the day. But there are multiple tales to uncover, including hidden factions (check out the Calico Historical Society) and who is taking who to the 4 p.m. hoedown, which ends each daily game of “Ghost Town Alive!”
But Crocker has also seen it get rather heartwarming.
“My mom came to see it,” she says. “She has some health concerns. There was a character who was in a crazy mix-’em-up and said he would not make it to the hoedown and that this would be his last day on Earth. This character and my mom ended up having this conversation about how if you know you don’t have a lot of time left, what would you do with your time? I was surprised by that pivot.”
It helps, Crocker says, that she’s noticed one commonality among the “Ghost Town Alive!” staff. They play — or were weaned on — tabletop role-playing games such as “Dungeons & Dragons,” which at their best allow for an anything-goes approach designed to follow the direction of the players rather than a strict script.
Tucker on the panel said there was one rule the crew lives by that defines the success of “Ghost Town Alive!”: “It’s not real,” he said. “We can do whatever we want.”
This week in SoCal theme parks
Not yet ready for prime time, Knott’s Berry Farm has delayed the opening of Montezooma: The Forbidden Fortress.
(Todd Martens / Los Angeles Times)
Montezooma is not yet zooming. Knott’s Berry Farm initially intended to launch its reimagined Montezooma’s Revenge, now known as Montezooma: The Forbidden Fortress, this week. Late Thursday, the park delayed its public unveiling, with a spokesperson citing additional fine-tuning that surfaced during its final days of testing. The delay is not expected to be a prolonged one. “We appreciate everyone’s understanding and look forward to welcoming media and guests in the coming days when we can showcase the attraction exactly as intended,” read a statement from the park.
A monthlong Lego celebration. Carlsbad’s Legoland likes to describe its Lego Festival, which started Monday and runs through Aug. 30, as a child’s first fest. Expect lots of characters and an assortment of play-focused areas. One is dedicated to music, another is a free-run creative zone and a third is a Lego garden designed to soothe. New this year is a game-heavy center dedicated to the Pokémon franchise, as well as a challenge-filled F1 installation.
It’s now more expensive to eat at Disneyland. Price hikes, unfortunately, are a yearly-occurrence at the Disneyland Resort, and this summer, like every summer, hundreds of food items have ever-so-slightly increased in cost. Most are in the range of a dollar or so — give or take a quarter or two — but expect to pay $7, up from $6.50, for a scoop of popcorn. I admittedly do not keep a database of Disneyland food prices, but sites like Mickey Visit or Theme Park IQ have tracked the most egregious price bumps. Looking at their data, you may want to think twice about dining at Disneyland’s Rancho del Zocalo Restaurante, where prices have been increasing even as portions over the years have been declining.
Where is Fast & Furious: Hollywood Drift? We’re now in midsummer, and Universal Studios Hollywood’s Fast & Furious: Hollywood Drift still does not have an official opening date. While sources familiar with the coaster’s operations point to routine mechanical issues that have arisen during its test and adjustment phase, one thing is certain: It’s not delayed due to noise complaints from neighbors, as rumors suggested last week. A Universal spokesperson pushed back on the notion that the coaster is delayed, stating it would still open this summer, which lasts into late September.
The best thing I ate at the parks
The hearty cottage pie from Downtown Disney’s Gordon Ramsay at the Carnaby.
(Todd Martens / Los Angeles Times)
I’ve been eagerly anticipating the opening of Gordon Ramsay at the Carnaby at the Disneyland Resort’s Downtown Disney, the latest concept in which the celebrity chef has agreed to lend his name. This one is an upscale gastropub, and while I’ll leave the full cuisine analysis to the professional food writers, as a parkgoer I do believe it fills a void in Disneyland’s shopping and entertainment district, bringing the area an adult-focused space with upscale (read: expensive) twists on old favorites like fish and chips ($33) and cottage pie ($38). And after reading breathless press release-like articles and posts from my theme park peers (“utter perfection,” proclaimed one) I couldn’t have been more excited to dine there this weekend.
Let’s start with the vibe, which I found to be rather confused. I was seated in the tiny, uncomfortable indoor bar, a place that felt like an afterthought and leaned airport terminal drinking hole, as it’s situated at the top of a stairwell and serves primarily as a thoroughfare into the dining hall. That a pub, especially one with an extensive cocktail menu (I did love my $22 cotton candy-infused Old Fashioned) would treat its introductory bar as a throwaway rather than a centerpiece of the experience was disappointing (an outdoor bar is significantly more enticing). The core dining space leans contemporary more than a traditional, wood-infused pub, feeling cafe-like with its ‘60s rock posters and framed portraits of those in mod outfits. More theme-ing would have been welcome, as I read it as slightly cold and corporate rather than homey and intimate. Instead of, say Pasadena’s Lucky Baldwins, this felt like a nice break room at a major record label.
But my dish was delightful. I had my heart set on the cottage pie, this one infused with a hearty portion of short rib. I probably should have taken leftovers, because it’s heavy, but in the best way possible. The potato-rich top felt creamy and buttery, while the meat was equally soft. The whole thing felt invitingly plush. I walked away mixed. No complaints on my entrée, and I’m eager to come back and try the fish and chips, and yes, that viral sticky toffee pudding dessert, but longing for a more welcoming atmosphere, especially at this price point.
Tell us your stories. Ask us your questions.
Have a theme park tale to share? Whether it was a good day or less-than-perfect day, I would love to hear about it. Have a question? A tip? A fun photo from the parks to share? Email me at todd.martens@latimes.com. I may feature your note in an upcoming newsletter.
Ride on,
Todd Martens
P.S.
Drowned Out Productions’ “The Shoebox Museum” explores love and loss.
(Drowned Out Productions. )
There’s a show running Saturday and Sunday in Los Angeles that I believe theme park fans should make time for. “The Shoebox Museum,” at North Hollywood’s After Hours theater, is a walk-through immersive experience at its most thoughtful. It’s short, at around 30 minutes, but it stayed with me for hours after it concluded.
“The Shoebox Museum,” from Drowned Out Productions’ Jackson Mancuso, who does theme park design by day, is a mediation on heartbreak, asking what we want to leave behind, and take with us, as we explore our grief. It’s meticulously designed, as we follow light cues through byzantine rooms filled with everyday ephemera — the type of stuff that only holds meaning to those who were in love. It’s a show about how an once broken heart, even mended, still finds ways to haunt us.
ESPN’s 30 for 30 will launch the first two of six podcast episodes July 28 examining the gambling scandal that resulted in Shohei Ohtani‘s interpreter Ippei Mizuhara going to prison for stealing nearly $17 million from the baseball superstar and gambling it away.
The podcast, titled “The Betrayal of Shohei Ohtani” is told by Tisha Thompson, the ESPN investigative reporter who led the outlet’s groundbreaking coverage in March 2024.
The podcast will recount Mizuhara’s life before he began working for Ohtani in 2013 when both were with the Hokkaido Nippon-Ham Fighters in Japan. When Ohtani moved to the United States to play for the Angels in 2018, Mizuhara came with him.
Thompson interviews childhood friends and colleagues of Mizuhara, but the interview that will generate the greatest interest is a 90-minute phone call she had with him 16 hours before she published the story. Thompson got permission from Mizuhara to tape the call and it remains the only interview he has given.
Mizuhara told her that Ohtani had helped him pay off his gambling debts, a story he recanted a day later. The Dodgers fired him the same day they opened the 2024 season with a game against the San Diego Padres in Seoul, South Korea.
IRS special agent Chris Seymour gave Thompson the first interview of his career, and what he and prosecutors say about Mizuhara’s motive goes beyond the narrative that he had a gambling addiction, according to ESPN.
Another interview by Thompson is with bookmaker Mathew Bowyer, who explains on tape that his relationship with Mizuhara began during a hotel poker game with Angels players. Bowyer pleaded guilty last year to running an illegal gambling business, money laundering and filing a false tax return. He was sentenced to 12 months and one day in prison and ordered to pay $1.6 million in restitution to the IRS.
Episodes one and two — “The Letter O” and “The Interview” — will debut July 28, followed by episodes dropping every Tuesday and Thursday through Aug. 11.
SACRAMENTO — California has spent millions of dollars to combat sex trafficking, and yet it can still be found in every city and town, hiding in plain sight.
Whether it’s online, on places such as Figueroa Street in L.A. or Stockton Boulevard in Sacramento, or even in the hotel rooms where our World Cup guests stayed, there are thousands of women and girls being sexually exploited in California right now, despite all that money and all the resources it has purchased.
“The reality is that few threats to a woman’s safety are as brutal or as overlooked as sex trafficking,” First Partner Jennifer Siebel Newsom said Monday, sitting with her husband, the governor, in a tiny second-floor dance studio built for survivors of trafficking.
Siebel Newsom was there to watch Newsom sign an executive order that was driven by her work as an advocate for survivors of trafficking. On its surface, the order may not sound like much and isn’t likely to make the news. It calls for most of the major state agencies to come up with a plan within 60 days to work together to curb trafficking and help survivors.
Hardly an earth-shattering demand. But believe it or not, one of the biggest barriers that our state faces, in this great age of technology and always-on connection, is that there is little collaboration between the folks fighting traffickers.
Yes, we have about 35 task forces statewide working on this issue and sometimes they run joint operations. But more often, those fighting trafficking live in their own silos, doing their own work, and often failing or refusing to share even scant details with other jurisdictions.
The same holds true for the many organizations that work with survivors, most of which have come on the scene only in the last few decades as sex trafficking morphed from a crime in which children were viewed as complicit to one in which we understand that they are victims.
Those organizations often do great work, but they too often do it alone. A survivor — or a girl being trafficked and looking for escape — has no easy way to find someone to help her. It’s largely luck, the right outreach person in the right place at the right time, or a cop who has taken the time and care to know what the resources are.
“We are so fragmented,” Sharmin Bock told the governor. She’s a former prosecutor in Alameda County who tried the first sex trafficking case in the U.S. Now, she’s advising the first partner on how California can do a better job fighting the predators — traffickers and buyers alike — who daily trade cash for the use of a human body, willing or not.
Bock points out that while those fighting against trafficking lack collaboration, the opposite is true of the criminals. Up and down the state, they are organized. A trafficker might pick up his victim in one city, only to transport her to another city to meet buyers. Victims are moved often, and even sold or traded to other traffickers.
Once a victim crosses a jurisdictional line, everything that happened on the other side of it too often gets lost in the nowhere land of bureaucracy and red tape. A move from Los Angeles to Riverside, and the girl might as well be in Taiwan, as Bock puts it.
“We need to stop asking whose case is this, and rather ask how do we solve this case together? How do we solve the problem together?” Bock said. “Collaboration recovers children sooner, links investigation, dismantles trafficking organizations and holds traffickers accountable. A trafficker should never escape accountability because critical information was sitting in another agency’s database.”
So while Newsom’s demand for a 60-day plan might not sound like much, it goes to the heart of what ails the system.
“Traffickers collaborate every day,” Bock said. “Traffickers have built networks to exploit children. We must build stronger networks to protect them.”
Newsom drew a parallel to the plague of retail theft that captivated the state not long ago, and which the state has successfully combated. Though careful to draw the obvious line that stealing a tube of toothpaste is a far cry from sexually exploiting a child, he pointed out similarities — online platforms that turned a blind eye, a lack of coordination between agencies, criminals that knew how to exploit not just victims, but systems.
Now he’s looking for that kind of “momentum,” to solve this most stubborn of abuses.
“For the last few years, I thought I could buy my way out of this,” Newsom said with a shocking bit of honesty, pointing to all that budget money that has been invested. But, he said, he’s clear now that it’s not a money problem. It’s a people problem.
“How is that possible? “ the governor wondered. The executive order, he said, is about saying “enough of just good intentions … we’re not delivering fundamental results.”
A report at the end of 60 days isn’t results. But it’s an acknowledgment that California needs to do better, and a road map to get there.
That’s crucial. Like Siebel Newsom and the governor, I’ve got two teenage daughters and I know just how vulnerable girls are, in the best of circumstances.
With all our resources and good intentions, California can’t continue to let predators win simply because they’re more organized.
1 of 3 | On July 21, 1925, the so-called Monkey Trial, which pitted Clarence Darrow against William Jennings Bryan in Dayton, Tenn., in one of the great confrontations in legal history, ended with John Thomas Scopes convicted and fined $100 for teaching evolution in violation of state law. UPI File Photo
July 21 (UPI) — On this date in history:
In 1861, the first major military engagement of the Civil War occurred at Bull Run Creek, Va.
In 1918, a German U-boat fired on the town of Orleans, Mass., on Cape Cod peninsula, damaging a tug boat and sinking four barges, and severely injuring one man. It was the only place in the United States to receive an enemy attack during World War I.
In 1925, the so-called Monkey Trial, which pitted Clarence Darrow against William Jennings Bryan in Dayton, Tenn., in one of the great confrontations in legal history, ended with John Thomas Scopes convicted and fined $100 for teaching evolution in violation of state law.
In 1969, U.S. astronauts Neil Armstrong and Edwin “Buzz” Aldrin, lifted off from the moon in the Apollo 11 lunar module Eagle and docked with the command module Columbia piloted by Michael Collins.
In 1970, after 11 years of construction, the massive Aswan High Dam across the Nile River in Egypt was completed, ending the cycle of flood and drought in the Nile River region but triggering an environmental controversy.
In 2000, a report from special counsel John Danforth cleared U.S. Attorney General Janet Reno and the government of wrongdoing in the April 19, 1993, fire that ended the Branch Davidian siege near Waco, Texas.
In 2011, Greece continued efforts to climb out of a financial chasm with a second bailout pledge from other eurozone countries and the International Monetary Fund worth $157 billion. Earlier, the nation dealt with its debt crisis with the help of a $146 billion loan package.
In 2024, President Joe Biden dropped his re-election bid in the 2024 presidential race, formally endorsing his vice president, Kamala Harris. Former President Donald Trump defeated Harris in November 2024 to win his second term in office.
In 2025, the U.S. Olympic and Paralympic Committee announced that it plans to follow U.S. President Donald Trump’s executive order banning transgender women from women’s sports.
On Monday, a federal judge temporarily blocked Paramount Skydance’s efforts to complete its purchase of Warner Bros. Discovery, ruling that the proposed $111-billion merger “raises serious questions” about whether the combination violates U.S. antitrust law.
District Judge Araceli Martínez-Olguín, based in Oakland, granted a request for a temporary restraining order from a coalition of 12 state attorneys general, led by California Atty. Gen. Rob Bonta, to freeze the deal while the court delves more closely into its impact on markets.
The order pauses the deal for 14 days. Martínez-Olguín’s ruling sets up a showdown for Aug. 3, when she considers a motion for a preliminary injunction — which, if granted, could tie up the deal for months in advance of a trial.
“This is a critical first win in our case to ensure this megamerger never sees the light of day,” Bonta said in a statement. “History tells the tale of what happens when a few people have great power over markets that are central to Americans’ lives: fewer opportunities for more people, worse products and services for all people.”
Two century-old film studios — with rights to Harry Potter, Batman, Scooby-Doo, “Top Gun,” “Ted Lasso” and “Game of Thrones” — would be combined, and HBO, CNN and HGTV would come under new ownership.
“The judge basically said, ‘Look, let’s not race to the finish line here,’” Eric Talley, a Columbia Law School professor, said in an interview. “At the end of the day, maybe this thing gets signed off on, but I think the AGs are going to be given a fair chance to bring their claims forward.”
The ruling dealt a blow to tech scion David Ellison’s efforts to quickly finalize his massive merger, which has the support of President Trump. Ellison wants to complete the deal by September to avoid a higher payout to Warner Bros. Discovery shareholders.
Paramount, in a statement, said the restraining order simply preserves the status quo, which Paramount had already pledged to do in court papers last week that offered to hold off on finalizing the transaction.
“We are confident the evidence will demonstrate that the State AGs’ antitrust arguments are without merit as their alleged markets and claims of anticompetitive effects are without any basis in modern market realities,” Paramount said in the statement.
Larry Ellison, co-founder of software giant Oracle, is bankrolling his son’s ambitions to acquire a second major entertainment company in less than a year. The Ellison family acquired the smaller Paramount in August.
The Democratic state attorneys general, including from New York, New Mexico, Nevada, Oregon and Washington, filed their lawsuit a week ago.
The 37-page lawsuit alleges that Paramount’s proposed takeover — the largest Hollywood deal in decades — would violate the U.S. Clayton Antitrust Act, a century-old law to prevent mergers that weaken competition and raise costs for consumers.
The lawsuit represents the stiffest challenge to a deal that had been swiftly clearing its various regulatory hurdles. Nearly two dozen regulators from around the globe, including Australia, Austria and Saudi Arabia, have already signed off.
The U.S. Justice Department last month approved the merger, saying the combination would probably bolster competition — not harm it. That decision wasn’t a surprise because Trump has been rooting for a CNN shakeup. The president told the network’s Jake Tapper earlier this month: “We’re trying to have CNN go on a normal path.”
“This merger is lawful, pro-competitive, and will benefit consumers, creators, workers, and the entertainment industry,” Paramount said. “We will continue to vigorously defend the transaction and will look forward to the hearings on the substance of the State AGs’ action.”
Paramount shares slid 2% to $8.57 on Monday. Warner shares tumbled nearly 4% to $25.86 — the stock’s lowest mark this year.
Martínez-Olguín’s order came after a hearing in Oakland on Friday that represented an opening salvo between the two sides in the fight over a merger that would dramatically reshape the entertainment industry.
“In many ways this case is a poster child for a much larger set of questions — some of which are specific to the entertainment industry but many are more specific to our regulatory state in general,” Talley said.
Because of the case’s expedited status, the judge said she looked closely at only one of the three markets where the plaintiff states allege the merger could bring anticompetitive harms — wide-release Hollywood films.
“Plaintiffs present compelling evidence that the combined firm resulting from the transaction will possess substantial market share in the wide-release theatrical distribution market,” Martínez-Olguín wrote in her 10-page order.
If allowed to merge, Paramount-Warner Bros. would control about 27% of the market of films that are initially released into more than 3,000 theaters.
“On this combined firm market share alone, the Court is persuaded that it can presume the proposed merger is likely to violate antitrust laws,” the judge wrote.
The ruling doesn’t signal that the states will win but, Talley said: “This is an important mark in the road that suggests that, in the eyes of the judge, at least one of their allegations has the seeds of a valid case.”
Paramount and Warner Bros. Discovery are “temporarily enjoined and restrained from closing or consummating the transaction or taking any steps, directly or indirectly, to integrate or consolidate their operations pursuant to the transaction,” the judge wrote.
The order extends to all officers, attorneys, and “other persons who are in active concert or participation with Defendants,” Martínez-Olguín wrote.
The merger is far from dead, Emarketer senior analyst Ross Benes said in a statement after the ruling.
“The order is likely to be a speed bump,” Benes wrote. “Thanks to the company’s symbiotic relationship with Trump, most challenges ahead that could stop the deal will be steamrolled.”
Claire Howard, 48, flew from Birmingham to Beauvais, northern France, for a day of food, sightseeing and sunshine — she was back in the UK by midnight and said the whole trip cost just £70
22:16, 19 Jul 2026Updated 22:16, 19 Jul 2026
Claire Howard jetted off to France for lunch(Image: Jam Press)
A teacher hopped on a plane to France for lunch and claims it was more affordable than a standard day out in the UK.
Claire Howard jetted off to Beauvais, France, for a leisurely day of dining, exploring and sunshine and was back home before midnight. The 48-year-old woman found return Ryanair flights for merely £27 and secured them a month beforehand.
The early morning flight departed Birmingham at approximately 7.30am, with the homebound journey leaving at 11pm. Her husband gave her a lift to the airport, and she caught a £1.80 bus to Beauvais that took 15 minutes. Claire, who is a mum, believes the entire trip, including flights, buses, food, and drink, came to roughly £70.
Claire, from Birmingham, said: “I’ve been to Paris a few times and didn’t want to travel in from Beauvais as Paris is really pricey and busy.
“I just wanted to see what was actually in Beauvais itself for a relaxing day of wandering, eating, and drinking. I just saw on Skyscanner that return flights were only £27, so I went for it.
“It’s exciting to go to a different country just for lunch or to explore for a day. The bus from the airport to the centre is very cheap. It’s just a different feeling abroad.
“It makes it feel much more like an adventure than just going somewhere at home. I don’t want to pay £50 to go to the cinema and lunch here in a shopping centre when I can go and experience so much more abroad for a very reasonable price.”
The English teacher spent her morning exploring the city’s weekly Saturday market, treating herself to a coffee and a pain au chocolat for just £4. She then unwound with a drink in the town square, soaking up live music before hopping in a £10 Uber to Plan d’Eau du Canada, a beloved lakeside destination.
For lunch, she put together an £8 French-style picnic featuring a supermarket baguette, cheese, and a small bottle of wine, which she enjoyed while reading and sunbathing beside the water. Her packed itinerary also took in Beauvais Cathedral and the neighbouring Musée de l’Oise, both of which were completely free to enter.
The day wrapped up with a Pad Thai supper at a nearby Thai restaurant for roughly £10, before she made her way back to the airport for her evening flight home. She also picked up an £8 bracelet as a memento of her trip.
Claire said: “I’d say it could probably be done even cheaper. I do stay over in some places depending on flight times but it wasn’t necessary for this trip as the flight times fit and I could still have an evening meal and a full day.
“There’s no point in staying over to get a flight home the next morning as it’s a waste of accommodation money.” Claire admits she’s become completely addicted to budget day trips overseas after stumbling across bargain flights from Birmingham Airport, jetting off to a new destination almost every month.
Just this year alone, she’s already ticked off Bergamo in Italy, Malaga in Spain, Valetta in Malta, Poznan in Poland, and Porto in Portugal. She’s already snapped up return flights to Poland and Berlin in August for just £70.
Claire said: “I’m just led by what is possible and affordable. I can’t take time off at all in term time but I have Tuesdays off so I do like to make use of them.
“I just love the way you can do and see so much in the same time that you might waste a day at home just watching Netflix and doomscrolling. I usually find the best prices four to six weeks in advance. My husband doesn’t like short trips so he’s not jealous.”
Benn, 29, had earlier said Garcia is “like a big child, a spoiled brat”.
“He throws his toys out of the pram on social media, throwing little tantrums,” he added.
“I’m not too concerned about this little influencer. He ain’t a fighter. He can say whatever he wants, it ain’t going to make a difference come 12 September.”
Benn then pointed to himself and said: “12-round war proven. I don’t quit, I don’t stay down on one knee,” referring to Garcia’s loss to Gervonta Davis in 2023.
Garcia, 27, responded by saying Benn’s “not gonna make it to 12, he’s not good enough”.
“You think I’m going to let a guy from the UK come here and beat me and take my belt? You’ve lost your mind,” Garcia added.
Born and raised in California, Garcia has Mexican heritage and often carries both an American and Mexican flag into the ring.
“Wait till I smack you up and make you quit,” Benn added. “You have no heart. You’re not Mexican, bro.”
Garcia later said he would stop Benn inside five rounds before the stage was cleared for a face-off between the fighters.
Benn’s father, former world champion Nigel Benn, was standing behind him as he repeatedly shouted “you quit” and told Garcia “you ain’t got no heart. I’ll test it, I’ll test that chin too”.
Garcia replied by saying: “This about to be easy work. You not good enough to beat me. Your dad’s gonna stop the fight. I promise you.”
A few weeks after lifestyle influencer Nara Smith revealed her daughter’s private cancer battle, the mom of four is sharing that Whimsy is in remission.
The content creator, well known for making elaborate meals from scratch while wearing glamorous ensembles, told her following of 12.6 million on TikTok and 4.9 million on Instagram on Friday that she and her husband, model Lucky Blue Smith, have spent the last eight months processing their 2-year-old daughter’s health battle.
The parents debated whether they should share such a private part of their lives and decided to wait until Whimsy had finished her treatments and doctors had a better grasp on the likely outcome.
“Now that she’s finally in remission, it felt like I could find the words to share,” Nara Smith said. “The whole point of me sharing our experience was to shed light on what so many families go through and battle privately. Going through chemo treatments opened my eyes to how expensive medical care is, and what a toll it takes on families specifically.”
“Lucky and I have been trying to return to everyday life and taking it day by day,” she continued. “I don’t know whether life will ever feel normal again, but we’re trying to navigate this next chapter the best that we can.”
Smith, 24, said in an Instagram video earlier this month that Whimsy was diagnosed with cancer late last year.
“When we saw something suspicious on her, we took her to the ER, and they didn’t quite know what to make of it,” she said in the video. “So when we took her into our pediatrician, I just remember him going really quiet and calm and my heart dropped in that moment. I don’t know whether it was my gut telling me something or just a mom’s intuition, but the first thing that I felt was she has cancer.”
The content creator said her daughter underwent numerous X-rays, ultrasounds and a biopsy before the hospital team confirmed the cancer diagnosis. Smith did not specify the type of cancer but said that the illness had spread and that Whimsy needed chemotherapy.
In recent weeks, Smith has shared heartwrenching glimpses into the family’s battle, including photos of Whimsy’s curls being shaved and her bald head bedazzled with gems.
“Cancer has a way of taking things you never realized you’d grieve,” she wrote alongside a video of the parents shaving Whimsy’s head. “The day I ran my fingers through her hair, strands coating them, I realized I wouldn’t be brushing Whimsy’s hair much longer. It’s such a small thing, until it isn’t.
“It wasn’t just hair. It was the little curls I tucked behind her ears, the wispy strands that caught the sunlight, and all the ordinary moments I never imagined I’d miss.
“If sharing these pieces of our story helps even one family feel less alone, or encourages one person to learn more about childhood cancer, then this vulnerable part of our lives is worth opening,” Smith wrote. “Today her curls are returning.”
In Friday’s video, Smith said that she’s been researching charities and foundations to support and included links to GoFundMe pages for children who are battling cancer.
Nara and Lucky Blue Smith, 28, married in 2020 and share four children: Whimsy Lou, eldest daughter Rumble Honey, son Slim Easy, and infant Fawnie Golden. Lucky Blue also shares a daughter with his ex-girlfriend, social media star Stormi Bree.
Times staff writer Alexandra Del Rosario contributed to this report.
Bet your bottom dollar that Son Heung-min, LAFC’s $26 million man — the record MLS fee for an incoming player — would peel himself off the mat and clear away the cobwebs and sorrows of the past few weeks and months.
He did it with a sizzling, right-footed goal in the 57th minute of LAFC’s 3-0 victory Friday over the Galaxy in the 27th rendition of El Tráfico and the first this year. Also, the first crosstown showdown of Son’s so-far, so-so tenure in L.A.
His arrival last August from Tottenham Hotspur in England’s Premier League was met with uncommon fanfare. Here came another global soccer icon to Major League Soccer — and to L.A., where the South Korean sensation was welcomed enthusiastically by a Korean diaspora that’s about 250,000 strong.
LAFC forward Son Heung-Min celebrates after scoring a goal against the Galaxy at Dignity Health Sports Park in Carson on Friday.
(Ronaldo Bolanos/Los Angeles Times)
The first Asian player to win the Premier League Golden Boot, Mayor Karen Bass spoke at Son’s introductory news conference. The Dodgers invited him to throw out the first pitch on Shohei Ohtani’s bobblehead night (and turned around this season and produced a bobblehead of Son throwing that pitch).
His first LAFC goal — a free kick over the wall in a 1-1 draw with FC Dallas — was named the MLS’s goal of the year. After notching 173 goals across all competitions with Tottenham Hotspur, he finished with nine goals in his first 10 regular-season appearances for LAFC.
Then the scoring stopped. As if someone turned off the spigot.
Before Friday, Son recorded nine assists but no goals over 13 unlucky matches this season. He went 44 shots without striking a goal. And 237 days between goals, according to The Chosun Daily’s tally.
Yeah, just a bit of what his LAFC teammate Mark Delgado described as “a drought.”
Most painfully, Son also was shut out in South Korea’s disastrously short World Cup stay.
South Korea entered the tournament with the expectation that its “golden generation” – led by Son – would reach the knockout stage. But after it opened Group A with a 2-1 win over Czechia, the Koreans lost 1-0 to Mexico and 1-0 to South Africa and failed to qualify for the round of 32 as one of the eight best third-placed teams.
The uproar in South Korea that followed included the country’s president demanding an investigation.
Mexico’s Julián Quiñones and South Korea’s Son Heung-min vie for the ball during a World Cup match on June 18 in Guadalajara, Mexico.
(Ricardo Mazalan / Ap Photo/ricardo Mazalan)
For his part, a heartbroken Son shared a statement on Instagram: “I don’t dare to convey the disappointment and hurt of the fans with a single word ‘sorry.’ So even saying those words feels insufficient.”
It was impossible not to wonder: What the heck?
Where was the version of Son that everyone was celebrating a year ago?
How did the 34-year-old’s game decline so suddenly?
Was this a classic case of overpromising and underdelivering?
It still might be. LAFC — now 8-5-3 and third in MLS’s Western Conference — is going to face tougher competition in the days ahead than the work-in-progress Galaxy.
But on Friday, the center-forward was aggressive and in control. He took two shots in the first seven minutes, both blocked by defenders. He toyed with the Galaxy just before halftime, lining up to take a penalty before turning it over to Denis Bouanga, who scored to make it 2-0.
Then he and Delgado exchanged passes in the second half to set up Son’s first goal in darn near forever.
LAFC coach Marc Dos Santos gave Son 10 days off after the World Cup, but Son said he was eager to return to L.A., because he so enjoys the camaraderie of this club.
Those good vibes were on display when Son’s shot whizzed between two defenders and the outstretched arms of Galaxy goalkeeper Novak Micovic.
Son put his finger to his lips in the universal “shhh” sign and then did his patented camera celebration — click! — miming a snapshot. Because every goal is precious, and let’s be real, you never know when another will come.
LAFC’s Son Heung-Min celebrates after scoring what could be a breakthough goal against the rival Galaxy at Dignity Health Sports Park in Carson on Friday.
(Ronaldo Bolanos/Los Angeles Times)
Around him, the crowd and his colleagues went wild.
Dos Santos did some vein-popping flexing on the sideline. Mathieu Choinière pumped his fists as though he were operating a handcrank. Jacob Shaffelburg and Ryan Hollingshead flanked him on either side as though posing for a family photo. Son’s hair got tousled and nobody wearing black and gold could stop smiling.
“He deserves it, coming back from an emotional World Cup, and joining us right away,” Dos Santos said.
“He’s a great guy,” Delgado said. “He’s been in a bit of a goal drought, and, you know, we all want him to score. We all, he’s always smiling, and in training, he’s always scoring.
“And we’re like, ‘yeah, we need that, we need that!’ Trying to give him confidence,” Delgado continued. “And in games, he finally is getting that confidence back. So to see him score and put the ball in the net and just see his face light up with a smile is awesome. We all want to see him succeed here. We all want him to lead this club like we know he can.”
Now the goal is to keep the goals coming.
“Scoring the first goal of this season, I think it [will] help me,” Son said. “I think, definitely, going forward through the second part of the season. So, let’s keep going, and hope Wednesday [against Salt Lake] I can score another goal.”
South Korean President Lee Jae Myung (R, front) attends a press conference with reporters covering him and the presidential office at Cheong Wa Dae in Seoul, South Korea, 15 July 2026. Photo by YONHAP / EPA
July 17 (Asia Today) — South Korean President Lee Jae Myung said Friday that the government will designate Dec. 3 as People’s Sovereignty Day to commemorate citizens who resisted the 2024 martial law declaration and preserve the country’s democratic values.
Lee made the announcement during a citizen event marking the launch of the presidential Light Committee at Cheong Wa Dae on Constitution Day.
“The government of popular sovereignty will firmly uphold the most basic and fundamental principle that the people are the owners of the country,” Lee said.
He said South Korea must ensure that democracy and popular sovereignty are never threatened again.
“No one should attempt to stand above the Constitution,” Lee said.
The presidential Light Committee was established in March to promote projects preserving the spirit of citizens who opposed the Dec. 3, 2024, martial law declaration. The committee officially launched Monday.
Park Mi-kyung, chairwoman of the Gwangju Federation for Environmental Movement, was appointed to lead the committee.
Lee recalled the citizens who rushed to the National Assembly after martial law was declared, remained outside the legislature for several nights over concerns that martial law could be imposed again and participated in outdoor demonstrations calling for the president’s impeachment during the winter.
“The great people of our country chose solidarity over division, peace over violence and action over silence,” Lee said.
“They clearly demonstrated that South Korean democracy may be shaken, but it will never collapse.”
Lee said the committee will preserve and document what his administration calls the “Revolution of Light,” referring to the public movement opposing martial law.
“Through the Light Committee launched Monday, we will remember and record this great history for generations,” Lee said.
He said the government will designate Dec. 3 as People’s Sovereignty Day so citizens can remember the events together each year.
“This will allow the values of democracy to be fully passed down to future generations forever,” Lee said.
The president also announced plans to systematically collect and preserve records related to the public opposition to martial law.
The government will develop a digital archive to document citizen participation and promote South Korea’s democratic experience internationally, he said.
Lee described the country’s model of citizen-led democracy as “K-democracy.”
“I hope the brilliant lights of many colors that our citizens raised in the streets and public squares will become a bright beacon illuminating democracy around the world, beyond South Korea,” Lee said.
The Greek capital of Athens is, perhaps, the liveliest, most energy-filled and funnest city I have ever visited. But it is also one where locals are struggling to see a future
Athens’ walls are filled full of stridently anti-tourist graffiti(Image: Olivia)
“100% I will leave. I think of leaving every day.”
The words of Stella, a renters’ union member who is slowly but surely being ground down by one of Europe’s great cities.
When I visited Athens in the spring, I fell hard for it. The city is an energy-filled network of roads and alleyways, taken up with pedestrians, moped drivers and cars jostling for space. The sprawl stretches to the Parnitha, Hymettus, Penteli and Egaleo mountains on three sides, and the sea on the other. All four corners can be seen from the top of Mount Lycabettus, which rises 277m above Athens, letting climbers come up for air and a respite from the intensity down at street level.
It is home to some of the world’s best collections, not least at the National Archeological Museum. I snuck in to see treasures including the Mask of Agamemnon before it shuts, potentially for years, while David Chipperfield gets busy expanding and upgrading.
Outside museum opening hours, recommended activities include filling your pockets with Dreamies to befriend the impressive cat population, and watching a film at one of Athens’ 60-or-so open-air cinemas. The Thision not only serves ice-cold sour cherry drinks, it allows guests to light up and gaze at the Acropolis framed perfectly above the cinema screen.
From this tourist’s perspective, it is a dream to visit. Fun, hot, cheap and friendly.
But for many living in Athens, the city is quickly becoming a place they don’t recognise and no longer love.
The disquiet is obvious as soon as you arrive. ‘F**k Airbnb’ graffiti is everywhere, as are anti-Israel tags that more than border on the anti-semitic. On the random weekend I visited in June, the streets were taken over by tens of thousands of protesters – a very common occurrence.
As seen through the eyes of a Londoner, where political action is minimal, everything is increasingly clean and consumerism dominates every inch aside from the parks, Athens feels much more real. On Saturday mornings, markets fill streets virtually free from major chains. On Saturday nights, way past midnight, you can walk into a taverna to have a five-piece band serenade you and a waiter apologise that they ‘only have home-cooked food’.
But this perspective is a tourist’s one. It is not shared by Athenians.
“Athens is becoming more and more unfriendly. The places we used to hang out, they’re being destroyed, one by one. Soon I won’t be able to recognise it,” Stella tells me.
A local friend agrees. “It’s not like it used to be,” he says as we walk by a shiny coffee shop, a queue of tourists waiting for an iced freddo.
In the years following the Greek debt crisis, anarchists ruled much of the city. Their stronghold was Exarcheia. Chains were hounded out. Buildings converted into squats. Police rarely dared to tread there, particularly not on the anniversary of Alexandros Grigoropoulos’s death: the teenager murdered by police at the leafy intersection of Mesolongiou and Tzavella Streets.
Things began to change, and quickly, when Kostas Bakoyannis was elected mayor in 2019. He vowed to transform Exarcheia into a ‘model’ neighbourhood. Police went in, flushing out drug dealers and asylum seekers who had long received shelter in squats run by passionate locals.
This feeling of things changing has deeper roots. After winning independence from the Ottomans in 1833 and becoming Greece’s new capital the year after, what had been a ruined village of 4,000, where locals sheltered in tents beneath the Acropolis, took off. Its population had grown tenfold by 1870, tripling again over the following 25 years.
A century and a bit on, and it’s nearing four million. Many live in five or six-story polykatoikia apartment blocks that shot up in the 1930s, when the government encouraged locals to exchange their land for a stake in new builds. Today, these ‘antiparochi’ families remain major landlords.
This, according to Stella, is where the real battle for the soul of Athens is being fought. “Xarchia, where I work, used to be the most leftist area. It is famous for anarchy, but now it is a tourist area. It is a ghost of itself,” she said.
Looser property laws have allowed many home-owning Athenians to get in on the action, renting out their places on platforms such as Airbnb. Now, in the small central Athens area alone, there are thousands of holiday properties of this nature. Encouraging so many normal Athenians to become holiday let landlords means they’re much less likely to “bite the hand that feeds”, according to Stella. Or in other words, vote for parties and policies that stop the spread of holiday rentals.
And if they don’t, then Athens will become more unaffordable. According to the OECD, house prices in Greece increased by 69% between 2017 and 2024. A much faster growth rate than incomes. As a percentage of their total disposable income, Greeks now face the highest housing costs in Europe, north of 35%. In just 12 months from 2022, rent rocketed 11% across the country.
If those who make Athens the city that it is can no longer afford to live there, as many already can’t, then it loses what makes it so great.
At the westernmost tip of the Gower peninsula, Rhossili Bay is a gloriously wide sweep of sand, backed by dunes and licked with waves perfect for bodyboarding and surfing. Wild ponies graze on the southern headland, while walkers time their trip across to the serpent-like Worm’s Head promontory to not get cut off by the tide.
In summer there’s an added draw: 100,000 sunflowers. A 20-minute walk from the Worm’s Head National Trust car park, the flowers hit their peak from late July into August. Across the site there are pick-your-own fields, a trail to follow between wooden animal structures and giant swings (for the photo ops as much as the fun). Entry to the sunflowers £4 weekdays, £4.50 weekends, rhossilisunflowers.co.uk
Fabulous forest play in Dorset
Forestry England’s play trail at Moors Valley country park.
Deep in the woods at Moors Valley country park are giant ant nests and snake pits, huge hawks and spiders, all stars of Forestry England’s play trail. It wiggles for a mile through the trees with tunnels to crawl through, slides to whiz down and crocodile-shaped balancing beams. There’s also the inclusive beehive with double-width slide and quiet areas for those requiring less stimulation.
New for this year is Woodland Rhapsody, a musical play structure with gravel-filled rain makers and drums to bang, and the Timber area, which tells the story of a forester’s job, with pulleys to sort seeds, timber tangles to climb and a big wooden harvester with steering wheel and levers to operate. Free (car parking charges apply), moors-valley.co.uk
A wine (and wildlife) hike in the Surrey Hills
The vineyard train at Denbies Wine Estate.
Wine hikes, with scenic trails linking vineyards, are often associated with mainland Europe, but here’s a great English alternative, using the North Downs Way.
Start at Albury Vineyard (take the 32 bus from Guildford train station), where the self-guided wildlife walk through the vines passes bat and barn owl boxes, bug hotels, beehives, wildflower meadows and a pond. It’s then a seven-mile stomp to Denbies Wine Estate to board the vineyard “train”, the carriages hooked up to the back of a Land Rover. Other shorter walking loops start and end at Denbies Estate, passing artist James Tunnard’s wavy wooden seat, Radius, and up Denbies Hillside, which is alive with butterflies and wild orchids – the perfect picnic spot. Albury Vineyard wildlife walk: free (suggested donation £10 a group to Surrey Wildlife Trust), alburyvineyard.com. Denbies vineyard train tour: £12.50 adults, £6.95 children, denbies.co.uk
Spot dolphins in the Moray Firth
Bottlenose dolphins from the most northerly colony in the world. Photograph: Andreas Berthold/Alamy
About 200 bottlenose dolphins live in the waters north of Inverness, the most northerly colony in the world. They are a hardy bunch, hunting and swimming around the Moray Firth and beyond all year, but sightings of them throwing fish and leaping from the water are more frequent in the summer months.
The Scottish Dolphin Centre at Spey Bay is not only a good place to get the binoculars out (there are plenty to borrow – keep an eye out for ospreys, seals and otters, too), but also a hub of marine learning. Housed in a former 18th-century fishing station, there are tours of the old ice house, an interactive dolphin exhibition with live wildlife cameras, plus river rambles and nature-themed holiday clubs during the Scottish school summer holidays. Free, holiday clubs £1.50-£3 per child, dolphincentre.whales.org
Celebrate David Hockney in West Yorkshire
The bookshop at Salt Mills.
The late David Hockney’s oil painting Salts Mill depicted the building’s Victorian facade glowing orange and the Yorkshire hillsides glinting emerald green. It was a present for Jonathan Silver, Hockney’s friend, who transformed this former textile mill into a cultural hub, and it hangs in the entrance to the building.
Upstairs there are more of Hockney’s works in the 20 Flowers for 2025 and Some Bigger Pictures exhibition, which runs until January 2027. It’s a free, inspiring space – perhaps pick up a sketch book and paints in the shop afterwards. Plus there are burgers and pizzas at Salts Diner for lunch, the Peace Museum (also inside the mill) to potter around, and a lovely walk along the canal to Bingley. Free, saltsmill.org.uk
Visit the Quentin Blake centre in London
Ever Feel Like… by Murugiah, one of the exhibits at the Quentin Blake centre. Photograph: Benedict Johnson
Revered illustrator Quentin Blake has been championing a museum of his craft for 20 years, and in June, aged 93, he opened the Quentin Blake Centre for Illustration, a permanent home for the art form in an 18th-century waterworks in Clerkenwell. Blake is most famous for his scribbly style, as seen in his illustrations for Roald Dahl’s stories, but all kinds of work is celebrated here, from comics to graphic murals. Plenty is free to wander: a library in the former Engine House, a cafe in the Boiler House, as well as the gardens.
Paid exhibitions delve into Blake’s extensive archive and spotlight contemporary illustrators. Budding artists can try out fabric painting and printmaking at the Creative Studio during the summer holidays (Wednesdays, 10.30am-12.30pm). Exhibition: £15 adults, £6 children, under-5s free, family tickets from £23 (1 adult + 3 children), qbcentre.org.uk
Count butterflies on the Hampshire Downs
Magdalen Hill Down is a great place for counting butterflies. Photograph: Sarah Womersley
The wildlife charity Butterfly Conservation predicts it’s going to be a bumper summer, thanks in part to a massive migration of painted lady butterflies from Africa. Its Big Butterfly Count runs until 9 August – the world’s largest butterfly survey – and last year 125,000 citizen scientists each spent 15 minutes outside noting numbers of butterflies and moths.
The organisation’s Magdalen Hill Down nature reserve on a chalk hillside just outside Winchester would be a good place to count – 46 hectares of chalk grassland, wildflower meadows and woodland, which are home to butterflies such as the adonis blue, chalk hill blue and brown argus. Free, butterfly-conservation.org
Monastic life on a Pembrokeshire island
Priory Beach on the car-free Caldey Island. Photograph: Whitcombe RD/Getty Images
The first monks arrived on Caldey Island off Pembrokeshire’s south coast in the sixth century. Today, the Cistercian order are as well known for their chocolate and lavender perfume-making as for their vow of nightly silence (with no unnecessary speech during the day). It’s 20 minutes by boat from Tenby to this peaceful escape, where paths wind through woodland and along cliffs to the working lighthouse, soft sands of Priory Beach and a chocolate and fudge kitchen.
This summer, there’s a new natural play area and the Monastic Story Hall, which charts the island’s history and explores monastic life, as well as highlighting the unique wildlife here, which includes red squirrels, hedgehogs, seals and Manx shearwaters. Adults £24.95, children £12.95 (under-4s free), family (2 adults + 2 children) £64.95, caldeyislandwales.com
Watch history come to life in County Durham
Epic battles are relived at Kynren.
Each summer, on Saturday evenings in Bishop Auckland, Boudicca battles against the Romans. Vikings invade, knights joust and a full-size steam locomotive chugs across a 7.5-acre stage as part of Kynren – An Epic Tale of England. With a 1,000-strong cast, the outdoor show whips through 2,000 years of history, and now has an equally dramatic daytime counterpart, Kynren – The Storied Lands.
The five daily shows offer a journey through time and legend, with immersive re-enactments and live-action storytelling, featuring swooping birds of prey, charging horses, ancient monsters from the deep, a Viking village and a maze-like Victorian imaginarium. From £30 adults, £20 children,18 July-12 September, kynren.com
A bat safari by punt in Cambridge
Searching for bats by punt on the River Cam.
Bats might have their big moment at Halloween, but the best time to see them fluttering around is the height of summer, just after sunset. One of the most atmospheric ways is on a Bat Safari Punting tour along the River Cam. The trips take place every Friday and Saturday evening in summer – departure times vary depending on dusk. Run by the local wildlife trust (with 50% of ticket sales going towards its work), guides use bat detectors to listen for the clicks and squeaks from pipistrelle and Daubenton’s bats along the riverbanks of Grantchester Meadows. In late July and early August there’s a chance to see the mothers and pups in tandem flight in the night sky. Family row for two £63, three £73, scudamores.com
Bathers at the six-lane Sea Lanes Canary Wharf, which floats in Eden Dock.
There has been talk of floating lidos and river swimming in London for years, and this summer a spot at Ham, in the west, became the capital’s first designated bathing water area on the Thames.
Elsewhere in London, Sea Lanes Canary Wharfopened a 50-metre six-lane pool in June, bobbing in Eden Dock and designed for swimming lengths, though over-8s who are strong swimmers are welcome. Plus, there’s a summer programme of free open-air cinema, mini golf and other fun around Canary Wharf for afterwards. For younger children, the free Royal Docks Summer Splash at Royal Victoria Dock has a paddling pool, deckchairs and sandpits. Sea Lanes: pay-per swim £10, sealanescanarywharf.co.uk. Summer Splash: free, 24 July–16 August, royaldocks.london
Waterworld in Staffordshire
The UK’s largest aqua park at Cliff Lakes.
North-east of Birmingham, Cliff Lakes is part of a series of human-made lakes along the River Tame, formed from former gravel pits and sand quarries. Today, the tranquil waters are home to a host of activities: open water swimming lanes (popular with training triathletes), boating and wakeboarding, a paddleboarding school and the UK’s largest aqua park with floating assault courses. The newest challenge this summer is the X Tower, a 12-metre-tall inflatable with six slides – four with kickers to send thrill-seekers high into the air before splashdown (age 12 and over). There’s a dedicated kids park for younger water babies, while Aqua Chimp is a high ropes course suspended above the water. £25pp (over-6s) including parking, wetsuit, aqua socks and buoyancy aid, clifflakes.co.uk
Henry Moore in London and Hertfordshire
Henry Moore’s sculpture Large Figure in a Shelter at his studio and gardens in Hertfordshire. Photograph: Min Young Lim
Henry Moore and his wife, Irina, moved to rural Hertfordshire from London in 1940 after their home was damaged in the Blitz. For the next 46 years the sculptor worked at Hoglands, creating some of his best-known works. The farmhouse and outbuilding studios have been preserved as the Henry Moore Studio & Gardens, his huge works sitting, as he envisioned them, among the lawns, orchards and woodlands. This year, the Sheep Field Barn reopened as a gallery with hands-on spaces for messy monoprinting sessions and collaborative sculpture workshops.
Kew Gardens in London is having its own Moore moment, displaying 30 of his sculptures for Henry Moore: Monumental Nature (until 31 January 2027), with a family trail including prompts for sketching and games. Henry Moore Studio & Gardens: £23 adults, £11 children, under-5s free, family tickets from £38, henry-moore.org. Kew Gardens: £24 adults, £2 children, under-4s free, kew.org
See osprey fledglings in Mid Wales
Telyn, Idris and their three chicks at the Dyfi Osprey Project. Photograph: Montgomeryshire Wildlife Trust
Ospreys disappeared from the UK in 1916, the victims of persecution and egg-collecting, but populations have been slowly recovering since the 1950s. In Wales there are now five breeding pairs that return each year to lay their eggs after wintering in west Africa. Telyn and Idris, one of these pairs, are now raising three chicks, which hatched at the end of May, at the Dyfi Osprey Project outside Machynlleth.
The centre’s YouTube channel has more than 20,000 subscribers following their progress. At the Cors Dyfi nature reserve, visitors get a front-row seat – the observatory tower less than 200 metres from the nest, and this summer those chicks will begin to fly, then learn to hunt for themselves. Adults £8, children £4, dyfiospreyproject.com
Biking in Robin Hood country
Sherwood Pines has a network of trails for all abilities.
Forestry England’s Sherwood Pines is an activity-filled corner of Sherwood Forest, north Nottinghamshire, more popular these days with mountain bikers than merry men. The 1,336-hectare (3,300-acre) woods has a network of trails for all abilities: advanced dirt jumps, single track downhills filled with berms and rollers, and the four-mile Maid Marion family loop for gentle off-road cycling (bike hire available). The new Pedal and Play trail allows the next generation of freeriders to learn on three loops of increasing skill, including one wide enough for adaptive bike users. King John’s Castle with its wobbly bridge, climbing tree and dungeon, is opposite for a post-pedal play. Free (parking charges apply), forestryengland.uk/sherwood-pines
A tidal swimming pool tour on the Fife coast
Swimmers in Cellardyke tidal pool, Fife. Photograph: Porridge Picture Library/Alamy
In the early 20th century, tidal pools were all the rage as bathers discovered the health benefits of salt water. Up and down the coast rugged lidos were created, which fill with seawater at high tide, offering a sheltered swim away from waves and currents. The pools at St Monans, Pittenweem and Cellardyke sit on the Fife coast and have been revamped in recent years by community-driven projects. Start at boulder-edged St Monans; then at Pittenweem add a round of mini golf which funds the pool’s upkeep; and after finishing at Cellardyke have wood-fired pizza and coffee. This stretch of East Neuk is strung with pretty fishing villages (each with top-notch fish and chips) linked by the beautiful Fife Coastal Path. Free, cellardyketidalpool.com, thewestbraes.co.uk, St Monans
Cosmic land art in Dumfries and Galloway
The Multiverse stone circle with the Andromeda and Milky Way hills behind at Charles Jencks’ Crawick Multiverse. Photograph: Makasana Photo/Alamy
A 400m-long path lined with giant standing stones cuts north to south across the gently rolling hillsides of southern Scotland. This isn’t the mysterious work of Neolithic man, but of American visionary land artist Charles Jencks.
The pathway splits his Crawick Multiverse down the middle: on one side are the spiralling mounds of the Milky Way and Andromeda; on the other, a semicircle of trees, boulders and rusted scrap collide in jagged formations, representing the birth of a billion new stars as galaxies slam into each other. The 22-hectare site was an abandoned opencast mine, and Jencks turned tonnes of excavated earth and rock into an otherworldly sculptural installation. Adults £8.50, children £5, crawickmultiverse.co.uk
Surf on a Blue Flag beach in North Shields
Tynemouth Longsands is a Blue Flag beach and home to Longsands Surf School.
Each year the Blue Flag awards (or equivalent Scotland Beach awards) recognise the cleanest, safest, most environmentally well-managed stretches of coast in the UK. In 2026, 144 made the cut, from the gorgeous curve of Gyllyngvase Beach near Falmouth to the remote Sands of Breckon in Shetland.
Among them is the dune-backed, mile-long Tynemouth Longsands, the north-east’s year-round surf hub, 50 minutes from Newcastle on the metro. Both Longsands Surf School and Tynemouth Surf Co offer board hire and lessons for all ages, and in summer the swell is also dotted with kayakers and paddleboarders. Head to Longsands Fish Kitchen for fish and chips after. Tynemouth Surf Co, kids’ lessons from £15 for 1.5 hours. Longsands Surf School, kids’ lessons from £22.50 for two hours.
Springwatch in County Fermanagh
Canoeing below the Crom Castle boathouse. Photograph: Brian Jannsen/Alamy
BBC’s Springwatch had a new home this year with Chris Packham and Michaela Strachan broadcasting live for the first time in Northern Ireland at the National Trust’s Crom Estate. Set along the shores of Upper Lough Erne, this is one of Ireland’s most important nature conservation areas, with a tapestry of habitats: ancient oak-tangled woodlands, reed-fringed wetlands and flower-filled meadows.
The programme followed the estate’s red squirrels, pine martens, otters and birds of prey across its 810 hectares, and throughout the summer young wildlife watchers can borrow a tracker pack to find some of the animals themselves. For older children there are guided canoeing sessions on the lough (over-12s), or hire a rowing boat for all the family to mess about on the water. Adults £9.50, children £4.75 (under-5s free), nationaltrust.org.uk
Thrills and red squirrels in the Cairngorms
The Cairngorms national park is great for outdoor adventures of all kinds. Head to the Landmark Forest Adventure Park near Carrbridge for action-packed attractions from a high-ropes course to a bouncy aerial net challenge, treetop trails, a water raft ride and a 10-metre climbing wall. Away from the high-tempo thrills, spot red squirrels among the Scots pines and climb the 105 steps of the forest tower to survey the Highland scenery through the telescope at the top. Adults from £31, children from £29 (under-3s free), landmarkpark.co.uk
NEW YORK — Shohei Ohtani was at the top of the Dodgers’ lineup Friday against the New York Yankees, five days after receiving an injection in his left knee. And he’s penciled in to pitch against the Philadelphia Phillies on Wednesday.
Ohtani received an orthovisc shot in his knee to lubricate the joint and relieve irritation, manager Dave Roberts said, and did not have it drained.
“It gives him some relief in his knee which we were hoping to get,” Roberts said. “Then the four days off with no activity which gives it a chance to settle in.”
Ohtani was expected to be in the lineup for all three games against the Yankees. He planned to play catch and throw off the mound in the coming days, and the team would monitor his response before finalizing pitching plans.
Taking the mound Wednesday would give Ohtani more recovery time heading into the team’s day off. When asked if Ohtani would shoulder two-way duties Wednesday, Roberts said, “We’ll see when we get there.”
Dodgers star Shohei Ohtani hits his 300th career home run against the Colorado Rockies at Dodger Stadium on July 7.
(Eric Thayer / Los Angeles Times)
When it isn’t possible to have Ohtani pitch before a day off, Roberts would like to rest him the following day.
“It’s all contingent on how his knee is feeling,” Roberts said of Ohtani’s second-half workload. “I think we are certainly more prepared to back off on the workload if it calls for it. But Shohei wants to be out there as much as he possibly can.”
Asked if Ohtani would need offseason surgery, Roberts said: “I would highly doubt that.”
Coming out of the break, the Dodgers shuffled their rotation to have Roki Sasaki, Emmet Sheehan and Yoshinobu Yamamoto face the Yankees in that order.
That leaves left-handed starters Eric Lauer and Justin Wrobleski (not necessarily in that order), to face the Phillies before Ohtani would take the mound.
Smith shut down
The Dodgers are shutting down catcher Will Smith from all baseball activities for a week as he continues to deal with a lingering neck injury. That pushes his return timeline back to at least August, if not later.
“It was flaring up, wasn’t recovering — however you want to word it,” Roberts said. “He didn’t feel like he was making any improvement.”
Smith has been sidelined since early June because of what he described as an inflamed disk. He initially treated it with rest and then an injection. But it still was bothering him during his latest buildup.
“I talked to the trainer, Thomas [Albert], today and he said that Will doesn’t feel any pain,” Roberts said. “Now with that, I think we’re in a much better spot.”
Dodgers utility player Kiké Hernández (strained left oblique) was set to begin a rehab assignment with triple-A Oklahoma City on Friday. And left-hander Blake Snell was scheduled to take the mound for two innings Saturday in his first minor-league rehab start since undergoing surgery to remove loose bodies in his elbow.
Air quality concerns
The MLB schedule got off to a smoky start out of the All-Star break. With wildfires in Canada raising air-quality concerns in the Northeast and Midwest on Thursday, the New York Mets’ game at Citizens Bank Park in Philadelphia was moved up an hour.
The smoke cleared over Yankee Stadium on Friday afternoon.
“I know that the players got a players’ union text that says it’s a full go,” Roberts said. “They feel good about it. The league feels good. I haven’t heard anything otherwise.”
2027 schedule
With a lockout widely expected to start Dec. 1 and no guarantee of an agreement in time to preserve the 2027 season, take MLB’s schedule announcement Thursday with a grain of salt.
Should collective bargaining negotiations wrap up in time, however, the Dodgers are set to open the season at Dodger Stadium on March 25 against the Atlanta Braves.
They end the season on the road, facing a pair of division rivals in the Colorado Rockies and Arizona Diamondbacks from Sept. 21-26.
Bryson DeChambeau thought he had finished Day 2 of the British Open in second place and just one stroke off the lead.
He apparently thinks that should still be the case — but it’s not.
After a lenghty, and at times animated, discussion involving DeChambeau, his caddie and officials, the U.S. golfer was assessed a two-stroke penalty that dropped him into a fifth-place tie and three strokes back.
Grant Moir, executive director of governance for The R&A, told reporters that DeChambeau was penalized “for inadvertently improving the area of his … intended backswing on the fifth hole when he was playing his second shot.”
Moir added that the penalty “applies even when the action is accidental, as it was in Bryson’s case.”
DeChambeau sent his tee shot 257 yards but far off to the right into tall fescue grass. He needed to step high to get to the ball but was able to hit it out of the area, eventually making bogey on the par-four hole. That score was later changed to triple-bogey, and DeChambeau officially finished the day at two-under 68.
“The player mustn’t move, bend or break any growing or attached natural object,” Moir said. “A player is allowed to fairly take their stance by taking reasonable actions to get to the ball and take a stance if in some situations that improves the condition affecting the stroke, but when doing so the player must take the least intrusive course of action to deal with the particular situation and is not entitled to normal stance or swing.”
At one point during his discussion with Moir, DeChambeau appeared to state that he might not play the next day. He did not speak with reporters afterward, other than to say he thought he played great and that he was going to hit balls on the driving range.
His agent, Brett Falkoff, said DeChambeau was told he was “not careful enough walking around a sensitive area,” adding that his client “certainly feels he was unfairly penalized.”
Asked if DeChambeau would play Saturday, Falkoff said, “Your guess is as good as mine.”
DeChambeau reportedly stayed out on the driving range until after dark, at times whistling, humming and singing while hitting balls and offering reporters snacks.
Lucas Herbert leads after the second round at eight-under, two strokes ahead of Jackson Suber, Cameron Young and Ryan Gerard.
