Spain’s Marc Marquez completed his incredible comeback story as he won his seventh MotoGP World Championship to move level with Italian great Valentino Rossi.
Marquez, 32, finished second at the Japan Grand Prix behind Italian team-mate Francesco Bagnaia to give himself an unassailable lead in the championship standings with five races to go as he secured his first title since 2019.
He held his head in his hands and sobbed on his bike as he crossed the line, before being congratulated by his brother Alex, who was his nearest challenger in the title race this season but finished sixth in Motegi.
“It’s impossible even to speak, I just want to enjoy the moment, but it’s true that it was difficult, it was super difficult, but now I’m at peace with myself,” a tearful Marquez said.
Marquez’s achievement comes after a “nightmare” that started in 2020.
After winning four consecutive championships from 2016 to 2019 he suffered a string of injuries, including breaking his arm in 2020, which needed four operations over two years.
The years that followed were filled with serious injuries and major crashes, and in 2023 he left Honda after 11 years to join Ducati.
“I did a big mistake in my career, to come back too early [from surgery]. And then I fight, fight, fight – and I won again! So I’m at peace,” he added.
Marquez has 11 wins this season and stretched his championship lead to 201 points over his brother in second place.
Reporting from Sacramento — When California updated its equal pay law in 2015, there was no shortage of fanfare. Women’s rights groups called it one of the toughest in the country. Gov. Jerry Brown, in a symbolic flourish, signed the new measure at a Richmond park named after feminist icon Rosie the Riveter.
But a state report released last fall underscored how far California has to go before its rhetoric matches reality when it comes to paying state workers. According to its findings, there is a 20.5% disparity in pay between female and male state employees — a wider gap than in the federal civil service and the private sector in California and nationwide.
The focus on the public sector pay gap is just one way the equal pay debate continues to reverberate through the state Capitol. Several measures this year offer new approaches to bring women’s earnings to parity with wages earned by male counterparts — in state government and the workforce as a whole.
“We are frankly at an ‘equal pay 2.0’ moment,” said state Sen. Hannah-Beth Jackson (D-Santa Barbara), author of the 2015 law.
As lawmakers plumb deeper into the pay gap debate, the challenge before them becomes more daunting. While the mantra “equal pay for equal work” sounds straightforward, experts say lagging female earnings are rooted in unconscious bias and persistent undervaluing of jobs held by women — phenomena not easily solved by legislation.
The effort to shrink the pay gap for California state workers illustrates how thorny the issue can be.
At a February legislative hearing on the gender pay gap in civil service, Richard Gillihan, the director of the California Department of Human Resources, offered a blunt assessment.
“We know we have work to do; we know we need to do a better job,” Gillihan said, adding, “20.5% is unacceptable to all of us.”
We are frankly at an ‘equal pay 2.0’ moment.
— State Sen. Hannah-Beth Jackson (D-Santa Barbara)
The report by California’sDepartment of Human Resources, which surveyed state worker pay in 2014, estimated that California wouldn’t close its gender pay gap until 2044.
Assemblyman Jim Cooper (D-Elk Grove) has offered one solution: Make sure California’s equal pay laws apply to the public sector. He’s pushing a bill that would make public employers subject to existing law, including a 2015 update that expanded its purview to “substantially similar” work, not just identical jobs.
“If it’s good enough for the private sector, it should also be good enough for the public sector,” Cooper said.
Cooper’s measure was inspired by pay discrepancies he saw working in the Legislature, which is exempt from the rigid salary classifications that apply in most state work. A Sacramento Bee investigation in 2015 found women working in the state Assembly made 92 cents for every dollar men made; in the state Senate, it was 94 cents on the dollar. The findings prompted the Senate to give raises to more than 70 employees last year to close the gap.
“Female chiefs of staff make less than their male counterparts — that’s just plain wrong,” Cooper said.
It’s not entirely clear whether Cooper’s proposal is necessary; the state labor commissioner is currently reviewing claims filed by government employees under the Equal Pay Act. Supporters nonetheless cheer the proposal as eliminating any doubt that public sector jobs will be covered.
But for state workers outside the Capitol, the problems run deeper than men and women being paid unequally for doing the same job. State government jobs are classified into more than 3,500 positions, which strictly spell out salary.
“The issue that presents itself here is not as much one of disparate pay, but an unequal distribution of gender throughout the classification system,” said Joe DeAnda, spokesman for the California Department of Human Resources.
Women tend to work in sectors with lower salary ranges, such as administrative support or social work, while men tend to hold jobs with higher pay — particularly public safety jobs such as California Highway Patrol officer or firefighter. More than 61% of men in state government make more than $70,000, according to the Human Resources Department, while just 39% of women do.
Maia Downs, who works in Monterey Park as a state adoption specialist finding homes for neglected or abused children, said the salary range for her profession, which requires a graduate degree and is dominated by women, is significantly lower than those for jobs predominantly held by men.
“It’s sanctioned discrimination,” said Downs of the low salary ranges for female-dominated positions.
DeAnda said negotiations related to salary and benefits are hashed out during the collective bargaining process. Downs said attempts by her union, AFSCME Local 2620, to use gender as a reason for higher salary ranges were unsuccessful.
“California should be leading by example. And they are imposing these equal pay laws on private industry, all the while hiding behind the excuse of collective bargaining,” Downs said. “And then they wonder why their gender pay gap is so high.”
To close the gap, the state says it’s focused on recruiting women into higher-paid jobs and encouraging upward mobility to help women scale the salary rungs.
But overhauling the pay classifications to ensure women’s work is better compensated is a thornier matter. It means reexamining long-held customs that place a greater value on certain professions — particularly high-risk public safety jobs.
“Getting there is not just a matter of legislation,” said Lauri Damrell, an employment lawyer and the co-chair of the state’s Commission on the Status of Women and Girls. “It’s a matter of getting our cultural norms to catch up.”
That hasn’t stopped lawmakers from trying to tackle the pay gap issue — in both the public and private sectors. One bill this year by Assemblywoman Lorena Gonzalez Fletcher (D-San Diego) would require large employers to make aggregate pay data publicly available, such as the differential between the mean salaries paid to men and women by job classification.
Another, by Assemblywoman Susan Talamantes Eggman (D-Stockton), would bar employers from seeking salary history from job applicants. Proponents argue that women often enter the workforce with lower salaries and are disproportionately hurt when prior compensation is used to determine their next job’s pay.
“One thing that bakes in inequity is when we base somebody’s salary on what they previously made,” she said.
Eggman, who was among the legislators who convened the hearing on state worker pay this year, said she hopes to tackle the lingering pay gap affecting jobs predominately held by women.
“We are certainly looking at if there is some way that we can get to a root of that,” Eggman said. “Clearly we have a lot more work to do.”
No, it wasn’t the sound of distorted guitars, punk rockers puking or Nazis getting punched in the face. Though there was plenty of all of that.
It was the buzz surrounding FLAG, the most talked about band at the annual bowling tournament and music festival, now in its 25th year.
FLAG is the hardcore supergroup composed of four former members of Black Flag — Keith Morris, Chuck Dukowski, Dez Cadena, and Bill Stevenson — and Stephen Egerton, Stevenson’s longtime bandmate in the Descendents.
It had been six years since the last FLAG gig, which was also at Punk Rock Bowling. But this was more than a reunion show. It felt like history in the making.
It started Saturday with a panel discussion led by Fat Mike of NOFX at the Punk Rock Museum. Surrounded by photos of their younger selves taken by the late Naomi Petersen, all five members answered questions from Fat Mike, who introduced FLAG as “the best version of Black Flag I’ve ever seen.”
Fat Mike asked each participant to name their favorite album or song, which became something of a referendum on the band’s volatility on and off the stage, with musicians cycling in and out of the band. For instance, Henry Rollins, the band’s best-known vocalist, was Black Flag’s fourth singer.
“When people say, ‘Oh, Henry is my favorite. Ron [Reyes] was my favorite,’” Cadena said, “usually, that’s the first gig that they saw.”
“Why is it a contest?” Morris asked. “Each one of us contributed in the way we contributed. We each had our own personality.”
Keith Morris and Stephen Egerton of FLAG speaking about the band at the Punk Rock Museum.
(Rob Coons)
That those personalities frequently clashed with the band’s enigmatic guitarist and songwriter Greg Ginn is the story of Black Flag. Extreme music attracts extreme people. What’s unusual about these clashes is that they continued long after Ginn pulled the plug on his own band in 1986.
For instance, in June 2003, Rollins and Morris played Black Flag songs together — just not at the same time, Morris clarified during the panel — to raise money and awareness for the West Memphis 3.
It’s probably not a coincidence that later that summer, Ginn put together a Black Flag reunion of sorts at the Hollywood Palladium. The problem?
It featured musicians who’d never been in the band and they played along to prerecorded bass tracks. The shambolic set wasn’t well-received. These shows were also a benefit — for cats — launching a veritable cottage industry of CAT FLAG T-shirts.
Keith Morris, from left, Stephen Egerton, Bill Stevenson, Fat Mike, Dez Cadena and Chuck Dukowski gather to discuss FLAG’s reunion at the Punk Rock Museum over Memorial Day weekend prior to their set at the Punk Rock Bowling festival.
(Rob Coons)
In December 2011, Morris, Dukowski, Stevenson and Egerton played together for the first time at the Goldenvoice 30th anniversary show at the Santa Monica Civic Auditorium, where they were introduced as “Black Flag.”
The old friends had such a blast playing together, they decided to keep it going. Cadena was added to the mix and they played Black Flag songs under the banner of FLAG. The coming-out party for this lineup was an incendiary set at the Moose Lodge in Redondo Beach in April 2012.
Again, it’s probably not a coincidence that Ginn subsequently “reunited” Black Flag and initiated all kinds of legal activity against his former bandmates. At the heart of the issue was who could use the names FLAG and Black Flag. At the end of the day, the courts ruled that FLAG could continue.
Mike Magrann, vocalist and guitarist for L.A. punk band Channel 3, saw both bands play that year.
“It was puzzling,” Magrann said of Black Flag’s set, “because they weren’t honoring their legacy. When FLAG played, they played those songs the way they sounded back then. It brought back that feeling of being a kid on the side of the pit. The real threat of violence is right there. It was unbelievable!”
That ineffable feeling of danger is what drew so many people to FLAG’s Memorial Day performance. Fans came from all over the world just to see the show. Joey Cape of Lagwagon wrapped up a solo tour in Japan and flew directly to Punk Rock Bowling.
Like Cape and Magrann, some of the most hardcore fans were musicians who’d been inspired by Black Flag when they were young. David O. Jones of Carnage Asada drove in from L.A. with Martin Wong, who organized Save Music in Chinatown, and Martin’s daughter, Eloise Wong of the Linda Lindas. They returned to L.A. immediately after the show because Eloise, who is a junior in high school, had a physics test the following morning.
FLAG made it worth the trip. The band ripped through 22 songs, starting with “Revenge” and mixing crowd favorites like “My War” with deep cuts such as “Clocked-In.” Morris held the microphone with both hands like he was blowing on a bugle and urging the crowd to charge.
It was easily the rowdiest pit of the festival, and it swelled to nearly the length of the stage with a steady stream of crowd surfers being passed over the barricade: old men, young women and even small children. During songs like “Gimme Gimme Gimme,” “Wasted” and “Nervous Breakdown,” the roar from the crowd was almost as loud as the band.
There wasn’t any banter from the usually loquacious Morris. Toward the end of the show, he simply said, “Thank you for your participation,” and launched into the next song.
FLAG performs at the 25th Annual Punk Rock Bowling and Music Festival in Las Vegas on May 26, 2025.
(Courtney Ware)
After the obligatory performance of “Louie Louie” at the end of the set, the players took their instruments off the stage and were gone. Fans young and old looked at each other in disbelief, their lives changed, their DNA forever altered by punk rock.
FLAG had done it again. They played the songs the way they were meant to be played. They honored their legacy.
It will be a tough act for Black Flag to follow. In recent years, Black Flag has been much more active. Inevitably, that means more changes to the lineup. Earlier in May, Ginn announced Black Flag will be touring Europe this summer with three new members: all of them young musicians, including a young woman named Max Zanelly as the new vocalist.
Once again, the internet flooded with Black Flag memes keying on the considerable age gap between Ginn, who is 70, and his new bandmates who look many decades, if not generations, younger. Wong, who knows something about the power of young musicians to change the world, is hopeful.
“Everyone wins when there’s more good music in the world,” Wong said. “In a perfect world, the new Black Flag lineup will get Ginn stoked on music and push him forward. But if that doesn’t happen, we get FLAG, the best Black Flag lineup that never happened.”
While Black Flag prepares for its new chapter, is this the end of the road for FLAG?
“I don’t know,” Stevenson said after the panel at the Punk Rock Museum. “We always have fun when we get together. You can tell we love each other. I’m sure we’ll do more. At some point, one of us will be too old to do it, but so far that’s not the case.”
Jim Ruland is the author of the L.A. Times bestselling book “Corporate Rock Sucks: The Rise & Fall of SST Records” and a weekly Substack about books, music, and books about music called Message from the Underworld.
