England’s Amy Jones, Heather Knight and Tammy Beaumont are all dismissed for a duck as England slump to 1-3 in their World Cup semi-final against South Africa.
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TAMPA, Fla. — Jake Guentzel and Anthony Cirelli each scored twice and the Tampa Bay Lightning beat the Ducks 4-3 on Saturday to break a four-game skid.
Nikita Kucherov had an assist for his 1,000th career point as Tampa Bay got its first home win of the season. Victor Hedman registered his 800th career point and Brandon Hagel picked up career point No. 300.
Jonas Johansson finished with 37 saves for Tampa Bay, which ended an 0-2-2 stretch with just its second win of the season (2-4-2)
Troy Terry, Jacob Trouba and Ryan Poehling scored for Anaheim, which lost in regulation for the first time in four games. Lukas Dostal finished with 29 saves.
Cirelli scored the tiebreaking goal on the power play with his second of the night with 3:15 left in the third period with a quick shot from the low slot.
Guentzel and Cirelli scored 2:01 apart in the second period to take a 3-1 lead. Guentzel directed Brayden Point’s pass in off his skate with 7:41 left on a play Kucherov got his 1,000th point.
Cirelli made it a two-goal lead as he pounced on a rebound with 5:40 remaining. Hedman and Hagel each hit their milestones on the goal.
Poehling and Terry scored 59 seconds apart to tie it 3-3 at 8:10 of the third.
Guentzel opened the scoring for the Lightning 9:10 into the first period as a rebound found his stick in the low slot.
Anaheim tied it at 4:42 of the second after an offensive zone faceoff win landed on the stick of Trouba for a slap shot off the inside of the near post and in.
Defenseman Jackson LaCombe signed an eight-year, $72-million contract extension with the Ducks on Thursday, keeping the rising young star with the club through the 2033-34 season.
LaCombe’s deal is the richest ever given out by the team, although other contracts had larger average annual values.
“We are excited to sign Jackson to a long-term contract and lock up a core player for our future,” Ducks general manager Pat Verbeek said in a statement. “Getting this deal done early was a priority for us. Jackson has all of the tools to be an anchor on our back end for many years to come.”
After just two full NHL seasons, the 24-year-old LaCombe has emerged as an elite two-way defenseman who is under consideration for the U.S. Olympic team roster.
LaCombe went straight to the NHL from the University of Minnesota in 2023, and he has recorded 16 goals and 44 assists over 148 games. He quickly emerged as the Ducks’ most dependable defenseman, leading the roster in ice time last season and filling a major role on their power play.
He even stepped into a leadership role after longtime Ducks defenseman Cam Fowler was traded to St. Louis last December. LaCombe’s 14 goals last season were the most by a Ducks blueliner since Lubomir Visnovsky had 18 in the 2010-11 season.
“I am grateful to the organization for their belief in me,” LaCombe said. “It was an easy decision for me to commit my future to the Ducks and Orange County. We are building something special here, and I am excited to do everything I can to help this team win.”
LaCombe also stood out at the world championships in Stockholm last May, recording two goals and three assists for the gold medal-winning U.S. team.
The Ducks chose the Minnesota native with the 39th overall pick in the 2019 draft. He became a star for the Golden Gophers after being drafted, growing into a top prospect who then adjusted quickly to the NHL game.
LaCombe is the first player to re-sign in the Ducks’ large class of restricted free agents coming up next summer. LaCombe was slated to be an RFA alongside center Leo Carlsson, left wing Cutter Gauthier and defensemen Owen Zellweger and Pavel Mintyukov.
Verbeek locked up LaCombe five days after re-signing holdout center Mason McTavish to a six-year, $42 million deal.
Beacham writes for the Associated Press.
VLADIMIR Putin’s prized golden goose – Russia’s oil empire – has become a sitting duck, and it’s Ukraine’s drones that are pulling the trigger.
In the latest episode of Battle Plans Exposed, military intelligence expert Philip Ingram MBE lays bare how Kyiv has opened a devastating new front in the war in the oilfields, refineries and pipelines that bankroll Putin’s invasion.
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“This is the oil war,” Ingram says.
“It’s a highly strategic, calculated campaign to cripple the engine of Putin’s war.”
Watch the latest episode on The Sun’s YouTube channel here…
For decades, Russia’s vast energy reserves paid for everything from tanks and cruise missiles to soldiers’ salaries and propaganda handouts.
Before the invasion, energy exports made up around 40 per cent of the Kremlin’s budget.
Even under sanctions, oil and gas still bring in 30 per cent of Russia’s income.
The episode shows how Ukraine has zeroed in on this “river of oil money” with pinpoint strikes hundreds of miles inside Russian territory.
Long-range drones have torched colossal refineries, exploded pumping stations and set storage tanks ablaze – systematically dismantling Moscow’s refining capacity.
Footage of Rosneft’s Ryazan refinery erupting into flames after a single drone strike captures the scale of the destruction.
“This isn’t a military base on the border,” Ingram warns.
“This is a core piece of Russia’s national infrastructure – hundreds of miles from Ukraine.”
What makes these attacks so devastating is their precision.
Ingram explains that the real targets aren’t the giant tanks but the refinery’s processing units – “the heart of the refinery,” where crude is split into diesel for tanks, jet fuel for fighters and gasoline for the home front.
Knock one of these units out, and the entire facility is useless for months, even years.
The episode shows how Ukraine has already knocked out at least 12 per cent of Russia’s refining capacity – stripping away over 600,000 barrels a day.
That’s billions in lost revenue that can’t be pumped into Putin’s war chest.
The impact is twofold. First, it chokes the Russian military itself: “No diesel, and tanks don’t move.
“No jet fuel, and fighters are grounded,” Ingram says.
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Second, it hits ordinary Russians – with fuel shortages, soaring prices and the chilling sight of their industrial heartland burning.
The Kremlin’s response? Denial, spin and panic.
Moscow has been forced to ban fuel exports for six months, sacrificing vital revenue just to stop unrest at home.
“Putin’s greatest fear,” Ingram says, “is the Russian people rising up.”
This is asymmetric warfare at its most ruthless – cheap Ukrainian drones inflicting billion-dollar wounds on the Kremlin.
The episode shows how the campaign has shattered Russia’s aura of invulnerability, exposed its sprawling oil empire as a fatal weakness, and brought the war crashing into the lives of ordinary Russians.
And as Ingram puts it: “It proves that in modern warfare, the most effective battle plans aren’t always about brute force on the tactical frontline, but about finding your enemy’s single point of failure – and striking it again and again with unrelenting precision.”
It comes as Ukraine claims to have turned the tide on the eastern front in a brutal counter-offensive.
Kyiv’s top general Oleksandr Syrskyi said his troops had clawed back around 60 square miles since August, with Putin’s men retreating from a further 70 square miles north of bomb-blitzed Pokrovsk.
He boasted Russian forces had paid a horrifying price — 1,500 killed, another thousand wounded and 12 main battle tanks blown to pieces.
“Control has been restored in seven settlements and nine more have been cleared of enemy sabotage and reconnaissance groups,” Syrskyi declared, claiming nearly 165 square kilometres were liberated and almost 180 cleared of Russian saboteurs.
The breakthrough follows a shaky summer where Russian “saboteurs” punched six miles through Ukrainian lines overnight, threatening to cut supply roads.
But Ukraine has regrouped and is now pushing them back, Syrskyi insisting: “In the past 24 hours alone the enemy have lost 65 servicemen, 43 of them killed in action, along with 11 pieces of equipment.”
The destroyed kit ranges from tanks to artillery, drones and even a quad bike used by desperate Russian troops.
Russia has tried to claw back the narrative, claiming it captured a hamlet south of Pokrovsk — a claim Ukraine flatly denies.
Instead, Kyiv points to wrecked Russian armour littering the battlefield and insists the Kremlin’s army is being bled dry.
The fighting comes as Volodymyr Zelensky prepares to meet Donald Trump on the sidelines of the UN General Assembly in New York.
Ukraine’s war leader is set to press the US president for tougher sanctions if Putin refuses to come to the table.
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Trump — who once called Putin a “genius” — admitted the dictator had “let him down”.
“I thought this war would be one of the easiest to solve because of my relationship with Putin. But he has really let me down,” he said during his visit to Britain.
But Britain’s spy chief Sir Richard Moore has poured cold water on any idea of a quick peace.
In a message aimed squarely at Trump, he said: “I have seen absolutely no evidence that President Putin has any interest in a negotiated peace short of Ukrainian capitulation.”
He warned the world not to be duped by the Kremlin tyrant: “We should not believe him or credit him with strength he does not have.”
Moore added Russia was grinding forward “at a snail’s pace and horrendous cost” — and that Putin had “bitten off more than he can chew.”
He lauded Ukraine’s resistance and heaped praise on Zelensky, saying: “My admiration for him is unbounded,” while savaging Putin for plunging Russia into “long term decline” where he invests only in “missiles, munitions and morgues.”
The warning came days after Russia’s indiscriminate blitz killed three civilians in Zaporizhzhia — two women aged 40 and 79 and a man of 77 — even as Ukrainian forces notched up new gains and unleashed fresh revenge strikes on Russian soil.
Last month, Kyiv marked Independence Day with a wave of drone attacks crippling Russian energy sites and claimed to have wiped out three of the “Butchers of Bucha” in precision bombings in occupied Luhansk.
The Russian soldiers had been accused of taking part in the notorious 2022 massacre where hundreds of civilians were executed, tortured and raped as Putin’s troops stormed towards Kyiv.
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WASHINGTON — When he takes the presidential oath of office in January at the age of 78, Joe Biden will be the oldest person to hold the office. Fighting off the debilitating “lame duck” label is already on his advisors’ to-do list.
As they work to fill White House staff and Cabinet posts and strategize about the new administration’s agenda, top advisors are also trying to figure out how to lay down a marker that Biden, who has portrayed himself as a transitional, stabilizing figure — a bridge to the next generation of Democratic leaders — has not ruled out running for a second term as he approaches 82, according to a source familiar with the transition team’s conversations.
The prospect of Biden serving just a single term will remain a matter of speculation no matter what he says. But the Biden circle’s determination to tamp down the chatter reflects an awareness that such talk could hinder his effectiveness in an already challenging situation, one in which he faces dual economic and public health crises without party majorities in Congress to pass an ambitious response.
Perhaps most of all, unchecked speculation that Biden won’t run again would only encourage divisive jockeying to succeed him among Democratic presidential hopefuls waiting in the wings — from his own vice president, Kamala Harris, to prospective Cabinet secretaries, members of Congress and state leaders.
“It’s a much bigger problem for him within the Democratic Party,” said Alex Conant, a Republican operative and veteran of Florida Sen. Marco Rubio’s 2016 presidential campaign. “To the extent there’s Democrats on the day he’s sworn in angling to be the nominee four years later, that creates a difficult situation for him. Republicans are running for president in 2024 regardless.”
Biden’s confidants — incoming White House Chief of Staff Ron Klain and senior counselor Steve Ricchetti, along with Anita Dunn, who will be an outside advisor — share that view and are determining how best to preemptively defuse a potentially destabilizing situation within the Biden administration and the Democratic Party. Any perceived daylight between the new president and Harris, or between them and essential party allies such as Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren, could be magnified by the media into the first skirmishes of a 2024 presidential primary battle.
A Biden transition spokesman pointed to the president-elect’s past comments during the Democratic presidential nomination race, when he said on multiple occasions that he “absolutely” was not ruling out seeking a second term.
Of course, the fact that Biden’s early window to drive his policy agenda is likely a small one is only partly a function of his age. The bigger challenges are the crises he inherits, his party’s narrow margins in both the Democratic-led House and a Senate where Republicans are likely to maintain a majority, and the likelihood that Trump will try to sabotage him constantly from the sidelines, breaking yet another norm — that former presidents fade into retirement and remain mostly mute about their successors’ actions.
Yet the perception of Biden as a lame duck would only add to his trials, encouraging factions when party unity is essential.
“He’s inheriting the worst crisis since FDR and the Great Depression, but he has a much weaker hand than Roosevelt with the Senate in the hands of the other party, the Democratic House majority reduced and Trump refusing to leave the stage,” said David Gergen, who has served as a counselor to presidents of both parties. “It’s going to be very difficult to govern and get big things done. It’s really important that in first 100 days or more that President-elect Biden undersells and overdelivers.”
In the weeks leading up to election day, Biden’s top aides conferred with Democrats on Capitol Hill about an ambitious agenda, including discussions of doing away with the Senate filibuster and a package to combat climate change. They hadn’t planned, however, for Republicans to keep control of the Senate, which will be the case unless Democrats defy the odds and sweep both runoff elections in Georgia on Jan. 5.
“They’re reeling because they thought we were going to get the Senate back,” said one senior Democratic legislative aide involved with the discussions, who requested anonymity to discuss the talks. “Everything is being redefined, from what you do to what you do first.”
The first 100 days of a presidency, historically a new executive’s best opportunity to capitalize on post-election momentum and good feelings, are likely to be especially critical for Biden under the circumstances.
Ronald Reagan, who at 69 in 1981 was the oldest president to take office to that point, allayed much of the anxiety about his age and stamina by empowering his Cabinet and his first chief of staff, James A. Baker III. Reagan’s example offers something of a template for Biden, according to John A. Farrell, a presidential historian.
“If Joe Biden goes upstairs at 6 p.m. and has dinner with his wife on a TV tray, and has a brilliant chief of staff who calls him when he’s needed and knows his limitations, there’s no inherent reason why Biden can’t have a good first term and run again. And I’m sure that he will cloak the notion of a second term because there’s no reason to give up that kind of power.”
When Reagan was shot just two months after taking office, “People didn’t know if he was going to seek a second term,” Farrell said. “And he was easily reelected.”
Mack McLarty, who served as President Clinton’s first chief of staff, said that if Biden can begin his presidency by fostering bipartisan collaboration on economic relief and oversee a successful distribution of COVID-19 vaccines, he could build a foundation for other legislative compromises down the road.
No one in Washington expects Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) to go out of his way to help Biden. Republicans are already eyeing the 2022 midterm elections as a chance to win majorities in both the Senate and House; typically the party not occupying the White House picks up seats at a president’s midterm.
Still, said Mark Mellman, a Democratic pollster, “If Republicans are seen as merely obstructors, it will hurt them politically.”
“Bipartisan cooperation doesn’t come because Democrats and Republicans have martinis and whiskey in the evening. It comes because they are competing for the same people,” said Timothy A. Naftali, a presidential historian at New York University.
“Both parties are competing now for wage earners, for Latino voters, for suburban voters. If that leads to more cooperation, Biden could wind up being a fairly popular president,” he continued. “People tend to care far more about what presidents do than how they look or how old they may be.”
It has been a scarcely believable dozen years since Hull burst on to the professional scene in 2013 with five sucessive runners-up finishes on the Ladies European Tour (LET).
She has gone on to record a combined six victories on the LPGA Tour and LET and become a key member of the past six European Solheim Cup teams, but three runner-up finishes remain the best Hull has achieved in the sport’s biggest championships.
“Second to me is first loser,” said England’s top ranked player.
“But I’m in a great position because if you’re not asking [about my chances], I’m not doing something right.”
Hull has been a little boom or bust in the majors over recent years. In her past 24 starts, she has missed the cut on eight occassions but finished top-25 in 15, including runner-up in this championship when it was held at Surrey course Walton Heath in 2023.
Unlike the men’s Open Championship, which is always held at a coastal links course, the women’s equivalent is also played at inland courses.
And while Hull said she “prefers parkland” tracks, she has positive experiences from Porthcawl to draw upon.
“I won here when I was 14, so I have fond memories,” she said, referring to playing in the inaugural Junior Vagliano trophy in 2011 – a Solheim Cup-style amateur contest which pits Great Britain and Ireland agaist Continental Europe.
“Links is going to be a challenge and I hope the wind is up because I like finding links hard.”
Three times she has finished in the spot behind the winner in her previous 59 major appearances. There have been six other top-10s.
“I don’t really look at stuff like that,” she said.
“I have no interest. As I am in life, once I’m done I’m off to the next thing.”
And when pushed on what she needs to do to take her game to the next level, Hull simply said: “I need to not put too much pressure on my golf, not be too golf obsessed.
“Like when I was younger, I was never that obsessed.”
Perhaps a windy Porthcawl will help invoke memories of those more innocent days at blustery Turnberry.
For an entire decade now, Donald Trump has been immune to alienating his supporters — a base so loyal they’d drink bleach if he told them it would own the libs (and some probably did).
Stormy Daniels? A spiritual growth opportunity for evangelicals to witness a modern-day King David. Inciting a Capitol riot? Boosted his Q-rating (not to mention his QAnon rating). Bombing Iran? Sure, a few “America First” types grumbled into their microphones about endless wars before dutifully moving on.
Trump himself bragged he could stand in the middle of 5th Avenue, shoot somebody and not lose a single voter. He was right.
But the current wave of intra-MAGA criticism — over the Trump administration’s defensive insistence that Jeffrey Epstein (a) definitely committed suicide, and (b) never had a client list — feels categorically different.
Trump can usually smother an inconvenient news cycle by tossing a fresh carcass on the table, be it a deranged Truth Social post or a threat to jail an enemy.
This time, however, his suggestion that Rosie O’Donnell should have her citizenship revoked barely registered above ambient noise, as the mob kept hammering him over his refusal to release the Epstein files. His latest weapon of mass distraction is a not-so-subtle hint that he might fire Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell. But even that hasn’t managed to shift the spotlight away from Epstein.
Having failed at distraction, Trump reverted to bullying. He scolded the press for dredging up old news (“Are you still talking about Jeffrey Epstein?”) He took to Truth Social to tell his MAGA supporters not to “waste Time and Energy on Jeffrey Epstein.” He absurdly claimed the Epstein files were a “scam” and a “hoax” made up by Democrats, and described the folks who “bought into this bull—” as “weaklings” and his “PAST supporters.”
These efforts tamed some of the criticism inside the MAGA tent. But for others, it only reinforced the perception of a cover-up.
So why has the Epstein scandal — of all things — threatened civil war on the right? I have some thoughts.
First: It speaks to where the passions of MAGA really lie. For some percentage of Trump supporters, exposing the satanic, blood-drinking pedophile cabal was supposed to be the deliverable — his raison d’être — the payoff.
Instead they got, what, corporate tax cuts?
Second: The Epstein narrative is too lurid and concrete to be handwaved away. Epstein really was a sex trafficker. There really are those photographs of him palling around with Trump. He really was on “suicide watch.” Minutes really are missing from the surveillance video near Epstein’s cell. Atty. Gen. Pam Bondi really did say on Fox News in February that Epstein’s client list was “sitting on my desk right now.” You don’t need to be in a tin-foil hat to notice the fishiness here.
And third: The incentives have changed for MAGA influencers. Trump finally feels like a lame duck, and the knives are out, not just to inherit the throne, but for the whole spoils system of the MAGA grift.
To be clear, plenty of the usual sycophants have decided to “trust the plan” and go along with the party line. But others — Tucker Carlson, Marjorie Taylor Greene, Nick Fuentes and assorted alt-right B-listers — seem to have caught the scent of blood in the water.
Even the new cohort of MAGA-adjacent bro podcasters — guys like Andrew Schulz — have started to openly criticize him. Schulz recently called Trump’s failure to release the Epstein files “insulting our intelligence,” which, for that demographic, is tantamount to open revolt.
Here, Trump could really face some attrition. Unlike the evangelical core, these manosphere podcasters (and their legions of young male listeners) are not partisans or ideologues; their support for Trump has always been more middle finger than mission. And middle fingers, as everyone eventually learns, can be directed at new targets anytime.
So how does this end?
Eventually, this story will be suppressed or at least professionally ignored. But it won’t be fully memory-holed. It will linger somewhere between subliminal and ubiquitous, in much the same way that George W. Bush never fully escaped the stench of those nonexistent WMDs (even after Republicans agreed to stay the course).
So Trump survives — but he carries with him a dormant virus that could flare up again.
There’s a certain irony here that’s almost too obvious to point out, except that it’s also irresistible: Trump built an entire ecology of paranoia — a system that rewards its most theatrical paranoids. He spent years feeding his ravenous base suspicion and spectacle. And it worked. Until he finally got out-conspiracy-theoried.
Even the best carnival barker runs out of new tricks eventually. And when the crowd starts peeking behind the curtain, the spell is broken, and the jig is up.
Matt K. Lewis is the author of “Filthy Rich Politicians” and “Too Dumb to Fail.”
WEST MONROE, La. — Phil Robertson, who turned his small duck-calling interest in the sportsman’s paradise of northern Louisiana into a big business and conservative cultural phenomenon, died Sunday, according to his family. He was 79.
Robertson’s family announced in December on their “Unashamed With the Robertson Family” podcast that the patriarch of the clan had Alzheimer’s disease. The statement on social media from Robertson’s daughter-in-law didn’t mention how he died.
“Thank you for the love and prayers of so many whose lives have been impacted by his life saved by grace, his bold faith, and by his desire to tell everyone who would listen the Good News of Jesus. We are grateful for his life on earth and will continue the legacy of love for God and love for others until we see him again,” Korie Robertson wrote.
Phil Robertson skyrocketed to fame in the early 2010s when the A&E network created a reality show, presented like a sitcom. It followed the adventures of Robertson, his three sons — including Willie, who runs the family’s Duck Commander company, their wives and a host of other relatives and friends.
Phil Robertson and his boys were immediately recognizable by their long beards and their conservative, Christian and family-oriented beliefs.
That got Robertson into trouble, too. He told a magazine reporter in 2013 that gay people are sinners and African Americans were happy under Jim Crow laws.
A&E suspended him from Duck Dynasty but reversed course in a few weeks after a backlash that included Sarah Palin.
At the time, Robertson’s family called his comments coarse, but said his beliefs were grounded in the Bible and he “is a Godly man.” They also said that “as a family, we cannot imagine the show going forward without our patriarch at the helm.”
Robertson was born in north Louisiana and spent his life in the woods and lakes that make up the region called Sportsman’s Paradise.
Robertson played football at Louisiana Tech and taught school. He also loved to hunt and created a duck call in the early 1970s that he said replicated the exact sound of a duck.
The calls were the centerpiece of the Duck Commander business Robertson would grow into a multimillion-dollar enterprise before A&E came calling.
The family just didn’t sell outdoor and hunting gear, but a lifestyle.
“The Robertsons face everything from beavers to business deals in their own special way — with a twist of downhome practicality and a sharp sense of humor,” A&E wrote in its promotion for Duck Dynasty.