family

THE summer holidays are in full swing and if you want a fun family day out that is completely free, look no further.

From open-air museums to galleries, attractions and incredible buildings with summer activities for kids – these places will keep everyone entertained and won’t cost a penny.

Which? has revealed the top best family days out and in top spot is St Fagans National Museum of History in Cardiff.

The museum has a reconstructed historic street showing what life was like in Wales many years ago.

It’s filled with historic buildings that have been relocated to the site including a medieval church, farmhouses and a school.

In the centre of it all is St Fagans Castle, which is a 16th century manor house that has been open to the public since 1948 and is set within pretty Italian gardens.

SUNNY STEALS

Sun-drenched European holidays with £1.50 pints and stays from under £9pp

PARK UP

Epic UK holiday parks with waterparks, theme parks & Spoons pubs from £3pp a night

One visitor on Tripadvisor called it an “absolute masterpiece of living history” adding it’s in a “league of its own”.

Another added: “As far as free fun goes, this was great! It was like stepping back into time and seeing how people lived in Wales eras ago. Loved it!”

The second most highly-rated on the list is the National Railway Museum in York.

It’s considered ‘best [museum] of its kind in the world’ according to On Magazine with one visitor on Tripadvisor calling it “unique and unforgettable”.

Inside are 100 locomotives, thousands of historical artifacts, royal carriages and well-known trains like the Mallard steam engine.

There’s also the art-deco Duchess of Hamilton, and a Japanese Shinkansen bullet train too.

Here’s the full list of the the top free museums and galleries from Which?…

1. St Fagans National Museum of History, Cardiff
2. National Railway Museum, York
3. Royal Air Force (RAF) Museum Cosford
4. National Museum of Scotland
5. Cardiff National Museum
6. Kelvingrove Art Gallery and Museum, Glasgow
7. Royal Air Force Museum, London
8. Walker Art Gallery, Liverpool
9. Oxford University Museum of Natural History
10. Scottish National Galleries

Throughout the summer there are events on every day like immersive storytelling and live shows, plus there are indoor and outdoor play areas for children.

It’s completely free to visit, but it’s encouraged to book tickets online to guarantee entry, especially during the summer holidays.

Also highly-rated as a free day out is the Royal Air Force (RAF) Museum Cosford.

It has a huge collection of military aircraft as well as interactive exhibits and even a plane-themed playground.

Then there’s the National Museum of Scotland which has galleries filled with treasures from the age of the dinosaurs to new technology.

Make sure to pop up to the roof terrace too where you’ll get a view of the Edinburgh skyline.

During the summer holiday there are drop-in activities throughout the day from exploring a dinosaur trail, to space missions and crafts.

Another top free day out from Which? is the Cardiff National Museum which is filled with world-class art work and natural history – it also has exhibitions and plenty of events.

Kelvingrove Art Gallery and Museum in Glasgow is another completely free destinations for a family day out.

It opened in 1901 and has 22 galleries filled with beautiful artwork and don’t miss the organ recital at 1pm from Monday to Saturday and 3pm on Sunday.

Families can pop into Durham Cathedral to see the incredible building for free.

Throughout the summer it holds kids’ workshops like creating your own stained glass,activitys backpacks whichares filled withchallengesr and a pair of binoculars.

The surrounding grounds can be explored for free too.

Other highly-rated historical attractions that are free including St David’s Cathedral and Chichester Cathedral.

On a regular visit to the Houses of Parliament you will need to buy a ticket, but there is a way to get a tour for free.

But Which? advises that if you’re keen to visit, any UK resident can contact their MP or a member of the House of Lords to request a free-5-minute guided tour.

Here are the top free historic UK attractions…

1. Durham Cathedral, Durham
2. St David’s Cathedral, St David’s
3. Chichester Cathedral, Chichester
4. Houses of Parliament, London
5. Bury St Edmunds Abbey
6. Somerset House
7. Bristol Cathedral

A FAMILY has been left distraught after they missed their flight – but it wasn’t their fault.

A father along with his family including his severely disabled teenage daughter has claimed that they were abandoned by budget airline Ryanair.

Daniel Laws, from Bournemouth commented that Ryanair told them to make their own way home after waiting in the wrong airport for hours, adding that the treatment from the airline’s staff was “abominable”.

When at Alicante Airport, the special assistance bus took the family to the wrong plane and resulted in them missing their flight back to Bournemouth.

According to the Bournemouth Echo, Daniel said: “I said to them this is the wrong plane, this is a TUI plane.”

However, by the time the family were back at the terminal, their plane had left without them.

Read more on travel inspo

CHEAP BREAKS

UK’s best 100 cheap stays – our pick of the top hotels, holiday parks and pubs

SEA IT

All 25 of the English Riviera beaches ranked from best to worst – by a Devon local

The family was then taken to the Ryanair help desk, where they were left “sitting on the floor for two hours”.

After waiting for a few hours, the family was then told they could be rebooked onto a flight that would head to Stansted Airport.

He added: “I responded would they also be able to help us get back to Bournemouth and they seemed to laugh at that and walk away from the window.”

After landing back in London, the family headed to the Ryanair desk at the airport to seek further assistance to travel back to Bournemouth.

After an hour of waiting passed, the staff hadn’t spoke to the family and when they eventually did, they told the family that “Ryanair believe it has nothing to do with them and we must organise our own way home”.

To make matters worse, the family hadn’t eaten since breakfast.

Daniel added: “We were abandoned in Stanstead and none of us had eaten.”

The family eventually travelled home via train, but have stated that they want a refund for the flights and all expenses incurred.

He added: “It was a life changing event for them [the children]….they were so worried about my eldest.”

A Ryanair spokesperson said: “Special assistance services at Alicante Airport (and all other airports) are provided by the airport but are paid for by Ryanair.

“We regret that Alicante Airport’s special assistance provider, Alyzia, failed to bring these passengers to the aircraft prior to this flight from Alicante to Bournemouth departing on 31 July.

“Following Alyzia’s error, Ryanair reaccommodated these passengers free of charge onto the next available flight from Alicante to Stansted, which departed later that the same day.

“We are working with Alicante Airport to ensure this does not recur.”

SAN DIEGO  — Emanuel Lexius’ market in El Cajon is typically bustling.

Not lately.

Lexius is Haitian, and so are most of the shoppers at Miche Caribbean Market. They come to stock up on familiar Haitian staples — Ti Malice vegetable oil spread, long-grain heirloom rice, Cola Couronne soda.

“People don’t want to be out,” he said, and “no one wants to be exposed.”

A wave of fear swept Haitian American communities in San Diego County and nationwide last week after the Trump administration revoked protections for Haitian immigrants living in the U.S. under temporary protected status, or TPS. The program has allowed roughly 350,000 Haitians — including thousands in San Diego and Los Angeles — to live and work in the U.S. because their home country is unsafe.

A federal district judge temporarily blocked the action for nearly five months before the Supreme Court upheld the Trump order in June. The Department of Homeland Security officially moved to remove the protections last Monday.

That has left Haitians in Southern California in a state of anxiety over whether and when they could be deported. Community leaders say the repercussions could be widespread, with people now scared to leave their homes or go to work — or at risk of losing their jobs because they no longer have work authorization.

“People who applied for a program that the U.S. government laid in place … they came to the U.S. in search of safety and protection, only for that to be pulled from under them without any support,” said Guerline Jozef, the executive director of Haitian Bridge Alliance, a local nonprofit that provides legal and social services to Haitians and other immigrant groups.

Along with Haiti, the Trump administration has moved to roll back temporary protected status for people from 13 countries, all of them majority Black or brown.

“Temporary Protected Status is exactly that — temporary,” said a Department of Homeland Security spokesperson. “For too long, TPS has been allowed to function as a de facto amnesty program despite Congress never intending it to be permanent.”

TPS was established for Haiti in 2010, after a catastrophic earthquake killed more than 200,000 people and destabilized the country. The protection was extended in 2021 amid the civil chaos that unfolded after Haiti’s president was assassinated and again in 2024 due to ongoing safety concerns. Today, armed gangs control sections of the country, presidential elections haven’t been held in a decade, and millions of people struggle with daily needs, per a recent United Nations report.

Today, the Trump administration says conditions in Haiti have improved enough for Haitians to return. But Haiti remains under a “Do not travel” advisory from the U.S. State Department, and the country has been under a state of emergency since March 2024.

Since their deportation protections ended Monday, local Haitians say they can’t go back to Haiti, pointing to safety concerns for themselves and their families.

“I had no choice but to leave Haiti,” said Galencha, a Haitian TPS holder who works in San Diego and requested his last name be withheld for fear he might be deported.

The 42-year-old, who is married with two young daughters, has lived in San Diego for seven years. He said his mother and uncle were killed in Haiti; his older brother was shot. His father is still there, but his sisters and close friends have left.

A Homeland Security spokesperson declined to comment on plans for any enforcement operations targeting Haitians but said enforcement actions are happening every day.

“Whenever we go out, it makes me feel bad,” said a 43-year-old Haitian man who lives near El Cajon. He too just lost his temporary protected status.

He arrived in the U.S. two years ago, alone, leaving behind his family. He typically waits in a Home Depot parking lot with the hope of getting picked up for a job, but it hasn’t been easy to find steady work.

Now, he and other local Haitians say they have been keeping their head on a swivel for immigration enforcement.

Even with temporary protected status, immigrants face a host of challenges to find work in the first place, said Maria Chavez, immigration legal director at the Partnership for the Advancement of New Americans. The process to qualify for a work permit and a reauthorization can take over a year with delays, she noted.

Most Haitians who have settled in San Diego since 2010 have found work in the hospitality, healthcare and construction industries — though many arrive with an entrepreneurial mindset forged in their home country, explained Jozef, from the Haitian Bridge Alliance.

“Due to the lack of a formal job market, the majority of the people have to find ways to create small businesses in Haiti,” she said. “So they come with that mindset of creating businesses.”

Right now, Haitian Bridge Alliance is focused on helping former TPS holders create a family plan — including getting their financial documents in order and creating contingency plans in case they’re deported. It’s also helping get basic needs like food to Haitians who are scared to leave home and connecting them with legal representation.

Since going back to Haiti is not an option for many Haitians in the region, now is the time for former TPS holders to pursue alternatives such as asylum or seeing if they qualify to stay in the U.S. through marriage, Chavez said.

“None of these are fast options,” she noted.

PANA and Haitian Bridge Alliance are fighting in court against the Trump administration’s termination of temporary protected status for Somalia. But Chavez says that fighting the termination for Haiti is largely off the table, since the Supreme Court has already upheld that order.

In the meantime, the end of Haitians’ temporary protections has created heartbreak throughout the community.

Husband and wife Martha and Feret Milliem own Caribbean Pleasure, a Point Loma restaurant serving Haitian cuisine in a dining room hung with Haitian flags.

The couple have lived in San Diego for nearly half a century and aren’t personally affected by the end of TPS protections — but it’s been painful to watch their community grow fearful and lose their grip on the American lives they’ve worked to build.

The impact extends to families back in Haiti, too, they add, if relatives in the U.S. who suddenly lose their legal jobs are unable to send money back to them.

“Right now, the Haitians are living under hell,” Martha said.

Fox writes for the San Diego Union-Tribune.

“Today” show host Savannah Guthrie said Saturday on social media that her family was “desperate” and “begging for help” in the disappearance of her mother, a day after authorities released two ransom notes including one saying that she had died.

Authorities released an early note in the investigation into the disappearance of 84-year-old Nancy Guthrie, hoping that someone will recognize the writing style. A second note said Guthrie died shortly after she was kidnapped and “is buried in nature now.” Both notes initially were sent to a Tucson television station days after Guthrie went missing from her home outside Tucson on Feb. 1.

Desperate plea

“We are begging for help. We are desperate. We need someone to come forward. Someone knows something. Someone suspects something. Someone recognizes the writing in the ransom demand notes,” Guthrie wrote on her Instagram account, alongside a photo of her mother.

“Someone has noticed something different, strange, troubling or just unusual — perhaps with someone they deeply love,” she wrote. “Perhaps they are afraid to come forward. Perhaps they are conflicted. Perhaps they are angry or upset for being in this situation. There is a way out — to tell what you know.”

Guthrie went on to say she and her family “wanted to find out what happened to her, so that we can give her the dignity of a proper goodbye — a celebration of her remarkable life that she so deserves.”

Missing since February

Saturday is the six-month mark since Guthrie disappeared. No suspects have been arrested. The investigation has been dogged by unanswered questions, such as how many people are believed to have taken part in her abduction and whether she was taken by someone who knew her.

The FBI in Washington did not respond to questions about the ransom notes, including whether both messages sent to the Tucson station have been deemed legitimate.

In releasing the notes, the Pima County Sheriff’s Department said that “we believe these distinctive linguistic characteristics may be recognizable to someone who knows or has interacted with the notes’ writer.”

Ransom notes released

The first note, sent Feb. 2, said Guthrie was safe but scared and would be released unharmed once her captors received $4 million in cryptocurrency, with the ransom amount increasing if the first demand was not met. It said Guthrie would be released within 12 hours if the payment was received. It also included a threat to kill her if the ransom wasn’t paid.

“Your mother is aware of this and her life is in your hands,” the first note read. “It is in the best interest of everyone to have this completed as soon as possible.”

The second note was sent Feb. 6 and said Guthrie died shortly after she was taken. “She is buried in nature now,” it said. “Nothing you could have done could have changed the outcome.” The note ended with an apology: “We are truly sorry.”

The Pima County Sheriff’s Department said the notes reveal a distinctive pattern of word choices and provide insight into the writer’s mindset. The agency said someone who knows the notes’ writer may recognize the patterns.

Authorities similarly used a suspect’s writings as a tool to find Theodore “Ted” Kaczynski, branded the “Unabomber” by the FBI. Kaczynski, who killed three people and injured 23 others with mail bombs over a 17-year span, pressured the Washington Post, in conjunction with the New York Times, to publish his 35,000-word manifesto in 1995. He was finally arrested after his brother realized his sibling was the suspect and notified authorities.

Signs of preparations

The sheriff’s office also said Friday that two videos recovered from Guthrie’s doorbell camera might be from two separate days and indicate an unidentified male prepared ahead of when Guthrie was taken. Authorities are seeking information on anyone who was behaving differently, changed their physical appearance, suddenly left the Tucson area or had a noticeable or unexplained interest or disinterest in the case.

“Investigators continue to pursue every available technological and investigative lead,” the sheriff’s office said. “However, community members remain a vital resource as we seek to provide answers for Nancy’s family.”

The FBI had released surveillance videos of a masked person who authorities said appeared to tamper with a camera on Nancy Guthrie’s front porch and block it with a plant. They described the person as a male about 5 feet, 9 inches tall.

Casey writes for the Associated Press.

OLYMPIC hero Adam Ramsay-Peaty wants to reconcile with his estranged family following their bitter bust-up.

Adam, 31, who is married to telly chef Gordon Ramsay’s daughter Holly, 26, said: “For me, as a Christian, there has to be forgiveness.”

He added, however, that he needs to feel his family have “improved as people” before they can make up.

The fall-out started in 2024 after a row over engagement party invites.

Adam’s mum Caroline, his brothers and aunt were then barred from his and Holly’s December wedding.

The tearful star blamed the feud in part for his poor performance in the pool at the Commonwealth Games in Glasgow, which end today.

family feud

Adam Peaty’s mum Caroline hits back in furious rant after son’s latest swipe

TROUBLED WATERS

Adam Peaty fears ‘family bomb to drop’ TODAY and destroy Commonwealth dream

Triple Olympic champion Adam got two individual bronzes and a silver in the mixed 4x100m medley relay.

He told The Guardian: “It’s hard because I know how hard I’ve worked.

“I know the s**t I’ve been through, which is no fault of my own. It does take a toll.”

Holly, expecting her first child with Adam, who has a son from a previous relationship, said online: “It’s not been an easy journey . . . we will keep going, through the good and the bad together.”

Adam vowed to get back to his best for the 2028 LA Olympics and to shake off his Commonwealth Games experience “very quickly”.

Meanwhile, Caroline, 60, from Uttoxeter, Staffs, said she will “always support” her son “from afar”.

Aug. 1 (UPI) — Two ransom notes sent by people claiming to be the kidnappers of Nancy Guthrie were released Friday by local police in hopes of generating new leads.

The second note, which was sent Feb. 6, told the Guthrie family that Nancy Guthrie died soon after she was kidnapped.

“We believe it was heart related,” the note said. “She is buried in nature now. Nothing you could have done could have changed the outcome. We want your family to know this and hope you all can find peace. We are truly sorry.”

Nancy Guthrie, 84, was the mother of Today co-host Savannah Guthrie. She was kidnapped from her home near Tucson, Ariz., on Feb. 1. The Pima County Sheriff’s Department marked six months since the kidnapping on Thursday and reiterated that the investigation is ongoing.

The family posted a new plea on Instagram Saturday.

“This is our beautiful Mom. Six months ago, someone took her out of her bed in the dead of night. We have lived every moment, every breath and every heartbeat in agony and despair ever since,” the post said. “Every day, we wake up and try to be strong and go on — because that’s what our joyful and resilient Mom taught us to do. But make no mistake — our hearts are in ruins.”

The post asks that people review the letters for possible recognition.

“We are begging for help. We are desperate. We need someone to come forward. Someone knows something. Someone suspects something. Someone recognizes the writing in the ransom demand notes. Someone has noticed something different, strange, troubling or just unusual — perhaps with someone they deeply love. … There is a way to end this situation and do the right thing. Please. Bring her home,” the post said.

The Pima County Sheriff’s Department posted the emailed ransom notes on X for the public to view, as well as a list of behaviors that could signal involvement.

The first note, which was sent on Feb. 2 to a local news outlet, noted that there was a white smartwatch on the floor at the foot of her bed, and that the backyard floodlight had been destroyed. It demanded $4 million in bitcoin by Feb. 5.

“Do not play games, law enforcement will not be able to help you,” the note threatened.

In July, a California man pleaded guilty to sending phony ransom notes to the Guthrie family to harass them.

The new series of ITV’s Long Lost Family begins with an emotional story of a search for a family.

A remarkable new series of Long Lost Family on ITV uses DNA technology and painstaking detective work to reunite two foundlings with family members they lost contact with or never met.

In December 1960, David Stevenson was discovered inside a locked apartment block in North-West London. He was found in the corridor up on the second floor, outside one of the flats. He was several days old and cold, but well fed. For Long Lost Family: Born Without Trace, 65-year-old David returns to the flats more than six decades on still with burning questions about why he was left in such a specific place and whether this provides any clues as to who his birth parents are.

David says: “This place is part of me and part of my identity, no question. This is where my story starts here, so coming back here is emotional. Babies are often left at a police station or a hospital. Whoever put me here…this is a locked private block. Were some of the other residents somehow involved? The WPC arrived and discovered me on the floor with people milling round.”

Although some residents were investigated by the police, enquiries failed to help identify David’s birth parents or link them to him. David was adopted by the Stevenson family and had a happy childhood in nearby Edgware. He grew up knowing about his start in life, but for a long time he wasn’t curious to know more.

“I did know that I was a foundling but as far as I was concerned I had a mum and dad and it wasn’t a problem for me.”

He now has three sons of his own. They reflect on the risks involved with searching – the answers could be upsetting. David is also conscious of the experience of his birth mother.

“If I find my birth mother and she didn’t tell anyone and she wasn’t keen on that secret turning up that would be hard because it would be rejection all over again. The consensus from the police doctor was that I was a result of an unattended birth. and that must be a traumatic experience for any woman,” he says.

With his sons now grown up, David remarried and now lives with his second wife Julie. In 2009 they launched a national appeal for information. Ultimately it did not provide answers, but it did mark the start of a decade of their own extensive investigative work.

Using the apartment building as their primary clue, they developed several hypotheses about the residents. More recently David has turned to searching through DNA, which revealed that he has both Dutch and French heritage. While this is a significant development, the search has stalled, leaving him still not knowing who his birth parents are. Thankfully the LLF team get a breakthrough on David’s search.

There is a strong connection to a particular Dutch family. Two family members, including a woman called Marianne agree to take DNA tests. The pair of them testing enables LLF expert Ariel Bruce to – with certainty – identify David’s birth mother. Her name is Petra and she sadly died in 2010. Upon seeing a photo of David, the family immediately see a likeness to Petra.

Show host Nicky Campbell travels to the Netherlands to meet with Marianne – David’s aunt and his first cousins Saskia and Bart. He wants to see how they are dealing with the news and to learn more about Petra. It transpires that nobody in the family ever knew that she was pregnant and gave up a baby in London. They are left with mixed feelings. They are desperately sad that Petra had to endure this alone but delighted to be able to meet their new cousin and welcome him into the family.

After finishing school, Petra moved to Paris to work as an Au Pair and was living there when David was conceived. This tallies with David’s French DNA and the thinking that his birth father is French. She then moved to London and subsequently parted with David.

She grew up in a strict Catholic household where news of her pregnancy would not have been tolerated. Marianne says: “It was parents after Second World War. They would be angry.”

Bart adds: “They were Catholic and they would also have been very concerned with what society would think of having a child born out of wedlock.”

The sad news that Petra has died is shared with David away from the cameras. French privacy laws mean that DNA testing is very uncommon in France and so Ariel and the team are not able to identify his birth father. Referring to the death of Petra, David tells host Davina McCall: “It’s a shame because it closed an avenue that might have been open to me.”

Davina explains that the nature of Petra’s relationship with David’s birth father is unknown, along with any possible connections to the building where David was found. She describes Petra’s strict upbringing in The Netherlands and explains that she never confided in her family about giving birth at 20. David is quite affected by learning that after returning to the Netherlands, she did not have any more children.

David says: “Oh wow. I find that surprising. And quite sad actually, you know, not having a family, having given up the one child that she did have.”

Davina then reveals that Petra has family members in Rotterdam who were all too willing to take DNA tests. She passes on a letter that they have written him, where they explain that they would love to meet and share as much information about Petra as they can. David is moved by this gesture.

He says: “To meet people close to Petra would be very nice. To put a name to my mother and a picture, it’s a profound feeling. That is amazing.

“I’ve often said I’m not looking for another family, you know. All I want to know is where did I come from? But seeing these[photos] and reading the letter, you know, I want to meet these people. Yeah, that’s as big as it can be.”

After travelling to Rotterdam and has an emotional first meeting with Marianne, Bart, Saskia and another first cousin Jan. They share details about Petra, her personality and interests. David concludes: “One of the most rewarding things…is to hear them talk about her, and, and it’s helped me form an idea of her character. I’m very excited abut the future. There was nothing but love from them.”

Petra’s sister Marianne tells him: “She would love you and you would love her.”

The other search on next week’s programme sees Sarah Gray search for her birth mother.

She was found inside a Leicester telephone box in June 1983. Just a newborn baby, she was discovered by a woman going to make a phone call. Now a mother herself of 3-year-old twins, she often reflects on her own beginnings. She had a very happy and fulfilling adoption but her start in life was never openly discussed.

“I think you know in your family the conversations that can come up freely, and I think there’s a time and a place for certain things and I didn’t push it.”

Returning to the telephone box she sees that it’s on a busy road where there would have been lots of passers-by.

Sarah, 43, said: “Whoever it was has left me in a public phone box right next to a bus stop, next to a community centre… they definitely wanted me to be found.”

The search team make incredible strides with Sarah’s case and identify her birth mother. Davina is able to finally bring Sarah some answers about who she is and where she comes from, Sarah’s mother – who is alive – wants contact and a meeting to be done off camera.

* Long Lost Family: Born Without Trace Series 8 begins on Monday night at 9pm on ITV and ITVX.

Like this story? For more of the latest showbiz news and gossip, follow Mirror Celebs on TikTok, Snapchat, Instagram, Twitter, Facebook, YouTube and Threads.

SACRAMENTO — California Gov. Gavin Newsom and his wife, documentary filmmaker Jennifer Siebel Newsom, have earned at least $11 million since he took office, with most of their income coming from wineries, restaurants and other investments, according to tax returns from 2019 through their most recent filings for 2024.

The tax records show the couple has earned between $1.4 million and $3.5 million per year, putting them in the upper echelon of Americans when it comes to annual income.

Newsom allowed reporters on Thursday to view four years of the couple’s jointly filed tax returns after receiving criticism for not disclosing his filings since he last released the information for the tax year 2020.

The release of the tax records comes just weeks after Newsom accused the Department of Justice of launching — at President Trump’s request — a baseless and politically motivated investigation into him and his wife, including her business interests and charity work. The governor said the probes, which federal officials have not confirmed, were a personal vendetta launched because he’s considering a run for president in 2028.

Siebel Newsom leads the Representation Project, a nonprofit that advocates for gender equity through film and education programs, and Girls Club Entertainment, a for-profit production company she owns that holds the copyrights to her documentaries. The nonprofit has faced criticism for accepting donations from companies that lobby the governor, including Pacific Gas & Electric Co. and AT&T.

The tax records released Thursday showed that her salary from the Representation Project was $145,000 to $150,000 annually from 2021 though 2024, similar to prior years. While Girls Club paid her $100,000 in 2021, and $11,700 in 2022, she did not report any income from the production company in the two years that followed.

The governor’s office, in a summary of the tax returns provided to reporters, stated that financial documents contradict “the FALSE right-wing claims that the Newsoms ‘enriched themselves’ through new ventures and nonprofit organizations.”

The memo stated that their income has declined since Newsom became governor. The tax records also show that Girls Club Entertainment has been losing money in recent years.

The governor signed a law during his first year in office to require presidential and gubernatorial candidates to release five years of tax returns to appear on the primary ballot. Democrats passed the law in response to Trump’s refusal to make the information public.

Less than six months later, the California Supreme Court struck down the portion that required presidential candidates to comply with the law. Gubernatorial candidates are still required to disclose their tax filings during election season.

Though tax returns became a flash point in the California vs. Trump political saga, Democrats have for decades demanded that candidates for governor and president release their income tax filings.

Presidential candidates dating back to the Nixon administration routinely shared their filings, with only President Ford and Trump refusing to do so. Former Democratic Gov. Jerry Brown and his Republican opponents also declined to share their tax returns before the 2010 and 2014 California gubernatorial elections.

Newsom released his tax returns during his campaigns for governor in 2018 and 2022, again in 2020 and before he beat a recall election in 2021. California candidates, elected officials, judges and some public employees also file annual economic interest statements.

“In the interest of transparency, he’s now voluntarily making all remaining filed tax returns available — going beyond what the law requires — as part of his longstanding commitment to transparency,” said Izzy Gardon, a spokesperson for the governor, in a statement.

The governor and his wife put their investments in a blind trust when he took office. Their earnings, which have totaled more than $1 million per year since at least 2011, stem from investments in wineries, restaurants, bars, hotels and hospitality management companies based in San Francisco, Napa Valley, and Lake Tahoe, according to economic interest disclosures filed with the state.

The latest batch of tax returns covers 2021 through 2024. Reporters were allowed to view, but not copy, more than 700 pages of tax records at the governor’s office in Sacramento on Thursday. Their 2025 tax returns were not available because, as he has done most years, the governor filed for an extension with the Internal Revenue Service and he doesn’t expect to file until October.

The couple’s reported income was the highest in 2021, when they sold their home in Kentfield, a wealthy enclave in Marin County, for $5.9 million. The Newsoms reported receiving more than $55,000 in rent for leasing out the home that same year, but declared an overall loss for tax purposes of $70,000 due to their mortgage payments, taxes, legal fees and depreciation.

The family previously moved to a mansion in Fair Oaks that they purchased for $3.7 million in 2019 following a brief residence at the Governor’s Mansion in downtown Sacramento.

The family kept the Fair Oaks home and purchased another $9.1-million estate in Marin County in 2024, where they primarily live and their four children attend school. Newsom and his wife also spend time in Fair Oaks while working at the state Capitol.

During those four years, Newsom and Siebel Newsom paid a high of $1,253,187 in federal income taxes in 2021, and a low of $488,821 in 2023. Their state tax income bill ranged from $34,307 to $213,331 during that time. The annual property tax bills hovered between $48,000 and $64,300 over that span.

The governor’s income included his government salary, which ranged from $167,647 in 2021 to $192,087 in 2024.

Newsom also was paid more than $150,000 during that period as an author. In recent years, Newsom has published a book for children with dyslexia and a memoir, “Young Man in a Hurry.”

The tax returns showed the family paid from $154,000 to almost $200,000 each year for household employees from 2021 through 2024. The returns showed that they paid for Social Security coverage, Medicare and the state’s unemployment benefits fund as part of those expenses.

The governor and his family donated more than $200,000 to charity from 2021 to 2024. While most of those donations were in cash, they also gave $4,900 in “Armani Business Wear” to the Oakland nonprofit organization Restorative Justice, and toys, furniture, appliances, books and other goods to Goodwill in Sacramento.

Among their listed expenses in 2021 was $3,542 in storage costs for silver and platinum holdings. Previously, the couple made nearly a half-million dollars trading silver bars in 2011 alone.

The “family fight” over setting the Fed Funds Rate that Federal Reserve Board Chairman Kevin Warsh has desired resulted in the Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC) maintaining its current 3.5% to 3.75% target at the second meeting under his leadership.

“I asked for a good family fight, and I got one,” he said at Wednesday’s FOMC post-announcement press conference. “That’s the purpose… Most of our discussions were on the big questions that matter to the conduct of monetary policy.”

The two-day fight addressed the impact of five years of high inflation on current policy, the effects of strained supply chains and resulting price increases, and the role of monetary policy and strategies in achieving price stability.

“There was nothing inertial about that discussion. It was an active, robust discussion about what’s in the full range of what we can do and might want to do in the period ahead,” he said.

Unlike June’s unanimous vote to maintain the FOMC’s target rate, Beth M. Hammack, president and CEO of the Federal Reserve Bank of Cleveland; Neel Tushar Kashkari, president and CEO of the Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis; and Lorie K. Logan, president and CEO of the Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas, voted to raise the Fed Funds Rate by 25 basis points.

The division nearly matched the CME Group’s FedWatch Tool, which estimated a 68.5% chance the FOMC would maintain its rate and a 31.5% chance of an increase to 3.75%-4%, based on the 30-Day Fed Funds futures price.

Inflation Target

Acknowledging that supply chain shocks in energy and other sectors have kept inflation above the FOMC’s 2% target, Warsh noted that little could be done to cure inflation in the nine weeks since he became chairman or to achieve a month of modest price decreases.

“For some households, businesses, and market professionals, five years of high inflation have left a mistaken impression… that the Fed’s implicit inflation target was somehow above 2%,” said Warsh. “Let me reiterate: There is no soft inflation target. There is no soft implicit target. Not on this committee’s watch. There’s only a target, and it’s 2%.”

No Jackson Hole Preview

Keeping true to form, Warsh shared that he has not yet begun his speech for the Jackson Hole Economic Symposium in August, which has historically set the stage for what the FOMC would do in the second half of the year.

He said he would like to ask the “big questions” about what is happening to productivity, demographics, and the global economy amid the current economic shocks.

“I haven’t made a decision whether it’s going to be a big-picture speech or whether it’s going to be a more traditional setup for all the action we’re going to have between September and December,” he said. “I will tell you one other thing I’m doing between now and Jackson Hole. I’m checking in with those task forces [that I announced in June].”

Billy Ray Smith Jr. became embedded in the San Diego sports community as an exceptional linebacker who lived up to his billing as a first-round draft pick and played all of his 126 NFL games with the Chargers from 1983 to 1992, long before the franchise moved to Los Angeles.

Despite being Texas-raised and Arkansas-educated, Smith Jr. became synonymous with San Diego by spending the rest of his life in the sunny SoCal city as a sportscaster, radio host and big-hearted, larger-than-life personality.

Smith Jr. died Wednesday at age 64, his family saying in a statement that he “faced his long journey with dementia caused by CTE with unmatched bravery, dignity, and strength.”

“It is with profound sadness that we share the loss of our beloved Billy Ray Smith Jr., who passed away peacefully surrounded by family,” the statement said. “Billy Ray brought so much joy, light, and laughter to the world as a devoted father, husband, son, and loyal friend.”

Chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE) is a progressive brain disease characterized by mood disturbances and cognitive decline. It is linked to repeated head impacts and traumatic brain injuries, and has been found posthumously in numerous athletes in contact sports.

According to the Mayo Clinic, CTE cannot be diagnosed definitively during life. However, clinical criteria has been developed for traumatic encephalopathy syndrome (TES), symptoms that occur together and are associated with CTE.

A diagnosis of CTE requires evidence of degeneration of brain tissue that can only be seen during an autopsy. Through 2022, the Boston University CTE Center studied the brains of 376 former NFL players and diagnosed 345 with CTE, a rate of 91.7%.

The list of former NFL players diagnosed with CTE includes another legendary Chargers linebacker, Junior Seau, who died in 2012 of a self-inflicted gunshot wound at 43. Smith played alongside Seau from 1990-1992.

Their friendship endured after Smith Jr. retired and moved into broadcasting. He was a speaker at Seau’s public memorial service.

Smith Jr. was born Aug. 10, 1961, in Fayetteville, Ark., the son of longtime NFL defensive lineman Billy Ray Smith, and grew up in Plano, Texas. The year he was born, his father registered a career-high 13.5 sacks for the Baltimore Colts.

Smith Jr. followed his father’s footsteps to the University of Arkansas, and was twice named a unanimous All-American and voted into the College Football Hall of Fame. The Chargers drafted Smith Jr. with the fifth overall pick in 1983.

He moved from defensive end to linebacker in San Diego and by 1987 was named the team’s most valuable player. Smith Jr. finished his career with 26.5 sacks, 15 interceptions and 14 fumble recoveries.

He soon moved behind a microphone, teaming with Scott Kaplan on a popular radio show on the Mighty 1090, a station that went off the air in 2019.

“He loved being part of San Diego,” Kaplan told the San Diego Union-Tribune. “Yeah, he was the fifth overall pick and he played 10 years and, yeah, was the face of the defense before he handed it off to Junior Seau. But he was the guy who never left San Diego.

“He was loved because people knew Billy Ray. It wasn’t like other star athletes; they knew him because they had seen his whole life, from the time he was in his early 20s, play out on local television. And he never left.”

Smith Jr. worked on TV as a sportscaster and sports director for KGTV while also making appearances on Fox Sports and local Chargers broadcasts.

He met his wife, broadcaster Kimberly Hunt, during a United Cerebral Palsy telethon while still a Chargers player. They married in 1990, had a daughter, Savannah, two years later and celebrated their 36th anniversary in June. Hunt, an Emmy Award winner, is currently in her 18th year as the KGTV news evening anchor.

The couple was active in charities for decades and this year was given the San Diego Nice Guy of the Year Award.

“Through decades of volunteer service and charitable leadership, Billy Ray has generously supported youth programs, veterans, healthcare initiatives, and numerous nonprofit organizations, helping strengthen the fabric of the San Diego community,” the San Diego Nice Guys said earlier this year.

“Together, Kimberly Hunt and Billy Ray Smith represent the very best of San Diego —individuals whose professional excellence is matched only by their kindness, humility, and dedication to improving the lives of others.”

Smith Jr. came to San Diego as a fearsome linebacker who made two Pro Bowls, yet he transcended football through his infectious personality and devotion to his adopted city.

“He had that big smile, that huge laugh, that rip-your-arm-off handshake,” Kaplan said. “B.R. did everything right. There was not one part of him that was a lie, a secret, not one skeleton in the closet. He really, really lived a life that he could be very proud of.”

It was at 11:21 a.m. on Sunday, June 21, that things started to fall apart. Aliyu Muhammad was in the Malali area, Kaduna, northwestern Nigeria, working underneath a car when he missed a call from his wife. When he called back, someone else answered and asked him if he knew the owner of the phone. 

“He said whatever he would tell me are just unconfirmed suspicions,” he recounted. “Then, he told me some women saw my wife and suspected she was a child kidnapper. I told him that I left her at home and she was supposed to attend an event. He said that’s exactly what she told them, but the people, seeing a stranger with a hijab and niqab talking to some children while there is a high rate of kidnapping, were suspicious. He asked me to send a representative since I wasn’t around.”

The man who called introduced himself as the Mai Anguwa (community head). Aliyu sent his friend, Suleiman Isa, to fill in for him. Fortunately, the man knew the friend.  

Ummulkhairi left her home in Sabon Gari Marraraban Jos, Kaduna, that morning to attend an Islamic lecture in Madrasat Tashiyhul Iman, an area she wasn’t familiar with. This led her to ask a group of children for directions. However, being a fully covered Muslim woman with a hijab and a face veil (niqab), some of the residents profiled her as dangerous. They mistook her for a child kidnapper. Within a short time, a mob gathered, and they eventually killed her, then set her body on fire, despite attempts to save her life.

The Kaduna State Police Command claimed that officers attempted to save her life, but the mob stormed the police station, overpowered them, and forcefully took Ummulkhairi out. However, eyewitness accounts tell a different story. 

Zainab Musa, Ummulkhairi’s sister-in-law, who was at the scene, said it was the Divisional Police Officer (DPO), CSP Abdullahi S. Akai, who handed her over to the mob, and that she tried to pull Ummulkhairi away from him but to no avail. Other witnesses, including Ummulkhairi’s co-wife, Hussaina Sani, corroborated this account. 

HumAngle visited the police station in Marrarraba Jos, where sources said the DPO “had been transferred to the Force Headquarters for investigation”. On the afternoon of Jul 16, we met DSP Mansir Hassan, the Kaduna Police spokesperson, who said he could not answer any questions because the case is under investigation and officers were not allowed to comment outside the earlier press statement.

After she was lynched, the DPO visited her house with some journalists, who interviewed him right in their compound at the centre of the family’s grief. 

“[The DPO] lifted his trousers to show us the injury he sustained from the mob. He even told us that his car was damaged, and all I could think was how any of that concerns us,” said Aminatu Isa Abdullahi, Ummulkhairi’s mother-in-law.  

On the day it happened 

As Aliyu struggled to reach the scene after the phone call, each passing second deepened his fears. “It was hard to get a bike from where I was in Malali Low-cost, so I had to walk,” he recalled. “While I was walking, I was anxiously calling my friend [Suleiman], but his number wasn’t connecting. I rushed to get my brother-in-law in Kawo Park, and we flagged down a bike.” He also called Zainab, his sister, who in turn contacted Ummulkhairi’s colleagues, who were also supposed to attend the event. 

The bike ride felt slow that day, and Aliyu’s anxiety worsened as he started receiving calls from people asking where he was as the crowd was becoming more erratic. When they reached the Marrarraban Jos Bridge, he saw cars and lorries parked on the road. The motorcyclist dropped them on the other side, and they continued on foot. 

He saw smoke from a distance. Then, as if on cue, his second wife called.

“They have killed her,” she said. 

Those words echoed in Aliyu’s head. He was struggling to hear what she was saying because she couldn’t stop crying, and when he started to ask questions, she couldn’t respond. Instead, she ended the call. 

“When I arrived there, I saw her friend. They were all crying,” he said.

Eventually, he saw his sister and second wife returning with a piece of clothing he immediately recognised as his wife’s hijab. The lemon-green fabric was torn. 

Aliyu had spent the previous night with Ummulkhairi. Every evening, even on the nights he stayed with his second wife, he would stop by to see her and the children. Every morning, before leaving for work, he did the same.

The evening before Ummulkhairi was killed was no different. She told him about her day, served him tuwo and vegetable soup, and they talked as they usually did. 

“I will always remember this as the last meal I had from her,” he said. 

The following morning, when he returned for his daily greetings, he found her seated at her favourite place, with her Qur’an open in front of her. “She reminded me to greet a sick neighbour who was her friend. I told her I would do so when I return,” he recalled.

It was then she informed him about the programme in Madrasat Tashiyhul Iman to which she was invited. He wished her well, and she asked the children to pray for him. 

Neither of them knew they were saying the final goodbye, nor did he know that hours later he would be standing at the police station, where her remains were. 

“I saw my wife’s body, burned and covered with a leaf,” Aliyu recounted. 

That day, he granted some interviews to journalists before the police released Ummulkhairi’s body to the family. “We returned her home and buried her,” he said. It was only afterwards, he said, that another loss struck him. “The phone you saw me give my daughter earlier was her phone, and something that further triggered me was when it was returned to me, I realised that I didn’t even think where her things were. The Mai Anguwa sent someone to give it to me, but he returned her shoes to me himself.”

Witnesses to tears 

When Suleiman Isa answered Aliyu’s call for help that morning, he didn’t know how the day would fracture his friend’s life. He arrived before the situation spiralled, helping to secure Ummulkhairi inside the police station. Believing she was safe, he stepped out to answer a phone call and meet a potential business customer. When he returned to the police station, he didn’t know she had already been dragged out and handed to the mob. 

“I started asking people where she was, and they told me that she had already been killed. At that point, my head turned, and I just started crying,” Suleiman recounted. 

He walked through the back entrance to the main gate, where Ummulkhairi’s body lay. “Some of us tried to stop the burning, after which we covered her body in leaves and put her on a stretcher,” he said. The family later took her home for burial. 

Although Suleiman and Ummulkhairi were not particularly close, he said the events of that afternoon left him shaken.

Grief was the last reason Ummulkhairi visited Hussaina Sani, her co-wife. Now, it is the reason Hussaina spends her day in the family compound, where Ummulkhairi lived, helping to hold together the space she left behind. 

Though the two women lived in different neighbourhoods and rarely saw one another, their relationship was warm whenever they met, Hussaina recounted. 

She had rushed to the police station after their husband called to tell her what had happened. When she arrived, Ummulkhairi had already been placed in a separate room. Inside the station, Hussaina encountered two women accusing her co-wife of being a child kidnapper. 

“They seemed angry, saying that they would not tolerate what happened. One of them got into a scuffle with the police officers,” she recounted. Unable to stay silent, Hussaina confronted one of the women herself. “I got upset and asked her if she saw her kidnapping any child. The woman said her child was kidnapped before. I asked her if it was Ummulkhairi who was responsible, and we kept going back and forth.” 

Outside, the crowd grew increasingly restless. Police officers fired tear gas over the station walls in an attempt to disperse them, but it did little to calm the situation. Soon, stones began raining into the compound. 

The officers moved the women into another room for safety and told them that reinforcements had been called. They also said Ummulkhairi would be transferred to Kaduna. Then the DPO arrived. 

“The first thing he said was, ‘Where is the culprit?’ Our sister-in-law then said, ‘Do you mean to say the suspect?’ and pointed to the room she was kept in. However, he came out dragging her, and my sister-in-law demanded to know where he was taking her. When she couldn’t stop her, she helped Ummulkhairi remove her niqab, and the DPO reached for her hijab, but Ummulkhairi held onto it tighter.” Despite the sister-in-law’s attempt to pull her back, he still pulled her outside and handed her to the mob. 

They heard her scream as the mob descended on her, but none of them could intervene because of the overwhelming crowd. Hussaina’s voice started rising as she recalled the events of the day.

She rejected the police’s account that the crowd had stormed the station. 

“I have no idea how many people there were,” he voice cracked. “There were hundreds, including men, women, and even children. At one point, both roads were filled with people; how could she even fight them?”  

Their sister-in-law, Zainab, ran into the streets pleading with the crowd to listen, explaining that Ummulkhairi was innocent. No one did. At one point, a police officer grabbed Zainab and warned that if she didn’t lay low, the mob might turn on her as well. Zainab was later taken out through a backdoor. 

The ones left behind 

On the morning of July 2, when HumAngle visited, Ummulkhairi’s home was thick with grief. In the midst of it, her children were playing about. Nearby, her mother-in-law, sister, and co-wife were moving around the hearth, trying to fill in the space her absence had left behind. The grief had thickened into the walls, but its weight was evident, even when they welcomed me with a warm smile. 

If Ummulkhairi were there, she would have woken up for dawn prayers, swept the house, and ensured her children were bathed and fed. She would have thrown danwake (bean dumplings) into a pot over the fire, like she did the day she was killed, and sliced pieces of onions into the hot oil. She would have plated it on the colourful plates her sister was now washing. 

Afterwards, she would have taken down her bag from the wall and revised what she would teach her students in her next class or left for school. If she did go to school, she would have returned around 2 p.m. Had I visited then, she would almost certainly have insisted on serving me a plate of food, even if it meant going without herself.

“Tell me about Ummulkhair,” I asked as I sat across from her younger sister, Ruqayyah Abbah, on the multicoloured mat in the sitting room. Ruqayyah had travelled from Gombi, Adamawa State, in northeastern Nigeria, after the news wrecked their home. She paused, as though weighing the question, before she started to speak. 

“Ummulkhairi had always taken care of the people around her. Ever since I knew her, she had always been one to feed and take care of any child. I can confidently say she is the kindest among us all,” she started. “But in a span of a day, all that was taken away when she was wrongly accused. I know she is innocent because I have known her all my life, and even if she wasn’t my sister, I would have said the same.” 

Ruqayyah recounted memories from when they were kids, how Ummulkhairi, who is fondly called Ummi by her family, always stayed away from fights, even when she was teased. As a child, she often preferred to play alone. 

Ummi Abba Gambo was her maiden name. She attended Gombi Primary School and Government Girls Secondary School, Gombi, for her secondary school. After marrying and relocating to Kaduna State, she enrolled in an Islamic school. Upon graduating, she was retained as a teacher due to her diligence. She taught both the children and adult sections. She last visited her family home nine months ago for her father’s funeral. 

“I would say she was the most easily terrified person I know. She always avoided things that would put her in scary or uncomfortable situations. After how she was attacked that day, even if they had left her alive, I don’t think she would have avoided being traumatised by the whole situation,” Ruqayyah said. 

When the news of Ummulkhairi’s death reached Gombi, it landed first in Ruqayyah’s ear. That morning, she and their mother had been trying to reach Ummulkhairi to talk about her youngest daughter’s education. 

“She hasn’t been put in school yet due to financial problems, and our mother wanted to send her the money. After Zuhr (midday)  prayers, I tried her number to let her know, but I couldn’t reach her,” she recalled. “I informed my mother, and we decided to call her later in the day, not knowing that she had already been killed at that point. By the time he called me, they were either about to go bury her or were coming back from it.” 

The details came in bits and pieces, because the grief hit before she could hear the rest of it. She learnt about the gut-wrenching details from their older sister, whom she called after she managed to stop crying. 

Ruqayyah arrived at Marraraban Jos on Tuesday, June 23, two days after the incident, but the reality of her sister’s death did not fully settle until she reached the family home. The first sign of absence was the lack of phone calls from her sister, who often called en route to see how her journey was going and to ask what she wanted to eat when she arrived. That had been the routine every time she travelled to Kaduna in the past. 

This time, the phone never rang, at least not from Ummulkhairi. 

“To think she couldn’t find safety in the police station. What’s the point of authorities that can’t protect someone in that situation?” The anger found its root in her voice. It wasn’t just that her sister died; it was that the system designed to protect her failed to. Her voice softened as one of Ummulkhairi’s daughters walked into the room. 

Seeing her nieces and nephews the day she arrived, she said, was the moment the reality of the loss finally overwhelmed her.

“I just hope the government gets us justice, so that these children and their father can get some peace. I feel so bad for the children. I know how much their mother loved them and how she could breathe for them if she could,” she added. 

Ruqayyah reached for a lemon-green storage box filled with the things her sister treasured. Inside were photographs from her youth and with her family. In one, she was holding one of her children, her eyes looking straight into the camera. In another, she was with friends, her face glowing with the promise of youth. 

As we looked through the pictures, three of her children gathered around, adding the little they knew to the history her sister was sharing. It was then that her second son, Usman Aliyu, brought me her favourite Qur’an, its battered pages, evidence of her love. 

Ummulkhairi is not the only victim of mob violence in Nigeria. It has become a recurring feature of public life in Nigeria, fuelled by distrust of formal justice systems and the widespread belief that communities must protect themselves. 

Suleiman Usman Yusuf, a security consultant and human rights advocate, said the roots of the problem lie not simply in public anger, but institutional failure. 

“The biggest reason is institutional failure compounded by deliberate impunity. When citizens repeatedly watch genuine criminals walk free, whether because evidence disappears, witnesses are intimidated, prosecutors receive phone calls, or judges grant bail to [people] who return to terrorise the same communities, a dangerous conclusion takes root in the public mind: that the formal justice system is not for them,” he said. 

He added that mob justice is not primarily a product of ignorance or barbarism. It is a deeply wrong response to a system that has consistently failed to deliver consequences. 

“People do not burn suspects because they enjoy violence. They do it because they have been taught, through repeated experience, that violence is the only language that produces results,” he added. “The second layer is impunity for the mobs themselves. When a crowd kills someone, and nothing happens, that crowd becomes a template. The next community that is angry enough simply follows the same script.”

He pointed to a pattern stretching across more than a decade. “We saw it with the Aluu Four in 2012. We saw it with Major General Idris Alkali in 2018. We saw it with Deborah Samuel in 2022. We are seeing it now with Malama Ummulkhairi in 2026.”

Although the incidents occurred years apart and in different parts of the country, he said, they shared a common thread. 

“Nobody was ever made to pay a price serious enough to deter the next mob,” he said. 

Suleiman believes legislation remains necessary, but it must be matched by visible accountability. He argues that Nigeria needs at least one high-profile conviction that would send an unambiguous message across the country to stop the cycle. He has been advocating for the Prohibition and Protection of Persons from Lynching, Mob Action, and Extrajudicial Bill passed by the Senate in 2017 to be signed into law. He has written formal letters to the House of Representatives, the President of the Senate, and others.

Amnesty International recorded at least 555 victims of mob violence in Nigeria between 2012 and 2023, with 33 people burnt to death. The regions with the highest cases were the North West (100) and the South West (98), mostly as a result of being accused of witchcraft, theft, blasphemy, or taking part in rituals. 

In Ummulkhairi’s family, however, mob violence is no longer a mere figure. It is a loved one, whose absence is felt every second. Her mother collapsed after hearing the news of her daughter’s death. Family members in Gombi said she remained in a state of deep distress, unable to eat or move normally after the incident. Due to pre-existing issues with hypertension and back pain, the journey was impossible for her to make down to Kaduna, but every time she remembered how her daughter died, the memories triggered another health crisis.

The last meal Ummulkhairi prepared for her family was danwake, but it was forgotten when the news reached the family. The next day, it was thrown into a basket as it had started to spoil. What happened next will haunt their paternal grandmother, Aminatu Isa Abdullahi, forever.

Twelve-year-old Usman, Ummulkhairi’s second son, attempted to eat the spoilt meal. “He looked at us and vowed that he must eat it even if it was spoiled,” Aminatu recounted. They watched him as he shoved handfuls into his mouth, an attempt to save his mother’s last meal, further breaking their hearts. 

“One day I was sitting with her youngest daughter, and she said to me: ‘Will you stay with us until our mother comes back?’” That was another exchange that shattered Aminatu’s heart, and recalling the memory made her break down in tears. She promised her she would stay as long as she was needed, not having the heart to explain that her mother was never returning. 

Aminatu called for justice. Her prayers echoed through the wall, her pain spreading through it. When she arrived at Marraraban Jos after she got the news,  the town was in uproar. As they tried to get a bike to take them to the house, someone warned her to stop crying so hard in case people suspect they are Ummulkhairi’s relatives and try to attack them too. 

“We couldn’t even do the funeral bath for her; we just had to sprinkle water on her burnt body,” Aminatu said. She had declined to see the body, afraid of what would stick in her memory. “They bought some security personnel with guns around the house, and all I could think was what they thought they were trying to protect when we had already lost her.” 

Hamza Dantani, a human rights lawyer, has since submitted a petition calling for a thorough investigation into the circumstances of this case. The alleged negligence contravenes the Police Act 2020 and violates Sections 33 and 34 of the 1999 Nigerian Constitution, which protect the fundamental rights to life and dignity. 

A history of violence 

About seven years ago, Marraraban Jos started having security issues; before then, stories like that were tales coming from far-away places. Sometimes, others from neighbouring villages would call residents to ask if they saw kidnappers approaching their side. This earned the neighbourhood its nickname, Sambisa. 

Things have eased up a little for the neighbourhood, as it was a lot worse three years ago. They hardly went a week without someone being kidnapped there. The men formed a night neighbourhood watch to protect what they could. The women at home live with anxiety every time their husbands and sons go out, not knowing how the night would end up for them. Aliyu was among the men who used to patrol the community.

Ummulkhairi’s family moved to the neighbourhood in 2020 and had lived in their current house for about two years. Right behind the house stretched acres of empty land, extending beyond what the eyes can see. 

“The men usually go out around 11 p.m. to start their patrol. Sometimes, they come back with wounds as a result of hiding in the bushes. I sometimes hear gunshots from my room, especially when one of our neighbours was kidnapped. I started to sleep fully dressed; I would wear trousers and keep a hijab beside me just in case I get kidnapped,” said Habiba Muhammad, Ummulkhairi’s friend and neighbour. 

Recently, residents said kidnapping rates had reduced, but cattle and animal rustling still happens often around that area. Still, they have never seen security personnel posted to their neighbourhood. Years of living with fear had made residents increasingly suspicious of strangers. There were times when people fled their homes simply because they feared an attack was coming.

“We can’t leave because we don’t have money to go elsewhere, and even if they kidnap us, they won’t get much. When we used to run, I would go to my grandmother’s place in Kaduna town. It disrupts our children’s education too; sometimes, they close up the schools when the kidnappings worsen. But now, I have accepted this fate; I don’t want to run anymore,” Habiba said. 

This anxiety is shared with several other people HumAngle spoke to in the area. However, some unanimously agreed that even though kidnapping was common in their part of Marraraban Jos, child kidnapping on its own rarely happens.

 “Sometimes when they can’t find the men, they will kidnap their wives, except in some circumstances where they would kidnap an entire family,” she said. Habiba recalled the experience of one neighbour whose family was attacked. “Because his wife was pregnant and couldn’t walk, they beat her up and abandoned her on the way. They also threw down one of her children when he peed on their body, and he even broke his arm.”

Retracing memory 

Aliyu has a lot to say about Ummulkhairi; her loss is overwhelming. 

“She was very kind to me, and there were many times I would be in distress, and she would offer warmth and support, even when we were going through hard times,” he recalled. “This place you are sitting in used to be her favourite place, and when she is not busy with other tasks, she prefers to sit there and study her books. Sometimes, other women from the neighbourhood come in so she can help them with theirs.” 

As he dug into his memory to answer the questions, his second son lay down the mat as he slyly tried to take his father’s phone as he spoke. When he succeeded, his legs swung in an upward motion as he lay on his stomach, playing with the phone as we spoke about his mother, a contrast from the young child who shoved pieces of spoiled food in his mouth over a week ago. 

“There are so many things I can tell you about Ummulkhairi, but I don’t even have the words. God knows I have suffered such a great loss; the only thing I can do now is pray for her,” he said. 

Uba Sani, the Kaduna State Governor, has claimed that “about 41 persons have been charged with culpable homicide. And about 41 went through investigation also; that’s 82. Thirty suspects have also been charged with unlawful assembly”. 

A June 24 report shows that 24 alleged suspects – 20 males and 4 females – have been arraigned on charges of criminal conspiracy, inciting public disturbance, mischief, mischief destruction of public and police property, and culpable homicide. 

This news reached Aliyu and his family through social media. “They said they were taken to court, but I don’t know much about that. The video I saw showed some people lined up, but I couldn’t really see their faces clearly; I only recognised one face, an old man that I see around,” he explained. 

The family, still waiting for answers about the circumstances surrounding Ummulkhairi’s death, felt excluded from the process meant to deliver justice. “No one briefed us; we have to depend on rumours for information. Her youngest son told me yesterday that if they get justice for what was done to their mother, he thinks he will be better, and I could only try not to cry,” Aliyu’s brother, Abubakar Muhammad, added. 

The recorded videos of the lynching are also a huge wound to the family, and they couldn’t bring themselves to watch them. “I cannot watch these kinds of videos. I avoid social media for that reason. I usually only go in to respond to condolence messages,” Aliyu said. He wished people cared more about how things like this would affect them.

Abubakar said Aliyu often told him that he was worried about his wife during the past few months due to the loss of her father, as it seemed to be taking a toll on her. But even then, she had continued to live life as she always had.

“The most painful part was hearing what the oldest son was saying about taking vengeance for what was done to his mother. I tried to placate him. I even tried to close his mouth, but he pushed my hand away. Things like this can only be solved by justice; only that can give us relief. And if this keeps happening, no one is safe,” Abubakar said. 

Ummulkhairi did not disappear with the smoke that burned her alive in broad daylight that day. She is present in the edges and corners of the house, on the walls where her bag lies, in the kit where she once kept everything that matters,  and in the memories of her loved ones.  

“Are you mad?” says a fellow guest over dinner at our campsite. “I heard you’re here on a long-distance cycle ride with your toddlers.”

I am in Orne, a region in Normandy, with my sister Issy and our three-year-old sons, Sid and Ralph. The landscape folds around us in green-over-green – hedgerow, oak, mossy manor wall – then opens into meadows where Percheron horses graze, knee-deep in wildflowers. Deer leap from the bocage. Cidre and poiré have been pressed here since the middle ages. The villages are sandy stone, blue- and green-shuttered; roses against the boulangerie.

And yes, we are biking through it with the boys in child seats on the back, camping along the way in places found through the France Vélo Tourisme website. Over five days, we’re travelling 130km (80 miles) from Rémalard-en-Perche to Domfront, mostly along the Véloscénic – a 450km voie verte (a “greenway” car-free route) that runs from Mont-Saint-Michel to Paris – but looping off it to explore the fairytale chateaux and villages of the Perche, a historic former province. Issy is intrepid and a serious cyclist (the Lycra kind) but the best I can say is I cycle Sid to nursery, and I haven’t slept under canvas since, well, Glastonbury. So two or three hours’ cycling a day is probably enough …

Slightly rumpled from the overnight ferry to Caen from Portsmouth, we pull into Forest View, a campsite three miles south of Rémalard. Jean-Louis from the local bike hire shop is waiting with our ebikes. He’d insisted. I’d resisted: they can’t carry both a child seat and panniers so we’ll rely on Jean-Louis and a patchwork of kindly hosts to move our bags between stops. We test our bike legs on La Route Royale, an intermediate-level 25km circular route, and within an hour of leaving the campsite, climbing the hill to the pretty church of Moutiers-au-Perche for lunch, I realise Jean-Louis was right. The ebikes are the difference between a holiday and a heart attack.

The route is flat, but to really see the Perche you have to venture off it, and once you do, the land begins to roll and hills come without warning. The boys, strapped in behind us, are not light. But they are also loving it: pointing, laughing, bursting into Old MacDonald every time they see a horse, cow, tractor or sheep. It’s going so well that Issy and I are debating another few hours cycling or even a cider tasting on the way home, when a pause in the singing alerts us to the fact that both children have been lulled to sleep, heads wobbling from side to side, and so we take them back to the campsite to rest.

Graham Allen bought Forest View three years ago and built wooden camping pods especially for cyclists after watching them arrive “laden like donkeys”. Inside there’s a cosy bed and a skylight that we watch the stars through. Across the field there are hot showers. And in the informal restaurant, more like a kitchen/living room, home-cooked food at a shared table. Along France’s greenways, the number of Accueil Vélo accredited stops (accommodation for cyclists that offer breakfast, basic repair kits and help with luggage, among other things) has tripled since 2019.

After some seriously good sleep, eggs on toast and frantic sorting of stuff, we spend the next day on the Dîtes-le Avec des Fleurs loop: through the oak forest of Réno-Valdieu and past the Manoir de la Moussetière, one of the fortified manor houses typical of the Perche. Even on the open roads, there are just a handful of cars, and some steep climbs reward us with wonderful views. The freewheel back down leaves the boys shrieking with delight. At La Chapelle-Montligeon, a church rises out of the fields, and here we picnic on the bank of a lake.

Denis Hurtaud was also cycling this route when he took a detour from the greenway and stumbled on Café de la Place in the sleepy village of Courgeon. “The terrace was full of yellow flowers and there were old-fashioned oilcloths on the tables. Dappled sunlight fell across the courtyard,” he says. Over lunch, he overheard the owner say he was planning to retire and, by the end of the meal, he had decided to buy it. Today it is a bistro, village shop, bike repair station, art gallery, music venue and a lifeline to locals.

It’s Accueil Vélo-accredited too. No shower yet, but we pitch our tent in the garden and Denis has saved us some dinner. We sit at a long table in the last of the light, doves cooing in the church tower, eating chicken cooked in cider, a Perche speciality. Locals drift in and out. A neighbour’s child arrives with a plate of warm crepes for us.

The next day, we ride 8km up the greenway to Mortagne-au-Perche for the market. The queue for the season’s first strawberries goes around the block. A man turns dripping chickens on a spit. The radishes are obscenely pink, the asparagus oh so plump. At the Bar du Marché, locals drink coffee and scratch scratchcards in the sunshine. We join them. Our boys are knackered; both have absolute meltdowns and it’s hard work getting them back on the bikes, so we head directly to Carrouges, where we are to camp at the Parc Naturel Régional Normandie-Maine, in an orchard behind the moated, red-brick Château de Carrouges.

The Parc is Accueil Vélo too, but the woman at the office says only five or six tents pitch up a year and we have the orchard to ourselves. Just us, a roast chicken and some baguettes, with the kids playing dinosaurs in long grass. Once Sid is snoring I pour myself a cidre – from local apples – and write. It is so quiet you can hear the flapping of birds’ wings. Then the storm comes. I’m a tent pole down (Glastonbury?) and the rain hits canvas like gravel. I lie clinging to Sid as the thunder tears the sky open above us, questioning every life choice that has led me to a walled orchard in Normandy with a small child and half a tent.

By morning, the rain has stopped. The orchard glistens. Issy emerges from the next-door tent having not slept either. We push on through the spa town of Bagnoles-de-l’Orne to Domfront, a town on a rocky outcrop dominated by a medieval keep. The sun bursts out again and the kids race up the ruined stones. Our home for the night is the Cabane des Deux Chênes, a handbuilt cabin on stilts between two old oaks. A secret room for the children in the rafters. A Nordic bath on the terrace, a hug after the rain.

On our last morning, we stop at the Ferme de l’Yonnière, Jérôme Forget’s farm just down the road, where he makes AOP Poiré Domfront. Pear trees take decades to mature, Jerome tells us, which is why most people stopped planting them, and why poiré went out of fashion. But he has planted a thousand. Next spring, he’ll start taking cyclists, too.

Back at the cabane, Jean-Louis comes to pick us up in his van and drives us, talking in French the whole way: about the pear trees and horses and the lanes we have just cycled. The most beautiful place in the world, he says, and I don’t disagree. Against the odds, it’s been a brilliant family holiday and Issy and I are already planning to come back next summer and do the whole thing. Perhaps we are mad after all.

The trip was provided by Orne Tourism, with travel to France by Brittany Ferries. Bike hire with Les Vélos Perchés costs €35 (£30) a day. At Forest View a pod sleeping two costs from £38 per night; campsite pitches start at £25 per night. Cabane des Deux Chênes sleeps 2-4 and costs from £138 per a night.

Betye Saar, a Los Angeles artist who transformed collections of bigoted bric-à-brac — Sambo dolls, ceramic mammies and crude renderings of pickaninnies — into potent works of assemblage that mined the searing history of race in the United States, and whose works influenced generations of artists, has died. She was 99.

Saar died in her sleep — just a few days short of her 100th birthday — in Los Angeles, her longtime gallerist Julie Roberts at Robert Projects said. Saar’s death was confirmed by her publicist Hannah Gottlieb-Graham.

“Betye Saar was one of the greatest artists of our time, and it has been an immense honor to work with her for nearly 20 years,” Roberts said. “Her singular vision transformed the course of contemporary art, and her legacy will continue to inspire generations of artists, scholars, and audiences around the world.”

A diminutive woman with a low-key manner that belied a steely resolve, Saar was known for combing garage sales, flea markets and junk piles for objects that she employed in collages and assemblages large and small. These explored difficult aspects of American history — including slavery and Jim Crow — but also touched on more personal themes of family, memory, magic and spirituality.

“My work has to do with recycling,” she told a documentary crew in the 1970s. “Each item I collect has a certain energy from its previous function that carries over into its new use.”

Artist Betye Saar in her Laurel Canyon home in 2016.

(Gina Ferazzi / Los Angeles Times)

In a 1984 profile, Times art writer Suzanne Muchnic described Saar as an artist who used found objects in a way that “draws on the power of mystery, the hurt of discrimination and the authenticity of individual vision.”

As Saar’s 100th birthday approached, her work and its groundbreaking importance were celebrated afresh in a slew of articles, including two recent profiles in The Times. As she approached the momentous milestone, Saar appeared more interested in creating new art than in dissecting her legacy. “That’s what art is,” she told The Times in an interview in late June. “Making something where there was nothing.”

Saar first rose to prominence in the 1970s, after crafting a small assemblage — roughly the size of a shoebox — that featured at its center a stereotypical Black mammy figurine bearing a rifle in one hand and a grenade in the other. The piece was first shown at the Rainbow Sign, a community center in Berkeley that was located near the headquarters of the Black Panthers.

The artist had begun her professional life as a designer of greeting cards and home accessories. But 1972’s “The Liberation of Aunt Jemima,” as the assemblage was called, catapulted her into the center of the Black Arts Movement and connected her with a broader tradition of assemblage in California and the art world at large. Three years after its creation, she had a solo exhibition at the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York. Decades later, activist Angela Davis credited “The Liberation of Aunt Jemima” with spurring the Black women’s movement.

“It’s like they abolished slavery, but they kept Black people in the kitchen as mammy jars,” Saar said in a 2015 interview. “I had this Aunt Jemima, and I wanted to put a rifle and a grenade under her skirts. I wanted to empower her. I wanted to make her a warrior. I wanted people to know that Black people wouldn’t be enslaved by that.”

In June 2020, in the wake of the uprisings following the murder of George Floyd, Quaker Oats announced that it would retire the Aunt Jemima brand. Saar took to Instagram with an image of her famous work and a message: “She’s liberated! Finally at long last! And it’s about time!”

“Liberation” now resides in the collection of the Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive, not far from where it was first shown.

Betye Saar was born Betye Irene Brown in L.A. on July 30, 1926, the eldest of Jefferson Maze Brown and Beatrice Lillian Parson‘s three children. Her father, with whom she was close, died when Saar was about 5. And shortly thereafter, Parson relocated the family to Pasadena to live with her maternal aunt, Hattie Parson Keys. (Years later, Saar created a series of works in honor of Keys, employing objects that her aunt had left behind — something she would do for other family members as well.)

Saar’s parents weren’t artists, but art was in the air. When she was a child, her mother encouraged her to sew and make crafts. And, in the summers, she spent time at the home of her paternal grandparents in Watts, where she saw Simon Rodia building the Watts Towers and was struck by his use of materials.

“The one I find the most amusing is the corn cob,” she told the podcast “The Modern Art Notes” in 2016. “He had a piece of space with wet cement so he just put the corn cob in there. And I just love the kind of freedom to make the piece. Anything can go in there.”

After graduating from high school, Saar spent two years at Pasadena City College before transferring to UCLA in 1947. She majored in design, figuring that she would become an interior decorator — and, for a time, she did indeed work in that field, teaming up with Curtis Tann to form a cleverly named studio called Brown and Tann. Operating out of Tann’s home, the company produced an array of decorative and functional objects, including bowls, ashtrays and jewelry.

To market their goods, they turned to an informal network of African American artists, staging pop-up exhibitions in people’s homes and in other impromptu locations. In 1951, the pair was featured in Ebony magazine.

It was through that circle that she met a ceramicist of German American descent by the name of Richard Saar. In 1952, they married. The following year, their daughter Lezley was born. Two other daughters followed: Alison in 1956 and Tracye in 1961. (Lezley and Alison are now respected artists in their own right. And, in fact, on more than one occasion, all three women have shown their work together, most recently at the Museum of Art & History in Lancaster in 2018.) In 2024, the Equal Justice Initiative Legacy Gallery installed Saar’s “Seeking Secrets of Destiny” alongside her daughter Alison’s sculpture “The Beckoning.”

Betye Saar, flanked by her daughters, stands before a painted brick wall.

(Carolina A. Miranda / Los Angeles Times)

In 1962, the Saar family moved to a rambling hillside home in Laurel Canyon, then a very rustic part of L.A. It put them in a hotbed of hippiedom right as the 1960s got rolling.

“Down the road was Frank Zappa,” Saar recalled in one interview. “There weren’t that many houses. We had the long skirts and long hair, and it was very casual. You’d go to a love-in or a concert.”

“We were as hippie-ish as hippie could be, while still being responsible.”

By the late ‘60s, she and Saar had divorced. But she remained in Laurel Canyon, where she would live and work until the end of her life.

Saar came to art almost by accident. In the late 1950s, she enrolled at Cal State Long Beach to pursue a master’s degree so that she could teach. But a stroll through campus led her past the university’s printing department.

“I walked past the print workshop and I was like, ‘Heyyy!’ ” she later recalled.

The master’s degree never happened. Instead, she poured herself into printing.

“I loved making prints,” she recalled. “The move into fine art, it was liberating. It gave me freedom to experiment.”

A pair of other, longer journeys, also proved formative.

There was a trip to Chicago’s Field Museum, where she immersed herself in the institution’s extensive collection of African art, followed by a trip to Haiti in the early 1970s. Saar was drawn to the Caribbean nation because of her interest in voodoo and magic — and the power that these could confer on inanimate objects.

“In the early 1960s I began going to coffee houses and they’d have books on the occult,” she told the New York Times in 1978. “I was attracted to signs and diagrams of alchemy and palmistry, and I began to use them in my prints. I also haunted second-hand and junk stores, and I started to frame my prints in old window frames.”

But it was a visit to an exhibition of the work of Joseph Cornell at the Pasadena Art Museum (now the Norton Simon Musuem) that inspired her to take a three-dimensional turn in her work. Saar was moved by the surreal qualities of the New York artist’s intimately scaled assemblages, which were often presented in small boxes.

“I immediately started collecting stuff after I saw that show,” she told the L.A. Times in 2016. “I started going to yard sales and estate sales.”

During the ‘60s and ‘70s, she took on a series of part-time jobs to provide for her children, designing costumes at a cultural center and teaching at area art schools. These provided her with necessary income, but also allowed her enough time to make work — which she often did at the kitchen table.

Saar’s creations from that era are on display through Aug. 22 at Roberts Projects. Titled, “Let’s Get It On: The Wearable Art of Betye Saar,” the show covers the years Saar spent in the costume department for the Inner City Cultural Center’s theatrical productions.

“Art comes from the heart and the head,” she once said. “You don’t need to have a separate space in which to make it.”

Plus, art gave Saar a crucial political voice at a time of the civil rights and Black power movements. “If you are a mom with three kids, you can’t go to a march,” she once stated, “but you can make work that deals with your anger.”

“The Weight of Betrayal,” 2015, by Betye Saar.

(Brian Forrest / Roberts Projects)

In her assemblages, she incorporated symbols that channeled dark episodes of U.S. history and African American struggle: the schematics of slave ships, the hackneyed images of vintage kitsch and the cruel sobriquets used by white supremacists to describe Black children.

At first she was apprehensive about using this type of imagery in her work. “Blacks were ashamed of those derogatory images,” she told the New York Times. “I like to think I recycled those images from negative to positive.”

But there was power in those images — and Saar knew just how to harness it.

“Saar’s assemblage doesn’t just describe history,” wrote former Times art critic Christopher Knight of her work in 2019, “it embodies a visceral connection to it.”

She would go on to deploy these tropes in myriad ways throughout her career — in particular the stereotypical figure of the Black mammy.

This included one particularly potent work: a glass bottle featuring the visage of a smiling mammy, which she transformed into a Molotov cocktail. The piece, which for decades had been in a private collection, reappeared in the traveling exhibition “We Wanted a Revolution: Black Radical Women, 1965-85,” which went on view at the California African American Museum (CAAM) in 2017.

“Historically, the mammy was the ultimate image of Black female servitude in the American psyche,” wrote historian Steven Nelson in the catalog that accompanied a 2017 exhibition of Saar’s work at the Craft Contemporary (then known as the Craft & Folk Art Museum). “She was kind and giving. She cooked and cleaned and did the laundry. She took care of the children. She was harmless.”

By arming her mammies with revolvers, rifles and bullets, Saar turned a symbol of servility into one of militancy and power.

“Liberation of Aunt Jemima: Cocktail,” 1973, shown at the exhibition “We Wanted a Revolution” at CAAM in 2017.

(Jonathan Dorado, Brooklyn Museum / Betye Saar, Roberts Projects)

Her work also frequently touched on the personal: family, dreams, magic and the body (particularly the Black female body). In the process, she influenced a younger generation of artists, key figures such as Houston Conwill, Senga Nengudi and David Hammons.

“You can really see the impact she had on them,” said Kellie Jones, a scholar and independent curator who organized “Now Dig This!: Art and Black Los Angeles 1960-1980” at the Hammer Museum in 2011. “She had this multimedia practice. It was about Africa, but it was about the world. She has works with Mexican milagros, she has titles in Spanish, she at certain points has Asian influence and Haitian influence. She was really looking at the globe. She was a person in the world, and she really modeled that for people like Hammons and Conwill and Nengudi.”

Saar’s work resides in the permanent collections of more than 80 international museums, and in recent years, she was the subject of solo shows at the Museum of Modern Art in New York, the Prada Foundation in Milan and the Scottsdale Museum of Contemporary Art in Arizona (which hosted a retrospective).

In L.A., she had regular exhibitions at her Culver City gallery Roberts Projects, as well as one-woman shows at CAAM and the Craft Contemporary. In 2019, a small but potent show at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art explored the ways in which her drawing process factored into her assemblage work. But a full retrospective at one of her hometown’s major museums eluded her.

Saar told The Times that she didn’t let it bother her: “I’ve always done what I did and never felt I was competing with what was going on.”

An installation view of “Mojotech,” 1987, by Betye Saar at the Scottsdale Museum of Contemporary Art.

(Tim Lanterman / Scottsdale Museum of Contemporary Art and Roberts Projects)

If anything, she competed only with herself.

Well into her 90s, she continued to get up every day to craft assemblages out of the objects she had amassed in her studio. At 96, she scoured the Huntington Library gardens for a commissioned installation she called a “full-circle” project.

“I used to come to the Huntington with my mother when I was a child. She loved to garden, especially African violets, and she passed that love of plants and nature on to me,” Saar told the New York Times Style Magazine in 2024.

That love is palpable in “Drifting Toward Twilight” and its accompanying documentary, which sees Saar fawning over the orange tint of sloughed bark and the mystical qualities of garden scraps.

“Even in death those things can be really beautiful,” Saar said in the short documentary.

After working with a 17-foot canoe as a centerpiece for the Huntington exhibition, Saar told Curate LA that she felt compelled to return to small-scale pieces. The result was her 2024 Roberts Projects exhibit, “Betye Saar: New Work,” an objet trouvé medley in bronze and gold hues.

“At first, the new works were more nostalgic, with vintage photos and female ephemera, like gloves and such,” Saar said. “Then I brought in the tall ship bookends and African masks, and the works moved in a more ancestral and political direction.”

Even her grandson’s discarded computer parts made a cameo, a testament to Saar’s uncanny ability to mine inspiration from the most mundane objects.

“The worst problem for an artist is having nothing to say,” she once said in an interview. “I just have so many ideas. … Look at things that are important to you, what’s happening in your life. If you have that, you never run out of ideas.”

With her centennial on the horizon, Saar in 2025 formed the Betye Saar Legacy Group, a committee of her trusted curators and collaborators charged with preserving her vast archive and keeping her name fresh in the minds of new generations of artists.

A Saar biography penned by Zoé Whitley, who co-curated “Soul of a Nation: Art in the Age of Black Power,” is expected in 2027.

Saar is survived by her daughters Lezley, Alison (both artists) and Tracye (a writer), and her grandchildren Kyle Leeser, Maddy Inez, Sola Saar, Gen Saar Agustsson, Spencer Saar Cavanaugh, Megan Cavanaugh

Times staff writers Malia Mendez and Jessica Gelt contributed to this report.

PETER Andre has said ‘it hurts too much’ seeing his sick mother in Australia amid her declining health.

The singer’s mum Thea, 90, was diagnosed with Parkinson’s and Alzheimer’s back in 2023.

Peter took to Instagram and shared a video marking his father Savvas’ 93rd birthday.

In its caption, the star explained his poignant reason for not including Thea in the clip.

He wrote: “This video touches my heart in every way. It’s my dad’s 93rd birthday today.

“I decided not to show mum in this video because it hurts too much.

SHOWTIME

Peter Andre makes U-turn on daughter Princess’ ITV2 reality show

GOING STRONG

Peter Andre shares tribute to wife Emily as they celebrate wedding anniversary

“But I want to thank my sis for sending this. Love you mum and dad so so so much. More than they will ever know.”

Continuing, Peter said that he speaks to his parents “every single day, sometimes twice.”

He added: “I tell them enough how much they mean to me ( if it’s ever enough ).

“Thank god for FaceTime. Going to see them and I cannot wait. Να ζήσεις dad.”

One person commented: “Sending so much love xxx.”

Another added: “Your mum and dad are such wonderful people. Watched them through all your shows. Your dad looks amazing for 93..lots of love to them.”

Last December, Peter shared a heartbreaking update on Thea’s condition, saying he worried Christmas 2025 would be her last.

He told OK! Magazine: “Of course I worry this could be Mum’s last Christmas.

“She’s very delicate. Her Parkinson’s has progressed quite a bit.

“Her speech is almost gone. She’ll say a word or two. It’s heartbreaking, because she’s our world, our pillar of strength.”

Carly Simon on Monday shared a lengthy and candid letter regarding the state of her health, which she said led to her recent withdrawal from the public eye.

The 83-year-old “You’re so Vain” singer and two-time Grammy winner in a statement shared with The Times revealed she has been diagnosed with Parkinson’s disease and has dedicated time away from the spotlight to understand and learn how to live with the illness. Simon said she decided to come forward about her health issues after “so many people have written to me, kindly wondering about my relative silence.” She did not specify when she was diagnosed.

Parkinson’s disease, according to the Mayo Clinic, is a nervous system movement disorder that worsens with time and cannot be cured. Tremors are a common symptom of Parkinson’s disease, which also notably afflicts “Back to the Future” star Michael J. Fox.

Simon explained in her statement that she experienced arthritis in both of her knees and one hip prior to receiving her diagnosis. She had those three joints replaced — “out with the old and in with delicate bouquets of metal and plastic” — but experienced worsening mobility after, including difficulty walking and standing from couches and low chairs.

“Eventually, there were periods when I could not walk without considerable help,” she continued. “My family and I knew that something more was going on.”

She said she was diagnosed with Parkinson’s after a trip to the Mayo Clinic and underwent treatment and started taking medication to aid with her symptoms.

“There is no tidy predictable schedule to the illness,” she said.

Simon also wrote that her experience with Parkinson’s wrought “anxiety, depression, exhaustion, an apathy.” Of the last, Simon recalled lying like a starfish “while nothing inside is telling you to get up, read, watch, sing, call someone, or do much of anything at all.”

Simon revealed that in the same period, she underwent surgery to treat skin cancer, specifically basal cell carcinoma on her face. The singer’s two sisters died of different cancers days apart in 2022. She said she felt self-conscious about her appearance post-surgery and retreated further from the public. “This gave my inner critic quite a lot of new material,” she wrote.

The singer, who likened herself to an “all-season” hibernating bear, said “I have not stopped living, and I have not stopped working” amid her health issues. She then promoted her upcoming album “Comes in Waves,” her first album of original music since 2008. “Comes in Waves” arrives Aug. 14. She is set to release the song “Peaches” from the album on Friday.

“Music has always known when to arrive,” she wrote. “It has rescued me more times that I can count.”

“Working on the music gave shape to days that did not always have much shape,” she said. “It gave me somewhere to go without having to leave the room. It reminded me that illness can change your life without becoming the whole of your life.”

For Simon, her Parkinson’s battle has proved “difficult, frustrating, and sometimes frightening,” but not a complete obstacle to her life. She expressed gratitude to her friends, family, caregivers and medical teams for their support.

“These days I move more slowly, I lean on others more than I once did, and I have learned to accept that every day will look a little different,” she concluded. “But I am still very much here.”

No word on jailed Tunisian opposition leader Ghannouchi for 11 days, his son tells Al Jazeera.

The son of jailed Tunisian opposition leader Rached Ghannouchi says his family and lawyers have been unable to see or contact the 85-year-old for 11 days since he was hospitalised after collapsing in prison.

In an interview with Al Jazeera on Monday, Moadh Ghannouchi said the last time lawyers saw his father was days before he temporarily lost consciousness on July 17, and that requests to visit him in hospital, including one submitted to the public prosecutor, had been refused, leaving the family with no confirmation of his whereabouts or condition.

“It is like a situation of enforced disappearance,” he said.

Ghannouchi said his father, who has high blood pressure and difficulty breathing, had been left exposed to a severe heatwave in a prison with no air conditioning.

“We hold the authorities fully responsible for his condition,” he said, alleging that his father’s confinement in a stiflingly hot prison was intended to worsen his health.

“It was not enough to imprison him – they want to torment him further,” Moadh told Al Jazeera.

“This is stressful for us and certainly for him as well because he’s used to always having a number of visits every week from lawyers and from family – so it has been 11 days cut off from everything, from every visit, from everyone.”

Ghannouchi said conflicting rumours had spread on social media, with some placing his father at the Rabta public hospital in Tunis, others at a military hospital, and some claiming he had suffered a heart attack. But the family has received no official information, he said, with the authorities refusing to communicate.

In a statement on his official Facebook page on Monday, Ghannouchi’s defence team demanded information on his condition. An Ennahda party spokesperson told Al Jazeera that it did not know which hospital he is in or his state of health.

The former speaker of parliament and most prominent figure detained in President Kais Saied’s crackdown on opponents has been jailed since April 2023 after receiving a life sentence that his supporters say was politically motivated. Saied’s government denies that prosecutions of opponents are politically driven.

Rached Ghannouchi lost consciousness last week as temperatures inside Mornaguia prison climbed, according to Haifa Chebbi, daughter of another imprisoned opposition figure. She said she witnessed the incident and that the temperature reached 52C (126F). His lawyers said on Thursday that his condition was “critical.”

The UN Working Group on Arbitrary Detention previously found that Ghannouchi’s detention was arbitrary and called for his immediate release, a ruling his son said authorities ignored.

On Sunday, the National Salvation Front, a broad opposition coalition, urged the authorities to issue an immediate statement on his health and Amnesty International called for the protection of prisoners during the heatwave.

President Trump’s $1.4-billion crypto windfall has become the biggest obstacle to passing his sweeping digital-asset legislation as Democrats demand tougher language to prevent the president from profiting off an industry his administration regulates.

Senate Republicans released a proposal this week intended to break a months-long impasse over the bill, known as the Clarity Act. But Democrats and consumer watchdog groups dismissed the terms almost immediately, complaining the bill would not stop Trump or his family from continuing to profit from his meme coin and other crypto ventures.

Trump needs the support of at least seven Senate Democrats to pass the legislation, which would set rules for digital assets. Ethics has emerged as the biggest, though not the only, sticking point.

“It’s the linchpin,” said Sen. Angela Alsobrooks, a Maryland Democrat and key negotiator who has been supportive of the crypto industry.

A spokesperson for the White House didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment. The White House has consistently asserted Trump is not involved in managing the family’s crypto ventures and has denied conflicts of interest.

Democrats have specifically taken issue with a provision that would leave Trump’s Justice Department as the primary enforcer of the new ethics regulations, preventing state attorneys general from acting as an independent check.

Another Democratic negotiator, Sen. Ruben Gallego of Arizona, and Republican Sen. Thom Tillis of North Carolina said they’re working on a compromise ethics proposal to send to the White House but didn’t provide details.

Senators in both parties said they see the negotiations in the coming week as key to whether a bill reaches Trump’s desk this year. But after the chilly initial reception to the latest White House offer, Senate Majority Leader John Thune (R-S.C.) said he didn’t think the Clarity Act would pass the chamber before the month-long August recess.

“We’ll see where the votes are,” Thune said.

Alsobrooks, Gallego and other crypto-friendly Democrats are demanding changes to other pieces of the massive bill, including consumer protection and illicit finance measures.

The bill has other issues, including opposition from banks intent on tightening restrictions on stablecoin rewards. Tillis and several other Republicans said they are considering backing changes to reflect banks’ concerns that their deposits could shift to stablecoin accounts, crimping their profits and customers’ access to credit.

Tillis has floated adding “circuit-breaker” language empowering the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. or other regulators to step in if bank deposits drop — an idea opposed by GOP Sen. Cynthia Lummis of Wyoming, the crypto industry’s biggest backer in the chamber.

Porous provisions

Critics said the draft’s ethics protections are porous. It would let Trump divest a large stake in his crypto venture or move it into a blind trust for the rest of his term, but stops short of requiring him to sell.

“It’s going to allow him to keep making money the way he has in the past,” said Scott Greytak, deputy executive director of Transparency International US, an anti-corruption advocacy group.

The restrictions also hinge on whether an official has a “direct interest” in a crypto asset — a threshold that may not apply to Trump.

The president is a significant owner of World Liberty Financial, the Trump family’s crypto venture, through an entity called DT Marks DEFI LLC, which holds about a 38% stake. Whether that counts as a direct interest “isn’t clear,” said Zach Everson, research director for Public Citizen’s Trump Accountability Project. “Does direct interest describe how he holds the crypto?”

Because the bill wouldn’t apply to the children of government officials, Donald Trump Jr. and Eric Trump could continue their own crypto business interests. And much of the family’s fortune has already been made: Trump and his affiliates have earned a huge windfall from meme coin and token ventures, income the legislation would not claw back.

Critics also decried a provision that would sunset the ethics requirements on Jan. 20, 2029, the day Trump’s successor would be inaugurated. That could prevent the next administration from holding Trump accountable.

The White House and Republicans argued that Trump had gone further in backing ethics restrictions in law than any previous president.

“History will remember this as the moment a president chose a higher standard of ethics than the law required of him,” Lummis, a key architect of the bill, said on X.

Democrats were skeptical even before the language was released. “Any meaningful ethics provision would be shot down by the White House,” Sen. Chris Murphy of Connecticut said.

The politics of crypto have long divided Democrats, and a bipartisan deal on the legislation risks provoking a backlash from progressives. Failure to reach a deal, however, could make the party the target of a torrent of crypto campaign cash.

Crypto group Fairshake and its two affiliated super PACs have raised $164 million for the midterm elections, Federal Election Commission filings show, and have spent $66.6 million so far.

It’s the kind of political arsenal that Senate Democratic leader Chuck Schumer of New York can ill afford to have aimed at his candidates as the party seeks to regain Senate control.

But others, like Murphy, have warned that blessing Trump’s big crypto bill would undermine Democrats’ midterm message.

A potential presidential candidate, Murphy said Wednesday while addressing the left-leaning Center for American Progress that the bill is before the Senate “because the industry paid for it” and urged Democrats to instead turn fighting crypto corruption into a potent campaign issue this fall.

Markets have grown less convinced a deal gets done. On Polymarket, the odds of the Clarity Act passing this year fell to about 1 chance in 3 earlier this week after Republicans released the new draft.

That’s about half the odds the prediction market gave passage after the Senate Banking Committee backed an earlier version of the bill on May 14.

Dennis and Patterson write for Bloomberg. Bloomberg writers Yash Roy, Lydia Beyoud, Aidan Williams, Bill Allison and Olga Kharif contributed to this report.

For more than a quarter-century, a lawsuit settlement from a case brought in Los Angeles federal court has dictated conditions for children held in immigration detention.

But now, the long-standing settlement — which set minimum standards for housing, education and medical care for migrant kids in federal custody, while strictly limiting how long they can remain there — hangs in the balance in the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals after a challenge by the Trump administration.

At the same time, the federal judge in L.A. who presides over the agreement appears poised to appoint a powerful new enforcer to uphold it.

President Trump has long sought to scrap the Flores settlement, which dates back to the Clinton era. In recent months, the Trump administration has waged a legal battle to cancel the agreement, while also pleading with the district court not to order an independent monitor to boost its compliance.

“[Flores] is the only thing standing between them and indefinite detention of families,” said Leecia Welch, chief legal director at Children’s Rights, a plaintiff in the case.

Last month, Assistant Atty. Gen. Brett A. Shumate pressed the 9th Circuit court to give the administration “the thumbs-up or thumbs-down” on its bid to tear up the settlement and end what he called “judicial micromanagement” of federal immigration policy.

“The Flores consent decree is an agreement which goes well above the constitutional floor,” Shumate told the court during oral arguments in June. “We’re asking that [the Department of Homeland Security’s] compliance with the law be assessed based on the law, not a 30-year-old settlement agreement.”

The three-judge panel sharply questioned the Justice Department’s legal claims, saying little had changed since the government last petitioned the court to have the agreement dissolved in 2020 — a request that was rejected.

The judges also pressed Trump administration lawyers to respond to evidence from scores of declarations filed in district court since last summer, in which detainees describe struggling to sleep in freezing, brightly lit rooms, vomiting from eating spoiled food, and begging for diapers, baby formula and asthma inhalers.

“You’ve said a lot of the reason you’re doing this is to discourage families from coming in the first place, so you’re basically punishing children because their parents brought them here,” Judge Marsha S. Berzon said.

Berzon, a Clinton appointee who issued a fiery dissent last year in a case that challenged the administration’s use of armed troops in immigration enforcement operations, asked: “You’re saying there’s no constitutional problem there?”

“I understand the detention of children at the border is a controversial policy issue, but that’s a policy decision,” Shumate said.

Just a day earlier, Chief U.S. District Judge Dolly M. Gee scolded a pair of government attorneys from her bench in Los Angeles, signaling she would probably appoint a new special master to force compliance with the settlement agreement.

“We’re talking about 11 years of this,” Gee said during the June 1 status conference. “None of these issues are new to me. These are all issues on which I have issued orders. I am very displeased about the fact that my orders are being disregarded and are not being complied with, not in good faith.”

“Both sides seem to be operating in different planes of reality,” Gee said.

The disputed settlement emerged from a 1985 lawsuit over the fate of 15-year-old Jenny Flores, a Salvadoran refugee who was picked up by federal immigration enforcement and left to languish in detention in Pasadena. At the time, there was little awareness that children were among the tens of thousands of migrants fleeing civil war and state collapse in Central America — with virtually no U.S. government infrastructure to protect them.

“It was a surprise,” said Benjamin Roth, a professor at the University of South Carolina College of Social Work and an expert on the agreement. “There was no thought then that there were kids in this mix.”

The current court fight centers on an immigration detention center in Dilley, Texas, run by the private prison company CoreCivic, where the vast majority of children and families in immigration custody are held.

In court filings earlier this month, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement said it has “maintained core Flores-related services” at Dilley and argued its length-of-stay numbers were skewed by a small number of families it was forced to keep because they are considered “national security risks.” U.S. Customs and Border Protection likewise boasted its July 1 report “shows our highest level of compliance to date.”

Immigrant rights advocates called those claims “a fiction.”

“We see the same sorts of problems and concerns and misery that we’ve been seeing for the last 15 months,” said Welch, the Children’s Rights attorney.

In dozens of declarations collected as part of the court record, detainees recounted broccoli full of worms, diapers doled out one at a time, and staff tearing up children’s drawings.

One mother said medical staff laughed off her 8-year-old’s broken arm. Another said she was denied treatment for hepatitis B, even after doctors told her she could develop liver cancer and pass the infection on to her unborn daughter.

Still others described unexplained rashes, outbreaks of diarrhea and infestations of lice, among a host of other maladies for which many said they were offered only Tylenol or allergy medication. Even Christmas brought misery in the form of an ICE agent dressed up as Santa, who shoved away children trying to hug him, according to the detainee declarations submitted to the court.

“What happened on Christmas Day can only be described as an atrocity,” one mother recalled. Children “dropped everything, ran up to him, begged for candy and wanted to take pictures. Some children even cried and begged him for their freedom. Santa himself acted very indifferent.”

The Department of Justice argued that immigrant kids could still sue over poor conditions if the Flores settlement is unwound. But experts say existing protections would collapse without the legal architecture of the consent decree to support them.

“[Under the settlement], the federal government has built out a very efficient system to provide temporary care for kids,” Roth said. “If Flores is dissolved, it’s not going to be easy to stand up this same set of programs.”

If the Trump administration loses before the 9th Circuit, the fight over Flores could soon escalate to the Supreme Court.

“I’d be shocked if the 9th Circuit rules for the government, and I’d be shocked if the Trump administration doesn’t appeal,” said Eric J. Segall, a law professor at Georgia State University and an expert on the high court.

But consent decrees are legally and politically complicated, and the treatment of migrant children further tangles the situation. Given the legal and political complexity, the Supreme Court could rule to keep the settlement in place, or decline to take the case at all, experts said.

“It’s more likely than not the court would stay away from this,” Segall said.

For now, both the district judge and the 9th Circuit panel appear fed up.

“I think my patience has come to an end,” Gee said during the recent hearing in her Los Angeles courtroom.

Chadwick Boseman’s brothers are taking the late US actor’s widow to court over her handling of his multimillion-dollar estate.

Derrick Boseman and Kevin Boseman have filed a petition with a Los Angeles court to force the Black Panther star’s widow, Taylor Simone Ledward, to distribute money to family members, and to have her removed as controller of his estate.

They claim she has mishandled distribution of the funds and “cannot be trusted with the continued administration of the estate”.

Boseman died at the age of 43 in 2020, four years after being diagnosed with colon cancer. He is best remembered for playing the lead role of T’Challa, king of Wakanda, in Oscar-winning 2018 Marvel blockbuster Black Panther.

According to court documents seen by BBC News, Boseman had assets worth $3.8m (£2.9m) but died without a will.

A court decided that 50% should go to Boseman’s widow, who was also appointed the estate’s administrator, with 25% to each of his parents.

The actor’s brothers filed the court petition last week on behalf of their parents, Leroy and Carolyn Boseman.

The petition said Ledward “has still not distributed the estate” and “continues to exert unilateral control” over it.

Ledward is also accused of creating a “lack of transparency” around his assets, and of keeping the actor’s parents “in the dark” about the deals and operations of a company that was set up to manage his image and rights.

The brothers claim Ledward’s “misconduct is causing ongoing harm” to Boseman’s elderly parents and depriving them “of financial assets at a vulnerable age when such support is most critical”.

“Moreover, the needless continuation of these proceedings denies Decedent’s [Boseman’s] family closure and causes emotional distress,” the court filing said.

“Imagine flipping through the channels and stumbling on a film starring your deceased son or brother, knowing that someone you do not know or trust is profiting from his image without your input or consent.”

Ledward – an R&B artist who uses the name Sahn – started dating Boseman in 2015 and they got married just six days before the actor’s death in August 2020.

The BBC has asked her lawyer for a comment.

In a statement to US media, the late actor’s brothers said: “On behalf of our parents, we are committed to ensuring that transparency, accountability, and respect guide the resolution of these matters.

“Our hope is that this process brings clarity, honors the court’s orders, and ensures the responsible stewardship of Chadwick’s legacy.

“We love our brother, and we remain committed to preserving his legacy with dignity, integrity, and respect.”

IF you’re jetting off to any beautiful Red Sea resorts this summer check your passport before travelling.

Unlike countries in the EU, Egypt requires more time left on your passport and it’s catching Brits out with some missing out on their holidays altogether.

There are two very important requirements to get into Egypt for Brits.

The first is that your passport must have an ‘expiry date’ at least six months after the date you arrive.

The second is that it must have at least one blank page to be stamped.

Most countries only require three months left on a passport after the date of arrival, so it’s not surprising that some Brits are being caught out.

COAST EFFECTIVE

Best UK family theme & waterparks with cheap stays from just £3pp a night

DIVE IN

Mega waterpark hotels with EVERYTHING you ever wanted & all inclusive from £189pp

One woman recently missed out on a £6,500 holiday to Egypt.

Victoria Vigors was headed on a two-week ‘holiday of a lifetime’ with her family but was stopped before boarding.

Her nine-year-old daughter Roxie’s passport was being scanned and is was then they discovered Roxie’s passport did not have the required period of validity remaining for travel to Egypt.

Roxie’s passport technically expired on January 4, 2027, but with Egypt requiring at least six months left on them, it meant it wasn’t valid.

Talking to creatorzine.com, Victoria said: “I wasn’t aware of the rules. For people like me who don’t always travel and it’s the first time with my children, I didn’t know.

“I would have thought when I put her passport details in to check in that would tell me it wasn’t valid.”

Victoria added: “That would be a simple system to install so save this agony and heartbreak.”

The family are now trying to get an emergency passport to try and enjoy the last few days of the trip they’ve paid for, as they were unable to get a refund.

Also check visa requirements into the country as they vary depending on the location.

For example if you are staying for less than 15 days at a resort in Sharm El Sheikh, you don’t need a visa.

However, if you’re heading to Hurghada you’ll need a visa which you can apply for online or on arrival.

If you apply online, e-visa applications must be submitted a minimum of seven days.

Another country to be aware of the entry rules is Turkey which needs at least 150 days left on passports from the date of arrival.

If you find your passport is technically out of date shortly before your holidays, then you can look at getting a fast-track renewal.

Before travelling this summer, here are all the new rules you need to be aware of, from eGates and passports to visas and power banks.

Unity Holidays has three parks across the UK that still have availability over the summer holidays – and they’ve got a food and drink offer on too

The summer holidays have officially descended upon us, and with the British weather actually offering up some sunshine and balmy temperatures, it’s no surprise that most of us are dreaming of our next staycation.

If you haven’t got anything locked in yet, the good news is that there are still plenty of tempting deals to be had, including one chain of holiday parks with family breaks under £400 including school holiday dates.

Unity Holidays recently gave its parks a £10million transformation to include new features such as lidos, splash parks, trampoline parks, dog agility parks and an array of activities from axe throwing to archery, so it’s worth having them on your radar. All alongside the likes of bars, restaurants, watersports, playgrounds and even soft play, it’s easy to see why it could be a hit with families on a budget this summer.

The brand has three sites, with prices for a family of four during the holidays from £209. That includes its Unity Beach in Somerset from £396, Skirlington in Yorkshire from £399, and Seven Lakes from £209, all of which can be booked on unityholidays.co.uk.

But that’s not all. For those who want to stretch their budget that little bit further, there’s more good news. For every summer break booked between July 3 and September 28, 2026, Unity Holidays are offering a £100 food and drink voucher that can be used at any of the venues on site (excluding the grocery stores). To claim the voucher, simply use the code UNITY100 when you book on unityholidays.co.uk.

Unity Beach’s brand new lido opened earlier this month, unveiled by former Olympic swimmer Baroness Sharron Davies MBE. The resort’s new lido, water park and festival gardens represented an £11million transformation, with the lido offering a capacity of over 400, with two heated pools including one specially designer for children. The holiday park already boasts an indoor pool, an indoor splash zone for Under-16s, two indoor water slides, and three more slides outside.

Baroness Sharron, who won an Olympics silver medal in the 400m individual medley in 1980 as well as two Commonwealth Games gold medals, said at the opening: “At a time when we are seeing the amount of swimming facilities in the country dwindle – we’ve lost 500 since 2010 – to have Unity Holidays investing millions in pools and lidos across the country, and creating jobs for local people, is tremendous.

“They are enabling children to gain water confidence and learn to swim, while giving families a stunning location to enjoy amazing spaces to play and relax.

“Our seaside towns need this injection of funds, and I was honoured to officially open the lido and water park in Brean while also seeing first-hand how impressive what a modern, 21st-century family holiday park has to offer can be.”

Unity Holidays isn’t the only firm to be offering up some tempting last-minute getaways.

For example Haven has three-night breaks from £179 if you’re booking over the next few days or even for next week, while Parkdean Resorts has last-minute breaks from £269 in late July. Butlin’s also has some last-minute availability for July with family breaks from £198.

A MUM was left devastated after her family were forced to miss a “holiday of a lifetime” because of a common passport mistake.

Victoria Vigors, from Kent, had spent £6,500 on a two-week holiday to Egypt with her whole family.

However, the 41-year-old was left horrified after they arrived at London Gatwick, only to be stopped at the gate along with her 15-year-old son Riley and nine-year-old daughter Roxie.

When staff scanned their boarding passes at the gate, they discovered Roxie’s passport did not have the required period of validity remaining for travel to Egypt.

This was because her passport technically expired on January 4, 2027, but with Egypt requiring at least six months left on them, it meant it wasn’t valid.

Victoria told creatorzine.com: “My stomach dropped and I felt like i’d been kicked in the stomach.”

PASS IT ON

Turkey passport rule Brits need to know about or risk being BANNED from flight

CLUED UP

ALL of the new rules you need to be aware of when travelling this summer

“The kids crumpled and I burst into tears. I begged the staff but there was nothing they could do.

“We had to be escorted back to get our luggage off the flight – It was so embarrassing.”

She said not only were the kids devastated, but that Roxie thought it was her fault.

She continued: “I wasn’t aware of the rules. For people like me who don’t always travel and it’s the first time with my children, I wasn’t to know.

“I would have thought when I put her passport details in to check in that would tell me it wasn’t valid.

“That would be a simple system to install so save this agony and heartbreak.”

The family are now trying to get an emergency passport to try and enjoy the last few days of the trip they’ve paid for, as they were unable to get a refund.

She added: “I’d been saving up for two years.

“We were incredibly excited as we’d never had a two-week holiday abroad together or been to a resort like this.

“It was going to be the holiday of a lifetime.”

An EasyJet spokesperson said: “Unfortunately Ms Vigors and her daughter were unable to fly as her daughter’s passport did not meet passport validity rules.

“We remind customers during booking, check-in and by email before they travel to ensure they are aware of the travel documentation requirements for their trip, and it is customers’ responsibility to ensure they have valid documentation for travel.”

It’s not the only country with strict rules, as Turkey requires Brits to have at least 150 days left, which is around five months.

So we’ve explained two other passport rules you need to be aware of this summer.