final

Oct. 29, 2026 8:29 PM PT

CITY SECTION PLAYOFFS

THURSDAY’S RESULTS

Quarterfinals

DIVISION I

#1 SOCES d. #9 North Hollywood, 25-13, 25-21, 20-25, 25-20

#4 San Pedro d. #5 L.A. University, 23-25, 25-19, 25-13, 19-25, 15-13

#11 Lincoln d. #14 L.A. Marshall, 22-25, 25-22, 16-25, 25-23, 15-11

#2 Granada Hills Kennedy d. #7 Sun Valley Poly, 25-22, 25-22, 25-12

DIVISION II

#1 South East d. #8 Carson, 25-21, 25-18, 25-20

#5 Alliance Levine d. #13 Panorama, 25-21, 30-28, 26-24

#11 Maywood CES d. #14 South Gate, 24-26, 25-21, 25-23, 24-26, 15-10

#7 Verdugo Hills d. #15 Reseda, 25-16, 27-25, 25-5

FRIDAY’S SCHEDULE

(Matches at 4 p.m. unless noted)

Quarterfinals

DIVISION III

#17 RFK Community at #9 Marquez

#12 Harbor Teacher at #4 Wilmington Banning

#11 Larchmont Charter at #3 Narbonne

#18 L.A. Wilson at #18 Math & Science College Prep

DIVISION IV

#8 Arleta at #1 Santee

#12 Fairfax at #4 Community Charter

#11 Canoga Park at #3 Huntington Park

#7 Legacy at #2 Garfield

DIVISION V

#8 San Fernando Arroyo at #1 Elizabeth

#21 Discovery at #4 Animo Pat Brown

#14 Smidt Tech at #6 Angelou

#15 Manual Arts at #7 Lakeview Charter

Note: Semifinals (all divisions) Tues., Nov. 3 at higher seeds; Finals (all divisions) Fri., Nov. 6 or Sat., Nov. 7 (times and sites TBD).

WASHINGTON — In the final days before an election that will decide control of Congress, President Trump’s closing argument — buoyant, digressive and characteristically off-script — is at times running headlong into the economic anxieties of the voters Republicans most need.

With a war in Iran driving up gas prices for Americans, Trump is boasting to supporters that the conflict is making the country rich. At a rally in Georgia, he said his aides had urged him not to brag about the billions of dollars the United States was earning on oil from the war, since Americans are “paying a little higher” in costs because of it. But he did it anyway.

“I said, I don’t give a damn,” Trump said. “We are making a freaking fortune. Our country is getting stronger and stronger all the time. And those pump prices are going to come down.”

The moment underscores the gamble at the core of Trump’s final pitch to voters. With polls showing an overwhelming majority of Americans unhappy with the economy, the president is offering a portrait of national prosperity that many voters do not recognize, and pairing it with jokes and digressions that can seem to make light of their struggles.

Tuesday’s results will be the clearest test yet of whether that message still moves his base, or whether the president has become a liability for a party at risk of losing Congress in part because of his sinking popularity.

Signs of GOP anxiety are reflected in where Trump is spending his final days campaigning. Rather than courting swing voters in battleground states, he is leading rallies in Mississippi, Texas, Ohio, South Carolina and Kansas — states that have long been Republican strongholds but where the party now worries its voters may stay home.

Still, the president is insisting to voters that the country is succeeding, and he is making the election a referendum on his agenda.

“The world is falling apart, and we are doing better than we’ve ever done,” he told a crowd in Mississippi on Monday. The next day, during a stop in Texas, he joked that the $5,000 he has promised Americans if Republicans win would not be enough for his supporters to eat a meal at Mar-a-Lago, his private club in Palm Beach, Fla.

“You will be my guest at Mar-a-Lago. The problem is that for $5,000 the most you’ll be able to buy is a hamburger and maybe a small dessert,” Trump said, laughing. “I’m not even sure you could buy that.”

Democrats have criticized the president’s remarks, calling them dismissive of voters’ concerns. Sen. Adam Schiff (D-Calif.) said Trump boasting that the country was making money out of the Iran war was a “fitting” slogan for Trump’s White House.

Trump’s personal oil and gas holdings are now estimated to be worth between $22.5 million and $81.6 million, up from $12.6 million to $46 million at the end of last year, according to a report released this week by congressional Democrats.

Joe Gruters, the chairman of the Republican National Committee, rejected the idea that the president has dismissed voters’ financial pain.

“The president, I think, shows empathy about what we’re going through, and he is fighting like hell,” Gruters said in an interview.

Asked to sum up Trump’s closing message, Gruters framed it as a choice between “common sense vs. crazy.” When pressed on the economy, Gruters pointed to Trump’s push to limit federal taxes on tips and overtime pay, to create investment accounts for children and to bring back manufacturing jobs.

“He has transformed the Republican Party into the workingman’s party,” Gruters said. “He is all about trying to bring back jobs that will bring up real wages across the board.”

But that message can be overshadowed with the off-script riffs that have long defined Trump’s rallies. During a rally in Ohio, while praising Sen. Jon Husted, Trump detoured into remarks about the Republican senator’s backside as well as rapper Nicki Minaj’s.

“I looked at his ass and I’ve never done that with a man before. It’s true. Off the record: Women, yes, men, no, OK?” Trump said. “By the way, I looked at one hell of a beautiful ass before, Nicki Minaj.”

At a separate rally, Trump turned his attention to Abdul El-Sayed, the Democratic Senate nominee in Michigan, saying that if elected, El-Sayed should be forced to pass through a metal detector before entering the U.S. Senate chamber.

“Anyone with that record of support for jihadists would be screened and unable to get a seat on an airplane,” Trump said of El-Sayed. “They certainly should not give him a seat in the United States Senate.”

In those moments, the message is aimed squarely at his base, which over the last decade has celebrated his unfiltered style. And it is that base, more than swing voters, that Trump has spent his precious time courting in the final stretch of the campaign.

On Monday, Trump rallied supporters in Mississippi, a state he carried by 23 points two years ago. On Tuesday, he went to Texas for the fourth time this month to make the case for Ken Paxton, the Republican Senate nominee trying to stave off what could be the first statewide Democratic victory there in three decades. Then on Wednesday, Trump was in Ohio for the third time this month, playing defense in a state he has won every time he’s been on the ballot. And on Saturday, Trump is heading to Kansas, a state that has not elected a Democrat to the U.S. Senate since 1932.

Gruters said the red state swing reflects the need to get Republicans to the polls.

“You can’t take anything for granted. You have to fight hard in every single state, and remind people why they need to go vote,” he said. “This is a turnout, turnout, turnout race. And we’re doing everything we can as a party.”

Don Haider-Markel, a political science professor at the University of Kansas, said it is still surprising to see the party deploy the president in Republican strongholds so close to the election.

“It really reflects, not just the tilt toward Democrats, but also the lack of enthusiasm among Republican voters for this election,” Haider-Markel said.

Republicans outnumber Democrats in Kansas, but there is a possibility that Democrats can win if Republicans stay home, he said. One of the biggest assets the party has to mobilize the MAGA base is having Trump talk to them in person, he argued. But so far, it is unclear whether his closing message will resonate.

“I don’t think that he’s really speaking to the issues that voters care about, but I don’t think he’s coming to change people’s minds,” Haider-Markel said. “He’s looking for lines that get him applause and praise.”

In rally after rally, Trump has turned the event into a show about himself. In Iowa, congressional candidate Joe Mitchell presented Trump with a “man of the century” certificate. In Texas, Trump bemoaned that he was not awarded the Nobel Peace Prize last year. And in several events, he has shown the crowd a video of a CNN analyst saying that among GOP voters, Trump is more popular than Ronald Reagan or Abraham Lincoln.

But in the end, he also tried to appeal to his base with nostalgia.

“We’ve been doing this together for 11 years, and there’s never been anything like it and there probably never will be anything like it again politically or otherwise,” he said. “So let’s go out and do what we do best and that is win on Nov. 3. We gotta win!”

For the 15th time in the last 16 years, Palisades and Granada Hills met for the City Section Open Division girls’ tennis championship Wednesday afternoon.

For the second year in a row, Palisades came out on top, winning eight of nine doubles sets (each worth one and a half points) in the round-robin format on its way to a 20-9.5 victory at Balboa Sports Center in Encino.

It was the 31st City title for the top-seeded Dolphins (21-5), who clinched the championship when their No. 1 doubles team of Remy Trepanier and Penelope Mihal beat the Highlanders’ No. 3 duo of Nicole Khachatourians and Sammi Cho 6-1 to earn Palisades’ 15th point

“We lost our top seven players from last year but these girls worked hard and improved,” Palisades coach Robert Silvers said. “I’m really proud of them.”

Palisades and Granada Hills have combined to win the last 25 upper division crowns (14 by Palisades and 11 by Granada Hills) and since the debut of the Open Division in 2017, Palisades has won the four-team bracket seven times and Granada Hills three.

Mihal and Trepanier dropped only five games in three sets, the Dolphins’ No. 2 pair of Brienne Dominguez and Nina Arasteh swept 7-5, 6-4, 6-1 and the third tandem of McKenna Adham and Sonia Shirley sandwiched a pair of 6-4 wins around a 6-3 defeat to the Highlanders’ No.1 team of Iris Huang and Christina Surmabukian.

Granada Hills High’s No. 2 singles player Ayah Vilien hits a forehand return Wednesday at Balboa Sports Center.

(Steve Galluzzo / For The Times)

The schools split the 16 singles sets (each worth one point). The Dolphins’ No. 1 player Aila Monahan and No. 2 player Charlie Roberts each won three sets before being subbed out for the last round with a second straight title already secure.

Palisades ended Granada Hills’ three-peat bid with a 25-4.5 finals win last fall.

“We expect to play Pali in the finals every year and it’s always a good match,” Granada Hills coach Troy Aiken said.

Groups that provide legal services to immigrants filed a lawsuit Wednesday seeking to stop the Trump administration’s new policy of hiding the locations of tens of thousands of detainees with final deportation orders.

The policy, adopted suddenly last month to expedite deportations, interferes with immigration lawyers’ rights by making it difficult, and sometimes impossible, to locate their clients, according to the lawsuit filed in federal court in Boston. It asks a judge to issue an order blocking the “unlawful and inhumane” change.

“No one should be denied a meaningful opportunity to defend their rights because the government has made it impossible for their lawyer to find them,” said Jacquelynne Bowman, executive director of Greater Boston Legal Services, one of the four groups listed as plaintiffs. “This arbitrary new administrative change leaves hundreds of thousands of people at risk of potentially life-altering consequences without essential legal help.”

The lawsuit challenges U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s decision, first reported by the Associated Press, to remove the locations of people facing final removal orders from its Online Detainee Locator System and to instruct staff not to reveal their whereabouts. As of last month, the move affected more than 16,000 of the nearly 69,000 detainees who were in ICE custody.

ICE and its parent agency, the Department of Homeland Security, didn’t immediately respond to a message seeking comment on the lawsuit.

The agencies have not publicly confirmed the change, but have said they are prioritizing people with final removal orders for deportation. They have also said they are facing a “historic number of injunctions” from courts blocking their efforts. The agencies have denied that they are disappearing detainees, saying they remain free to make phone calls.

Since 2010, lawyers and family members have used the online system to track detainees as they get moved from facility to facility through ICE’s sprawling detention network.

Approximately 1.4 million people living in the U.S. are subject to final orders of removal, which means an immigration judge has ruled they should be deported and the decision has been upheld on appeal or not appealed.

Those individuals still have several options to challenge the conditions of their detention and looming deportations, including asking to reopen proceedings, seeking relief from removal to third countries and challenging violations of their rights. Federal judges have ruled thousands of times that detainees should be released or granted bond hearings.

Since the change went into effect, lawyers have been unable to find clients and potential clients and have spent “significantly more time” tracking down others, the lawsuit says. Calls to ICE, including to its Detention and Removal Information Line, “lead to long wait times on hold, sudden hang-ups, a general lack of information or no answer at all,” it says.

As a workaround, some lawyers have tried to find their clients through an ICE program that schedules legal calls, but only a small percentage of detention centers use it, the lawsuit says. The result has been delayed or missed legal filings and fewer cases taken, according to the organizations.

The lawsuit argues the change violates the Administrative Procedure Act because it was adopted without explanation and the First Amendment, which protects lawyers’ ability to advise people of their legal rights and seek prospective clients.

Foley writes for the Associated Press.

No single Argentine capability shaped British planning during the 1982 South Atlantic conflict more than the pairing of the Dassault Super Étendard strike fighter and its deadly AM39 Exocet anti-ship missile. Against that threat, the British launched a series of special forces operations, all with the same objective: kill the Argentine pilots and destroy their aircraft and missiles before they could be used again. Together, the strike fighter and missile pairing had proven to be the biggest threat to the Royal Navy task force that had been sent to recapture the islands.

Five Super Étendard aircraft and five AM39 Exocet missiles had been delivered to Argentina before a French embargo took hold. The jets were flown by the Argentine Navy’s 2nd Naval Fighter and Attack Squadron out of Río Grande, on Tierra del Fuego, a region at South America’s southernmost tip, shared by Chile and Argentina. The Super Étendard/Exocet combination had already cost the British the destroyer HMS Sheffield on May 4 and the container ship Atlantic Conveyor on May 25.

The special forces operations were broken down into four phases — named PLUM DUFF, MIKADO, KETTLEDRUM, and IMPI — the last of which is the least well-documented, and the focus of this article.

PLUM DUFF was the insertion phase and was a reconnaissance mission. On May 16, an RAF Hercules airdropped eight special forces troops onto RFA Fort Austin to form a recce party. On the night of May 17/18, a Sea King HC4, ZA290, lifted off from the aircraft carrier HMS Invincible for a one-way flight to Tierra del Fuego, where the men were to observe Río Grande and report back. The patrol was set down far from the objective and never completed the reconnaissance; the helicopter crew flew on into Chile, where the aircraft was deliberately burnt to try and hide the evidence, while they tried to evade capture.

MIKADO was the planned attack phase, and it depended on that missing intelligence. Two Hercules were to air-land up to 70 men of B Squadron, 22 Special Air Service (SAS), directly on Río Grande — the air operation order of May 19 also named Río Gallegos, further up the Argentine coast, as an alternative. The men would destroy the Super Étendards and their Exocets on the ground, kill the pilots, and then withdraw overland into Chile. Commander Task Force 317, at Northwood, accepted from the outset that the mission could well cost both Hercules.

The aircrew did not refuse the task, but they were blunt about what it demanded: formation landing by two heavy transports on a possibly heavily defended, icy military runway, with a probable 20-knot tailwind, at night and on passive night-vision goggles in minimum light levels, with intelligence that was inadequate to support any air-land option at all. The RAF planning team recommended an airdrop as the better way to maintain a covert posture, and the Senior Air Staff Officer at Headquarters 38 Group warned the Air Commander to watch for overambitious schemes coming out of the SAS.

The U.K. Ministry of Defense formally cancelled MIKADO on June 4.

KETTLEDRUM was planned as the third of the set. It was aimed at Puerto Deseado, Santa Cruz Province of Argentina, and would have inserted a Special Boat Service party (SBS, the Royal Marines’ special forces unit) from the submarine HMS Onyx — a boat that will reappear before the end of this story.

None of the three was executed as planned.

Less well-known is that the cancellation of MIKADO produced a fourth project: Operation IMPI, named after a Zulu fighting force.

Cancelling MIKADO did not mean the wider operation was over. Also on June 4, the U.K. Ministry of Defense tasked CTF 317 to produce a new plan for special forces to destroy the combat effectiveness of the Super Étendards.

CTF 317’s staff went to work on what became IMPI. The planning document, Ops 1/3, is dated June 14 — the day of the Argentine surrender in the islands. In broad terms, the objective was to be attacked by special forces arriving both by air and by sea.

That much has been known, in fragments.

What has not been published until now is the fact that the operation had already been resourced.

At 2240Z on June 12, Maj. Gen. Jeremy Moore, commanding the land forces as CTG 317.1, signalled Rear Admiral Sandy Woodward’s battle group (CTG 317.8), with Admiral Sir John Fieldhouse at Northwood (CTF 317) and Commodore Michael Clapp’s amphibious group (CTG 317.0) as information addressees. The message called for B Squadron, 22 SAS, to be made available for operations as soon as possible: cover was needed against rapid developments of an unfavorable nature in West Falkland (Gran Malvina), and the theatre’s existing special forces assets were fully absorbed supporting the battle for Stanley — and IMPI. Operation IMPI, Moore noted in passing, was by then self-sufficient.

Examining two lines of routine signal traffic settles several things at once. Forty-eight hours before the surrender, IMPI was not a staff study but an operation that had been resourced, and that was enough to consume the theatre’s special forces and justify calling a fresh SAS squadron forward. It is also the only contemporary, operational-level reference to IMPI released so far: everything else comes from a narrative written years afterwards.

As that later narrative describes it, the concept behind IMPI was much leaner than MIKADO. Against two Hercules and 70 men, the air element of IMPI rested on a single RAF Hercules.

The aircraft was to fly from Ascension Island, refuel in flight, and then track east of the Falkland Islands and south of Cape Horn before making a low-level approach below Argentine radar cover for a night landing of special forces at the airfields codenamed San Jose and Arco Iris. Other special forces would have been inserted by sea. That air element, as will be seen, is the most questionable part of the entire file.

The routing is worth attention, because it rules out the intuitive picture of a direct run south from Ascension. Instead, the aircraft would have entered from the least-covered and least-expected direction, coming around the bottom of the continent rather than from the northeast.

The precise identities of San Jose and Arco Iris are not established in the declassified record.

The most likely reading is that they stand for Río Grande and Río Gallegos — the airfields at which the planned navigation ended, and the two named in MIKADO’s air operation order a month earlier. For a document circulating through restricted channels, encrypting the names of the two targets was an elementary precaution, although it should be noted that an operational order would more commonly have designated them simply as Target One and Target Two.

None of this rules out Chilean participation in other phases of the operation; if anything, it suggests it’s more likely. The narrative survives inside a folder classified Top Secret and restricted to the Chief of the Air Staff, whose declared subject is cooperation with Chile. That setting contrasts with the earlier stage of the planning, when mounting and recovering a special forces insertion from a Chilean airfield was considered and expressly discounted on political grounds — much as the use of an Antarctic strip was discounted after the New Zealand High Commission advised that the Antarctic winter precluded safe trans-polar flight.

The maritime half of IMPI can be traced in the records of those who were there.

Navigational support for the final phase was to come from the nuclear attack submarine HMS Conqueror. On June 9, 1982, Conqueror was off Bahía Camarones, working as an advanced picket and hunting targets of opportunity that ventured outside the 12-nautical-mile limit of Argentine territorial waters, with authority to sink any civilian vessel judged to be running to the Falklands/Malvinas; that same morning the sub had in fact entered Argentine territorial waters trying to locate the Argentine Navy’s Task Group 79.2.

That day, Conqueror received preparatory information on IMPI. The sub’s task was to come to periscope depth and act as a radio beacon, giving the Hercules a radio reference against which to refine a navigation that, low and at night, allowed no error. The resulting picture is an odd one: a nuclear submarine deployed on interdiction off the Patagonian coast, turned into a navigation aid for a transport aircraft.

The insertion itself fell to HMS Onyx, the Oberon class diesel-electric boat that had already taken part in Operation KETTLEDRUM and the only conventional submarine Britain deployed to the South Atlantic. On June 14, at 0815Z, lying in San Carlos Water, Onyx embarked a party of 10 men from B Squadron, 22 SAS and the SBS for the mission. The timing matches Moore’s signal of two days earlier almost exactly.

The plan called for the submarine to surface some two nautical miles offshore at night. The troops would close the beach in Gemini inflatables and destroy the objective — aircraft and missiles, if any were there — using anti-tank weapons and demolition charges.

What happened next illustrates the inertia of military machinery. The Argentine surrender in the islands came on that same June 14, hours after the party had gone aboard Onyx. Even so, preparations did not stop at once: on June 15 the embarked troops carried out practice landings from a Gemini. That does not mean IMPI was ever executed — it was not — but it does show that with the strategic outcome already settled, the machine was still rehearsing.

The British record closes the matter with administrative dryness: the surrender of the Argentine forces in the Falkland Islands and the cessation of hostile activity by Argentine aircraft resulted in the operation being cancelled.

The air part of the mission is another matter entirely and is where IMPI becomes more uncertain.

The only link between IMPI and an aircraft is a single paragraph in an RAF historical narrative. The folder that holds it was opened on April 18, 1986 — four years after the war — as an eyes-only briefing file for the Chief of the Air Staff, and the pages appear to be a working draft rather than a finished submission, carrying pencil amendments throughout.

Had a Hercules been earmarked, there is no doubt which unit would have provided it. The Special Forces Flight that runs through the whole chapter — five crews, commanded by a squadron leader, exercising regularly with SAS and SBS Sections — appears with its squadron number blanked out, yet the number surfaces a few paragraphs later, where two of its crews are described training on the probe-fitted Hercules C1P. The unit was No. 47 Squadron, RAF, home-based at Lyneham, and it would keep the special forces air support role for decades afterward.

The men who were at Ascension with that detachment, however, say they had nothing to do with it. Reliable sources with direct knowledge of the flight’s activity state that they never saw the codeword at the time, had never heard of the operation until this file surfaced, and consider it inconceivable that a special forces Hercules and crew could have been earmarked for a mission of this kind without the flight — a community of five crews that has stayed in touch ever since — learning of it at some point in the intervening four decades. By June 14, at most one aerial-refueling-qualified special forces crew was at Wideawake.

That skepticism is reinforced by the way the same narrative handles events those crews lived through. Its account of their own work-up does not survive contact with their logbooks.

For example, a practice infiltration into RAF Laarbruch in Germany that the narrative describes as successful had in fact been detected; the Hercules was notionally shot down about two miles out on the approach. The ramp toes (attachable extension plates located at the very end of the rear cargo ramp) it describes as droppable at 20 to 30 knots were never meant to be lowered with the aircraft moving, which would have been unsafe and risked the airframe. There are other anomalies, too.

A document that misstates the squadron’s own exercises is thin evidence on which to place that squadron over Tierra del Fuego.

What is not in question is what the Special Forces Flight could have done, had it been asked.

By mid-May the flight had two crews qualified in air-to-air refueling — one deployed to Ascension, the other held in the United Kingdom to train the others — flying Hercules C1s fitted with probes and, where the task required it, additional fuel tanks in the fuselage. It had rehearsed stream landings and rapid offloads, parachute insertion below radar cover to a pinpoint coastal feature, as well as flying on ANVIS goggles at 250 feet over sea and land. The goggles themselves were fitted to the crews’ helmets by RAE Farnborough specialists in a single day in mid-April. The reach was demonstrated on May 16, when the sortie that dropped the PLUM DUFF party stayed airborne for 24 hours and five minutes, with Victor tankers refueling some 1,800 miles from Ascension. Almost none of it was routine: nearly everything the force did during the conflict was improvised, at speed, in a matter of weeks.

What never had an answer — not for MIKADO, and not for whatever IMPI intended — was the other end of the problem. Putting men ashore deep inside Argentine territory was the solvable half. Getting an aircraft and its passengers out again after a direct action, from a strip in range of the Argentine Air Force, was not.

All of the above is reconstructed from lateral references: the RAF’s narrative in file AIR 20/13036 at the National Archives, unit records, submarine logs, operational signal traffic, and the accounts of participants.

The specific file — the one holding the complete plan with its annexes, the identification of the airfields and the execution sequence — remains closed. It is DEFE 71/980, titled Operation Corporate (Falklands Conflict): Operation IMPI, retained at the National Archives at Kew with no announced opening date. Until it is released, the air element of IMPI cannot be settled either way.

Forty-four years after the conflict, the last British special operation of the war is still, in essence, a document the British state is not prepared to show. That is not a trivial detail: the files touching on cooperation with Chile have consistently been the most reluctantly opened of all.

What remains is an operation of two halves. One of them is solid: a resourced plan, declared self-sufficient on June 12, with a nuclear submarine briefed to act as a beacon, 10 men of the SAS and the SBS embarked in a conventional submarine in San Carlos on the morning of the surrender, and rehearsals continuing the following day. The other half — a lone Hercules coming round Cape Horn to land on a codenamed strip — rests on one paragraph of a flawed staff narrative and is rejected by the only men who could have flown it.

Either way, the obsession is the same.

Between June 4 and June 14, 1982, while the final battle for Port Stanley/Puerto Argentino was being fought and the Argentine land campaign was collapsing, part of the British planning effort was still revolving around five French-built aircraft, their 10 aircrew, and their missiles. That the plan carries the date of the surrender itself, that it was still being rehearsed the following day, and that it remains classified today says a good deal about how far the British were prepared to go to destroy the Super Étendards and their Exocets.

Contact the editor: thomas@thewarzone.com

Mariano Sciaroni holds a master’s degree in Strategy and Geopolitics as well as a postgraduate diploma in Contemporary Military History, both earned at the Argentine Army’s Military Academy. Sciaroni has published five books and numerous articles on military and naval history. He is also an active member of the Argentine Institute of Military History and serves as a sub-lieutenant in the Argentine Army Reserve (Army Aviation Reserve Squadron). You can find out more about his books here.

Jake Jarman becomes the first British male gymnast to win two individual medals in the World Gymnastics Championships, after winning silver in a thrilling men’s vault final in Rotterdam.

WATCH MORE: Gymnastics World Championships BBC iPlayer

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President Lula da Silva rallied in Sao Paulo and Flavio Bolsonaro in Minas Gerais, on the eve of Sunday’s runoff election. The candidates are now polling at 50% each, according to a Datafolha poll.

ATLANTA — Angel Reese had 21 points and 12 rebounds to help the Atlanta Dream beat the Golden State Valkyries 97-71 on Wednesday night and take a 2-1 lead in the best-of-seven WNBA Finals.

Rhyne Howard added 16 points and Naz Hillmon had 15 for the Dream, who host Game 4 on Saturday.

It was the second straight strong game for Reese, who had 30 points and 16 rebounds in Game 2, which the Dream also won for their first victory ever in the Finals. She now has a double-double in each game of the Finals.

“It feels good when you’re in the Finals. It’s a long season and you play against everybody and go through and push through, but when you can do it at the highest level, this is what you live for, this is what the offseason is for,” Reese said. “I put the work in for this moment and I’m just happy I could lead the team to a win. We’re feeling good going into Saturday.”

With the score tied at 49 in the third quarter, Atlanta scored eight straight, including four by Reese. Golden State got within 59-55 on Tiffany Hayes’ layup, but could get no closer as Atlanta closed the quarter scoring 12 of the final 14 points.

Atlanta has dominated the third quarter so far in the series, outscoring Golden State 63-35 in the three games.

This game was originally scheduled to be played on Thursday at the Gateway Center Arena, where the Dream play most of their home games. The league was able to work with the Atlanta Hawks and State Farm Arena to play the next two games of the championship series there so that they could have a much bigger crowd. Gateway seats 3,500 fans while State Farm Arena can seat more than 17,000.

Wednesday night’s game was sold out, as is Game 4 on Saturday, which will also be played at State Farm Arena.

SITTING atop a bat-encrusted throne in front of me and 44,000 other screaming fans at Birmingham’s Villa Park last summer, Ozzy Osbourne took his final bow.

Just 17 days later, the music world was plunged into mourning as wife Sharon announced news of the Black Sabbath legend’s death at the age of 76.

Speaking to me for her only newspaper interview, Sharon reveals Brummie Ozzy — who she was with for 45 years — knew the epic performance might kill him.

“We never told anyone how sick Ozzy was,” Sharon says. “The ­doctors told him if he performed, he might die.

“Ozzy asked how long he had left and they said it was months.

“He said, ‘I’ve had the most amazing life. What is a few more months going to do, with me in pain and being miserable?

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“I’d rather go my way’. And he did — on the greatest high.

“It was the greatest gift that he could choose this way out.”

Life without Ozzy has been far more difficult than Sharon and their children Aimee, Kelly and Jack ever imagined.

And they have poured all their energy into creating a feature-length film of last year’s Back To The Beginning concert, which is out in cinemas next Wednesday.

“I am still learning to live with the grief, and that grief will be with me until the day I die,” Sharon says.

“I had counselling in the beginning. And when we watched the movie last week in LA, Aimee had to leave — it was too emotional for her.

“Jack stepped up and helped me with the business and Kelly is dealing with it in her own way.

“I told them we were lucky to have him, and it’s a blessing their dad was so beloved.”

For Sharon, who had Ozzy’s remains returned to their family home in Buckinghamshire, the Prince of Darkness is still very much with her.

“We kept his phone number on and do you know how many of his friends still text him?” she says, with a sad smile.

“Why should you wipe everything out because they have gone?

“I talk to Ozzy, too. I speak to him about everything that is going on.

“I ask, ‘What would you do? Tell me what to do’. We do whatever we can to take ­comfort. People I don’t even know have been so gracious — they come up to me to offer their condolences.

“The other day I was pushing my trolley around M&S and a lady approached to pay her respects. It really is touching that people thought of him so highly.

“The thing about Ozzy is that you didn’t even have to like his music, because people just loved the character.

“He was larger than life, a real softie and funny as f***. I mean, the f****** fights we had . . .  but it always ended in love. “He’d come out with one line which would be so funny, I’d crack and go, ‘Oh, f*** it’. Life is too short.”

Ozzy’s death saw an outpouring of grief all over the world, and Birmingham came to a standstill on the day of his funeral.

“I am blessed to have my husband’s friends. They are incredible and they have all been there for us,” Sharon says.

“We got so many messages, and we are still receiving letters, cards and flowers from fans all over the world.

“There was even one letter from King Charles.

“We had the honour of spending some time with him on a few occasions and he was just a ­normal bloke.

“The King loves to laugh . . .  he’s really naughty, and Ozzy loved that.”

Ozzy’s farewell concert on July 5, 2025, saw the great and the good of heavy metal travel to Birmingham to perform, including Sabbath bandmates Bill Ward and Geezer Butler as well as Tony Iommi — who ­supported Sharon at the film’s launch in London on Tuesday.

It is two-and-a-half hours of unbridled rock ’n’ roll joy, with acts including Metallica, Guns N’ Roses and Slayer performing Sabbath’s biggest hits.

Sharon admits Ozzy was ­worried about being able to go the distance at the concert, which ran for more than ten hours.

“I was petrified because I didn’t know whether he could get through it,” Sharon explains.

“He was just praying his lungs would work and that he could sing because, along with everything else wrong with him, Ozzy had emphysema.

“He could be great for two days and then on the third day he’d wake up and couldn’t breathe. But it was mind over matter. He wanted to play with Sabbath one last time. He wanted to see his mates and the fans.”

Emotions aside, Sharon admits there was non-stop fun backstage.

She told how Hollywood actor Jason Mamoa called and asked for tickets to the show, only to be told on the day he had to compere the entire event.

“I said, ‘Just go and talk to the crowd and introduce the bands’,” Sharon recalls.

“He said, ‘I can’t do that’. So I said: ‘F**k off, you’re an actor!’.”

The concert, which raised more than £8million for local charities, has gone down in music history as the greatest gathering of heavy metal artists of all time.

And Sharon hopes Ozzy’s ­legacy will continue to inspire the next generation.

“People don’t understand how poor Ozzy was [as a child],” she says. “He was born in the Forties and a can of condensed soup and a white bread loaf fed him and his five siblings.

“They all slept on one bed. They didn’t have blankets — they wore coats.

“There was no bathroom, just an outside toilet in a shed.

“He worked so hard to change his life and achieve what he did.

“He was a true working-class hero, and his music will live on forever.”

GOT TIME FOR GLASTO, SAM?

SAM FENDER has announced his biggest ever tour, a new album and dropped a big hint that he could headline Glastonbury in 2027.

The Seventeen Going Under singer will hit the road for the first time in 18 months next summer, with stadium shows across the UK and Ireland.

He will play Newcastle’s St. James’ Park on June 3 and 5, followed by Cardiff’s Principality Stadium on June 10.

Then there will be two nights at London’s Wembley Stadium on June 18 and 20, Dublin’s Marlay Park on July 1, Edinburgh’s Murrayfield Stadium on July 8 and Manchester’s Etihad Stadium on July 15 and 17.

The Proper Massive Stadium Tour will see Sam, right, perform to over 600,000 fans, and tickets go on sale at 9.30am next Friday, October 30.

Sam’s fourth album – a follow-up to 2025’s People Watching – could well be out by then, too, as fans who pre-order it will get access to tickets on Wednesday.

It’s hard not to see the clear gap in Sam’s schedule over Glastonbury weekend though – June 23 to 27.

I’ve heard some exciting whispers about next summer’s event and with Sam on board, it’d be a belter.

RYLAN: STRICTLY IS IN MY DNA

RYLAN CLARK says he’s thrilled his pal Emma Willis landed the Strictly job after he missed out on a role in the BBC show’s presenting line-up.

In an exclusive chat to celebrate Rylan teaming up with M&M’s to give away free Vue cinema tickets for Halloween, he said: “I love Emma to bits and I’m so over the moon for her. I think her, Josh Widdicombe and Johannes Radebe are doing a fantastic job.

“Being part of the show for four years hosting It Takes Two, it will always be a part of my DNA.

“I still love watching the show and long may they keep dancing.”

Rylan, inset, who has been going on secret missions for M&M’s by giving cinema-goers jumpscares before handing them free tickets, added: “I hid in a photobooth, a sofa and a ticket machine to give people spooks.

“There was one group that had quite an OTT reaction.

“They were very scared, even when it was revealed it was me, but maybe the teeth scared them off.”

TOM GRENNAN launches his bid to return to the charts tomorrow with new single, Wrapped In Gold.

The emotional track will feature on his upcoming fifth album. But before that, Tom will take to the stage at London’s O2 Arena to perform at Capital’s Jingle Bell Ball.

I previously told how John Legend, Jamie Miller and Becky Hill and will be part of the December line-up, with Queen of Christmas Mariah Carey also in talks to sing.

MUNYA CHAWAWA appears to be angling to become the first influencer to be cast as James Bond.

The funnyman looked ­dapper as ever as he enjoyed his new role as Oatly’s first-ever Diplomat of Taste.

He was driven through London in a three-car motorcade to ­celebrate the opening of The Oatly Embassy in West ­London.

On Fridays and Saturdays, guests can enjoy free oat-based drinks and a tour of the Museum of Modern Oats.

Munya said: “If there are two things people say about me, it’s that I love oats and I’m great at diplomacy.”

IN the last six months of her short life, there was one person Amy Jade Winehouse could turn to unreservedly.

Dale Davis, her band leader and confidante, provided her with a shoulder to cry on and a reason for her to break into the infectious laughter that came with her wicked sense of humour.

He was there to give Amy “a cuddle” during her final public outing, and three days later — on the night before she died aged 27 in 2011 — he spent 15 minutes on the phone to her, telling her she was “the best”.

“We were always chatting in those final months,” he says today to mark the 20th anniversary of Amy’s stellar Back To Black album.

“I remember her saying to me, ‘Dale, I’ve just realised that I’ve spent my whole adult life with you’.

“I was with her from when she was 19 to 27. The things I miss about her most are her big grin and that glint in her eyes.”

Dale joined Amy’s band in 2003 as bassist because the original choice was “too expensive” and, as he self-deprecatingly admits, he was “the uglier, cheaper” alternative.

A year later, he became her musical director and remains the keeper of her flame by leading The Amy Winehouse Band on its regular tours of the UK and abroad.

Though he was 17 years her senior, they bonded over a shared love of “hip-hop, soul and Nineties R&B”.

He adds: “We were also the only members of the band who drank Jack Daniel’s — so there was a lot of affinity there. If Amy loved you, no matter who it was, she loved you hard. She always had my back and I always had hers.”

Reaching the 20th anniversary of Back To Black, released on October 27, 2006, is a milestone Dale finds “surreal”.

Amy’s second album, the follow-up to her debut Frank, catapulted the vivacious, naturally talented singer on to the world stage and has sold more than 20million copies (and counting).

It contained raw, personal songs loaded with pathos and humour, such as Rehab, Me & Mr Jones, Tears Dry On Their Own and Love Is A Losing Game, all delivered in deliciously smoky, jazzy tones.

It charted in graphic detail Amy’s turbulent relationship with the love of her life, Blake Fielder-Civil, as well as her battles with drug and alcohol addiction.

“I believe she was the first star of this millennium, of the broadband generation,” maintains Dale.

“She was a most courageous performer and human being. Amy had a massive heart, but it left her open to the highs and the lows.”

To give an example of her inner conflict, Dale vividly recalls being with her on February 10, 2008, when she scooped five Grammy awards in the wake of Back To Black.

“Life was never dull and that night I saw an indication of what she was going through,” he says.

Amy could not attend the ceremony in Los Angeles because she’d been denied a visa amid drug and legal issues, but she was hooked up remotely to perform from London’s Riverside Studios.

“When she won her third Grammy, it was just me and her on stage,” continues Dale.

“Everyone else had walked off. I said, ‘Well done, Amy’. And she just said, ‘No, this is s*** because Blake’s not here’.

“While she was winning all those awards, her heart was going through the extreme pain of not being with him. There was no middle ground with Amy, and things like that are so destabilising to your mental health.”

When he considers the Back To Black songs, he says Wake Up Alone was Amy’s favourite, but he singles out a sad track, Love Is A Losing Game, and a funny one, Me & Mr Jones.

There’s an exquisite demo rendition of Love Is A Losing Game on the new, expanded anniversary editions, just Amy’s sublime, soulful voice and the strums of an acoustic guitar.

Dale says: “She was equally comfortable with an orchestra or on her own.

“The great thing about that version is that she delivers the most beautiful performance and then, at the end, she goes, ‘Is that all right?’. That really sums her up.

“Amy was so bright and so intelligent, but because she spoke so normally, it fooled people.”

Of Me & Mr Jones, with its old-school jazz vibe and jaw-dropping line, ‘What kind of f***ery is this?’, Dale says: “That’s my favourite song on the album. It’s right up my street. It’s got doo-wop. It’s got swing.

“I can imagine the mischievous grin as she’s thinking, ‘Right, I’m going to turn this into a funny old song’.

Also, you can’t play it on the radio. That’s the great thing about Amy — she knew no boundaries.”

Yet Dale senses that the star who burned bright for a fleeting moment “sold herself short in the end”.

“Amy was the most rebellious person I’ve ever come across,” he decides.

In 2004, the year Frank came out, Dale remembers “having breakfast with Nick (Shymansky, her first manager), who said, ‘We’ve got some issues with Amy’. I said, ‘Just leave her be, she’s a punk’.

“She had that spirit which could be destructive. However, the only harm she ever did was to herself.

“At the same time, she was so funny — her observational humour was ridiculous.

“I could always tell something funny was coming when I saw that glint in her eyes.

“Had she lived, Amy would have been like Barbra Streisand or Bette Midler — an all-round entertainer.

“I can imagine her having her own TV programme or being a great actress. She even talked about wanting to do some acting.”

When I caught up with Dale this week, he was preparing for last night’s Back To Black 20 show, directed by the album’s producers, Mark Ronson and Salaam Remi, at The Roundhouse in Amy’s London stomping ground of Camden.

Among the singers due to step into her ballet flats at the gig were Baby Rose, Corinne Bailey Rae, FLO, Jessie Reyez, Jorja Smith and Lianne La Havas.

Mention of the venue prompts Dale to cast his mind back to Amy’s final public outing, which took place there on July 20, 2011 — three days before she left us too soon.

Dale was by her side for a showcase by her goddaughter, the singer Dionne Bromfield.

Amy bravely appeared on stage — “dancing and being a good sport” — to support Dionne, but declined to take the mic.

“She was wearing a vest and jacket and looking as well as when I first met her,” says Dale.

“After the show, Amy said, ‘Let’s hang out’. So I spent two hours with her and we chatted so much. Before we left, we went outside and she said, ‘Cuddle me because I’m cold’.

“I spent the last ten minutes holding her. When I look back on that moment, I’m thinking it wasn’t like her because she was never cold.”

Dale believes Amy’s “eating disorder got her in the end”, a subject of great sadness to him.

He says: “She was never ever big — curvy at most. But I know a comment was made one year and then suddenly all the weight came off. I felt sorry for her.

“It has taken me a long time to realise what eating disorders are.

“I wish I’d had more knowledge so I could have helped.

“Towards the end, her nervous system was getting more and more shocked with the lack of eating.

“And when Blake went to prison, she also stopped sleeping. That had a massive impact on her physical state.”

This brings us to Dale’s phone call with Amy, which started at 11.15pm on July 22, 2011, hours before she died.

He says: “Purely by chance, I had the longest conversation with her that night.

“Even at her funeral service, I ended up right next to the coffin because there was no room for me elsewhere. All those weird things draw me in to make sure that I protect her legacy.”

Dale describes their final conversation: “Amy said, ‘Dale, I’ve had a little bit to drink’. And I said, ‘Well, you don’t sound at all drunk’.

“Then she said, ‘I’ve been watching some old clips of me on YouTube. I CAN sing, can’t I?’. And I just said, ‘Of course you can. You’re the best’.

“I’m so glad that, on her last evening, she could turn round and say that because she was the least arrogant person about her abilities.”

In the wake of Amy’s tragic death, there have been blame games involving various parties — Blake, management, the music industry, the media, her parents.

Mention of this prompts Dale to launch a staunch defence of Amy’s divorced mum and dad, Janis and Mitch.

He says: “I feel so sorry for Janis because when Amy started to get famous, Janis had her own health problems.

“Amy always said her mother was so serene — and then she had to go through her struggles and watch the demise of her daughter.”

Turning to her London cabbie dad, who left the family home when Amy was about ten but became more involved in her life as her career took off, Dale says: “People point the finger at Mitch.

“Me and my dad don’t really get on, but we love each other and are there for each other.

“It was very difficult for someone like Mitch coming back into Amy’s life when she’d become a self-made multimillionaire. It must have been quite hard to try to direct someone when they’ve made it themselves.”

On a more general note, Dale adds: “The industry and everyone else can take steps to do everything they can — but there’s always going to be someone who slips through the net.”

Next up for him is a UK tour with his Amy Winehouse Band, a chance to hear some of that beautiful, rebellious spirit.

“They tried to make me go to rehab but I said no, no, no.”

• UK tour details at theamywinehouseband.com. The Back To Black 20 ­Concert is on BBC Two on Saturday, 9.35pm, and Radio 2, Monday, 7pm. Expanded editions of Back To Black, with unheard demos and a 2007 live show, are out on Friday.

WASHINGTON — Xavier Becerra was dubbed a “rising star” before he even entered the halls of Congress.

His June 1992 Democratic primary victory over Los Angeles school board member Leticia Quezada in California’s 30th Congressional District earned the 34-year-old candidate that description in The Times.

When the boyish, affable congressman became the first Latino lawmaker appointed to the powerful House Ways and Means Committee in his second term, national outlets took notice.

Thirty years later, in the final weeks of his gubernatorial race with Republican Steve Hilton, Becerra now finds himself poised to lead the most populous state in the country.

An examination of Becerra’s more than 25 years in Washington shows a politician who was skilled at building important alliances and amassing power on Capitol Hill, but had some stumbles along the way and faced criticism for his performance in his highest profile role.

Becerra built his reputation as a diligent consensus-builder — a workhorse rather than a show horse, to use an analogy favored by political scientists — but also revealed himself to be an ambitious political operator in key moments.

“He’s an affable person who’s not afraid to pull out a knife in politics while smiling,” said Christian Grose, a political science professor at USC.

Becerra’s campaign declined to comment on his time in Washington.

Becerra’s origin story traces back to his youth in Sacramento, and a moment when a high school friend was about to throw out a blank, unused application to Stanford University. The elite university was only 125 miles away, but it might as well have been across the ocean from the working-class world Becerra was raised in. Still, he applied.

Becerra — whose parents spent their early years in Mexico — became the first in his family to graduate from college when he earned a degree from Stanford in 1980.

He earned a law degree there four years later, and it was at Stanford that he met his wife, Carolyn Reyes, who became a physician.

After living in Boston while Reyes attended Harvard Medical School, Becerra moved to Los Angeles to work for state Sen. Art Torres. Within a few years he was tapped by Henry Lozano, then chief of staff to trailblazing Latino Rep. Edward Roybal, to run for state Assembly in 1990; and then, two years later, to succeed Roybal, who was retiring after 30 years in Congress.

Roybal endorsed Becerra, whose victory in the heavily Latino district that included Central and Eastside Los Angeles communities, was seen as a passing of the torch to the next generation.

Frank Villalobos, the founder and president of Barrio Architects, was among the leaders in East L.A. who encouraged Becerra to run for political office, and he said he was impressed early on by Becerra’s genuine commitment to the community and his ability to unite the area’s sometimes divided political factions.

“I thought if we kept this going, someday he’ll become the governor,” Villalobos said.

Becerra was part of a wave of young Latino lawmakers entering Congress, and his growing power within Democratic ranks helped him escape Roybal’s long shadow. Soon after Becerra’s barrier-breaking appointment to the Ways and Means Committee — which writes tax legislation — Becerra became chair of the Congressional Hispanic Caucus, a position he held from 1997 to 1999.

An early test

He put his growing stature to the test a few years later when he decided to enter the L.A. mayor’s race in 2001.

It didn’t go well.

Former state Assembly Speaker Antonio Villaraigosa was also running, and Becerra — who had slept on Villaraigosa’s couch when he first ran for Congress — faced criticism for potentially splitting the Latino vote.

Becerra performed poorly, winning only 6% of the vote in the Democratic primary. His nice-guy reputation took a hit when his campaign was found to have been behind automated phone calls attacking Villaraigosa by a woman who falsely gave the impression that she was county Supervisor Gloria Molina, whose endorsement had been crucial in Becerra’s first run for Congress.

Becerra also faced criticism for his role in contacting White House staffers as part of an effort to push for the release of convicted L.A. cocaine dealer Carlos Vignali, whose father was a political contributor to Becerra. Vignali’s sentence was commuted by President Clinton on his last day in office; Becerra acknowledged calling the White House several times to discuss the possibility of Vignali’s release. Villaraigosa also wrote a letter on Vignali’s behalf.

Becerra told The Times in 2001 that he wasn’t lobbying for Vignali’s release, but merely asking White House officials to review the details of the conviction on behalf of the family.

“If I was going to try to put pressure on, I would have tried to call the president,” Becerra said at the time.

Villaraigosa fared better than Becerra but ultimately lost the 2001 election to City Atty. James Hahn, then rebounded to win the first of two terms as mayor in 2005.

Becerra got the better of Villaraigosa in their rematch this year in the Democratic gubernatorial primary, and won Villaraigosa’s support after.

“We’ve been friends a long time and, yes, we’ve been adversaries as well, but most of the time we’ve been friends,” Villaraigosa told The Times. “He’s got the experience and the wherewithal to lead this state.”

As for Becerra as a house guest during his first run for Congress?

“He makes his bed. He was neat,” said Villaraigosa. “He was pretty inconspicuous.”

Capitol Hill climbing

After his mayoral defeat, Becerra’s focus returned to Washington, where an alliance with another powerful Californian was a boon to his career on Capitol Hill.

Becerra was a close ally of former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-San Francisco), serving as assistant to the speaker from 2007 to 2009.

John Lawrence, Pelosi’s former chief of staff, said that Becerra’s standing within the California delegation and particularly among Latino lawmakers was a big part of his appeal.

“Speaker Pelosi had set a goal of elevating minorities and women who had historically been excluded from leadership,” he said.

Their relationship took a hit after Becerra told progressive lawmakers in 2009 that he believed party leadership gave up too easily on including a public option in the Affordable Care Act, which was signed into law the following year.

“I understand I have tire tracks on my back because Xavier threw me under the bus,” Pelosi said during a Democratic Party leadership meeting in 2009, Politico reported.

And Pelosi would later question Becerra’s appointment in 2021 to be secretary of Health and Human Services. She has not endorsed Becerra in the gubernatorial race.

But any bad blood between the two didn’t stop Becerra from continuing to advance within the party ranks.

He became chair of the House Democratic Caucus in 2012, leading weekly meetings of all Democrats in the House and uniting the party’s members.

Former Wisconsin Democratic Rep. Ron Kind said Becerra was an excellent listener and skilled at building consensus.

“He could get in the room with anyone and find common ground,” Kind said.

Becerra joined several high-stakes negotiations, notably a 2013 bipartisan effort to pass comprehensive immigration reform, in the wake of the “Gang of Eight” deal struck in the Senate.

John Yarmuth, a Democratic congressman from Kentucky who was also part of the House negotiation, said Becerra was “an amazing positive force” in the process.

“I think he, more than anyone else, was focused on fixing the problem,” Yarmuth said.

Xavier Becerra bumps elbows with U.S. Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) before his Senate committee confirmation hearing for Health and Human Services secretary in 2021.

(Greg Nash / Associated Press)

The group was able to achieve a compromise, but it never saw the light of day.

Then-House Speaker John Boehner, an Ohio Republican, later blamed then-President Obama, whom he accused of “poisoning the well” on an immigration compromise. Yarmuth said Republicans were spooked about potential blowback.

Several potential off-ramps appeared during Becerra’s time in Washington. He was considered by Obama for U.S. trade representative in 2008, but Becerra declined the offer. After flirting with the idea of running for outgoing U.S. Sen. Barbara Boxer’s seat, Becerra declined to enter the race, ultimately won by then-California Atty. Gen. Kamala Harris. He was briefly floated as a potential running mate for Hillary Clinton in the 2016 presidential election, but that didn’t materialize either.

In late 2016, Becerra found himself at a crossroads.

After more than a decade on the Ways and Means Committee, he faced the possibility of becoming the top Democrat on the committee and had the endorsement of the outgoing top Democrat, Rep. Sander Levin of Michigan.

But Harris’ victory in the 2016 Senate race created a vacancy for state attorney general.

Becerra decided to return home to Sacramento to take the role and spent the next four years as the state’s top law enforcement official, serving as “defender-in-chief” of the state, as USC’s Grose put it, against the Trump administration.

Fraught second act in D.C.

Becerra returned to Washington in 2021 for a second act that would prove to be far more controversial than his first.

Despite having no background in healthcare, Becerra was nominated to be the secretary of Health and Human Services and confirmed, over significant opposition by Republicans.

He took the reins of the healthcare agency as the country was still grappling with the COVID-19 pandemic and struggled to establish a clear role for himself in a response effort that was centered in the White House.

In his first year in office, he was called out by reporters for failing to hold regular press briefings.

And he faced criticism when health officials under his purview offered contradictory information in late 2021 about reduced quarantine requirements for people testing positive for COVID-19.

He continued to face criticism for the disappearance of thousands of unaccompanied migrant children who were supposed to be monitored by the agency’s Office of Refugee Resettlement after entering the country.

And Becerra’s chief of staff at Health and Human Services and longtime advisor, Sean McCluskie, pleaded guilty last year to participating in a scheme to use campaign funds from a dormant Becerra state political committee to pay for McCluskie’s frequent travel between Washington and California.

Dana Williamson, a longtime political consultant for Becerra and former chief of staff to Gov. Gavin Newsom, pleaded guilty earlier this year for her role in the scheme. McCluskie and Williamson are scheduled to be sentenced in December. Neither Becerra nor Newsom were accused of wrongdoing.

Democratic operative Xochitl Hinojosa, who served as the spokesperson for the Department of Justice in the Biden administration, earlier this year offered a blunt assessment of Becerra’s performance.

“He was not effective in government, and I think that a lot of people in the Biden administration are talking about this because they realize that he was not an effective HHS secretary,” Hinojosa said on CNN in May.

While other members of the Biden administration have defended Becerra’s performance, his time at the helm highlighted an issue that even allies concede has bedeviled Becerra in the past, his tendency to sometimes recede into the background.

Loretta Sanchez, a former Democratic congresswoman from Orange County who credits Becerra with encouraging her to run for Congress, put it simply.

“Will Xavier be bold?” she said. “I hope he takes those bold moves, because California needs it.”

The Court of Arbitration for Sport will announce its verdict on the title after it was awarded to Morocco by CAF.

A decision on Senegal’s appeal ‌‌after being stripped of this year’s Africa Cup of Nations title will be made ⁠⁠at the end of ⁠⁠November, the Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS) has confirmed.

“This process will require several weeks, with the CAS Award expected at the end of November 2026,” the court said in a statement on Monday.

Senegal are contesting the decision by the Confederation of African Football (CAF) to declare Morocco champions, despite Senegal beating the hosts ⁠⁠1-0 after extra time in January’s final in Rabat. Their arguments, plus those of Morocco and CAF, were heard by CAS in Lausanne on October 8.

At the time, CAS said ⁠⁠it expected a decision within days but has now decided to issue a complete ruling, including legal grounds, known as a CAS Award.

Senegal walked off the pitch for 14 minutes ‌‌after a penalty was awarded against them late in regulation time, with several players returning to the dressing room in protest before they resumed play.

Morocco missed the spot kick, sending the match into extra time, where Senegal scored the winner to secure victory.

However, they were stripped of the title two months later after CAF’s Appeal Board ruled that Senegal had forfeited the match by walking off the pitch, overturning the result and awarding a 3-0 victory to ⁠⁠Morocco.

Senegal quickly followed with an appeal to CAS, ⁠⁠which was lodged on March 25 but heard some six months later. The basis of their arguments is that the referee’s decision is final and he allowed the match to be completed.

“I know it’s a long wait for the fans, ⁠ ⁠a few months after the final between Senegal and Morocco,” CAS Director General Matthieu Reeb said outside the hearing earlier this month.

“The facts are set, are clear and the discussions will be on some procedural issues and legal aspects,” he added.

The CAS panel is presided over by French sports law expert Gerald Simon, with the assistance of Italian international law ‌‌professor Luigi Fumagalli and Hamburg-based lawyer and professor of law at the University of Zurich, Ulrich Haas.

CAS decisions are called awards and hold the same value as a national court judgement. CAS awards may be enforced by sports federations or state courts, depending on the circumstances.

India reached 118-5 after seven overs with Naman Dhir hitting 24 off six balls before rain forced an end to the game.

India and the West Indies were forced to settle for a 2-2 stalemate in their five-match Twenty20 International series after Saturday’s deciding match lasted just 48 minutes before it met a watery end.

At Bengaluru’s M Chinnaswamy Stadium, where play began an hour and 45 minutes behind schedule and the match was reduced to nine overs a side, India had reached 118-5 in 7.4 overs when the rain returned, forcing the umpires to call off play with not even a five-overs-a-side shootout possible.

The stadium was hosting its first international fixture since the October 2024 Test match between India and New Zealand and more than 20,000 expectant fans braved the inclement weather.

Their patience was rewarded when India’s batters went on the rampage after being put in by West Indies captain Shai Hope, with Ishan Kishan, Sanju Samson and the impressive Naman Dhir – with an unbeaten 24 off six balls – leading the way.

India lashed eight fours and seven sixes in their limited batting stint, with Kishan bringing up the 100th six of the series by swinging Romario Shepherd over long leg and out of the stadium.

But then, the skies opened up again, emphatically washing away any prospect of a decisive outcome.

Sonay Kartal’s dream week continued as she beat former Grand Slam champion Jelena Ostapenko at the Wuhan Open to reach the biggest final of her career.

British number five Kartal is playing in only her third event since returning from a six-month absence with a back injury, but she now stands one more victory away from a WTA 1,000 title – one of the most prestigious prizes outside of the Grand Slams.

The 24-year-old’s composure helped her secure a 7-6 (11-9) 7-6 (7-5) victory in a pulsating semi-final against Latvia’s Ostapenko.

Kartal trailed 4-1 in both sets but remained level-headed and took advantage when 34th-ranked Ostapenko stuttered in high-pressure moments.

Remarkably, Kartal survived three set points in the first set, and three more set points in the second, to secure a victory which will long live in the memory.

“That was probably one of the toughest matches I’ve ever played,” said Kartal.

“At times she is unplayable and you have to ride that wave. Mentally, this is one of the best performances of my career.”

The world number 170 is the lowest-ranked player to reach a WTA 1,000 final since the format was introduced in 1990.

Kartal will play French Open finalist Maja Chwalinska – who beat six-time major champion Iga Swiatek in their semi-final – for the title on Sunday.

Reaching the final means Kartal, who has been as high as 44th in the world, will return to the world’s top 50 and become Britain’s number one player when the next rankings are released on Monday.

Great Britain’s Millie Couzens beats her compatriot Josie Knight in the final of the women’s individual pursuit at the Track Cycling World Championships in Shanghai.

Watch the Track Cycling World Championships on BBC iPlayer

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WASHINGTON — President Trump bypassed his White House chief of staff last week in selecting Katie Zacharia as his press secretary and chief messenger, triggering days of scathing headlines about her credentials and abilities before her ignominious resignation on Friday.

Susie Wiles, that senior-most aide ostensibly in charge of the president’s team, is facing his scrutiny over a different set of problems: widespread public anxiety over corruption in government under the Trump administration. The issue has surpassed the economy as the top concern of voters entering next month’s election, according a Fox News poll released this week.

Marco Rubio, the president’s secretary of State and national security advisor, has been silent on Trump’s decision to cut a deal with Moscow on diesel sales that could fuel Russia’s war against Ukraine. The president’s poll numbers have been below water across the board, but especially so on foreign policy, where over two-thirds of Americans disapprove of his job performance and support Kyiv’s fight for freedom.

Trump aides walk to board Air Force One on Tuesday: Natalie Harp, Trump’s executive assistant, left; Walt Nauta, director of Oval Office operations (in sunglasses); Chief of Staff Susie Wiles; and then-Press Secretary Katie Zacharia.

(Alex Wong / Getty Images)

And on Thursday, the president was forced to reverse a course set out by Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth and the Pentagon to live-stream the execution of a convicted mass shooter by firing squad.

In the final stretch of the 2026 midterms, nearly two weeks out from election day, a White House that has enjoyed relative stability over the past two years has returned to the state of disarray that characterized much of Trump’s early political career, anticipating sweeping losses to Democrats in the House and Senate.

Staff upheaval is expected as officials brace for a blame game over Republican performance, with some distancing themselves from what they see as a fading political movement.

Polls suggest that Republicans are likely to lose control of the House, setting up two years of relentless congressional probes through the twilight of the Trump era, and that Democrats could even flip the Senate, winning in ruby red states from Ohio to Alaska.

It is historically a time for closing arguments, when politicians deliver their final pitches to voters in neat, disciplined packages.

Yet Trump’s campaign blitz across the country in recent weeks has generated a muddled message, dismissing the importance of the election itself at the risk of depressing Republican votes, overshadowing local candidates seeking distance from his record and touting an economy unrecognizable to most Americans.

President Trump walks ahead of Katie Zacharia at the White House.

(Win McNamee / Getty Images)

The president’s selection of Zacharia, who lasted just five days on the job, raised fresh questions about his message discipline in the final stretch.

And infighting within the White House has reinforced a narrative among political pundits that Democratic gains are a fait accompli, despite Zacharia, in her first and only press briefing, foretelling of Republican energy and excitement “never seen before in the history of midterms thanks to President Trump.”

Election officials across the country fear that, anticipating inevitable losses, Trump may be laying the ground to challenge the authenticity of the election results themselves.

“You know, this is the only guy that — it’s ‘promises made, promises kept,’ but he did more things than he promised,” Trump said Thursday, referring to himself in the third person. “I think we did. We did much more than we promised.”

The extent of the coming West Wing shakeup could be extensive, reaching into a Cabinet that has had far less turnover than Trump experienced in his first term.

Zacharia is the second senior official forced out by Trump in just three days, after Kimberly Guilfoyle, the former fiancée of one of Trump’s sons who served as U.S. ambassador to Greece, was revealed by the Wall Street Journal to have asked a Trump donor to pay off her $100,000 credit card bill.

Now, the president has begun asking political allies and donors about Wiles’ job performance, according to a recent Politico report, and several top administration officials are vying for her role, anticipating her resignation after the elections next month.

The conclusion of the midterms will also kick off the start of the 2028 presidential election season, when Republican hopefuls — including many from Trump’s Cabinet — are expected to launch exploratory committees.

British Defense Secretary Wes Streeting and U.S. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth stand for anthems at the Pentagon on Thursday.

(Finn Gomez / Getty Images)

“We have to get through the midterms first,” Trump said at the end of August, asked about Hegseth reportedly considering a run. “I bet there’s a lot of people considering it that you don’t know about. You have a lot of people.”

The party of incumbent presidents regularly loses seats in midterm elections, and it is common for presidents to shake up their staffs halfway through a term.

But the last time a term-limited Republican president faced voters in midterm elections, in 2006, Democrats swept into power in both houses of Congress — and President George W. Bush’s political capital never recovered.

That year, 37% of voters said they approved of Bush’s job performance. Polls published this month by AP and Reuters have found Trump already below that threshold.

In the GOP presidential primaries that followed, candidates jockeying to replace Bush distanced themselves from his legacy. He ultimately left office with an approval rating of 25%.

IT IS two years to the day since Liam Payne’s family – and his millions of fans – had their hearts broken when the pop star plunged to his death from a third-floor balcony at the Casa Sur Hotel in Buenos Aires.

Now, a bombshell update has ripped through the investigation. Argentinian businessman Rogelio ‘Roger’ Nores, 38, once facing the terrifying prospect of prison for negligent homicide, has been officially cleared of all criminal liability. Two hotel workers have also walked free.

Meanwhile, two defendants charged with selling cocaine to Liam await their fate, but case sources now think a full trial over his death will never take place.

For Liam’s grieving family and millions of devoted fans, Roger being cleared does not bring closure.

It simply shines a spotlight on the agonising black holes still in the official narrative as a UK inquest into Liam’s death is still ongoing, despite a series of setbacks. 

Here are the chilling questions that still demand answers:

Who really delivered the fatal dose?

While Nores and two hotel workers, Gilda Martin and Esteban Grassi, have had manslaughter charges dropped, the drug trail hasn’t gone cold. Toxicology reports confirmed a lethal cocktail of “alcohol, cocaine, and a prescription antidepressant” in Liam’s system.

Two men, Ezequiel Pereya, 22, and Braian Paiz, 26, are currently languishing in an Argentine jail awaiting trial, accused of selling Liam the narcotics. 

Braian Paiz was working at a high end restaurant in Buenos Aires when he first met the One Direction singer on October 2, 2024. 

He has claimed as Liam was leaving he asked the starstruck waiter if he had any cocaine and the pair exchanged Instagram handles. 

Over a week later Liam, who was still in the Argentine capital, contacted him to ask for drugs. 

Braian admitted in his witness statement: “He ended up convincing me to get [drugs] for him. And, in all honesty, I didn’t want to miss the opportunity to see him again. That’s why I agreed to do it.”

In a later newspaper interview, he said: “I’ve suffered so much psychological damage due to all this and the social condemnation, and of course I’m worried now I might be in prison for many years. But I don’t regret meeting Liam. I was a fan.”

But it has become clear Liam was getting drugs from many sources, so the question remains: how did a global superstar, supposedly in a secure VIP suite, become a target for local dealers? Was there a wider network exploiting vulnerable guests at the Casa Sur?

When will the trial of the two accused take place? 

The two defendants charged with selling cocaine to Liam in the lead up to his death are still awaiting trial. 

Restaurant waiter Braian Nahuel Paiz, 26, and hotel worker Ezequiel David Pereyra, 22, served over one year in police precincts and in a federal prison until they were released in March.

The Sun understands that there have been negotiations for a plea deal for the two young men. 

That could mean that a full trial over Liam’s death never takes place.

The pair are accused of selling drugs to Liam but if the plea deal goes ahead that charge could be reduced to supply of drugs for free, which carries a maximum sentence of six months.  

According to legal experts, given the pair have no prior criminal convictions, the sentence would already be covered by time served. 

Pereyra’s defense attorney, Augusto Maria Cassiau, told The New York Post: “We would be inclined to accept the offer.”

What part will Cheryl play in the ongoing investigation? 

Another heartbreaking chapter involves Cheryl, who shares 9-year-old son, Bear, with Liam.

Since Liam tragically passed away without leaving a will, his entire £25.7 million estate will eventually pass to his young son.

In May 2025, Cheryl was officially named as a co-administrator of his massive estate alongside attorney Richard Mark Bray. 

However, her power is strictly administrative. She and Bray can “manage the money” but cannot distribute it without further legal authority. 

Shortly after Liam’s passing, Cheryl issued a searing statement condemning the “abhorrent reports and media exploitation” surrounding his death, begging for Liam to be given “the little dignity he has left”. 

Cheryl is a plaintiff, on behalf of their son Bear, in the case against the waiter and the hotel worker, who are charged with supplying Liam drugs.

The Sun understands that she could ultimately have the last say over any plea deal agreed with the Argentine authorities – but she, or her lawyers, have so far not objected to the rulings in Roger’s favour. 

Now as the inquest stalls, how much longer will Cheryl and Bear have to wait for the final legal chapter to close?

What happened on the balcony? 

The most haunting mystery of all. We know Liam fell from the third floor of the hotel, where he was staying in Room 10. 

But the moments leading up to that fatal plunge are still shrouded in silence. The UK coroner, Crispin Butler, has been desperately chasing “eyewitness statements” from Argentina since late 2025. 

Following his death, it was reported that Liam jumped off his balcony, perhaps trying to reach the swimming pool below that it was claimed he had been denied access to because of his intoxicated state. 

But it later became clear he had fallen backwards, possibly after falling unconscious, causing unsurvivable injuries to his head and dying instantly.

The toxicology report read: “Due to the position in which the body was found and the injuries from the fall, it is presumed that Payne did not adopt a reflexive posture to protect himself and may have fallen in a state of semi or total unconsciousness.”

After forensic experts studied the singer’s hands, they did not find any defensive injuries, which led them to believe that “the injuries on the body were vital and produced at the same time, and that no injuries were observed that could suggest the intervention of third parties”.

Are there witnesses who saw the build-up? Were there warning signs ignored by hotel management before he stepped onto the balcony? And why did they let him back into his room? 

Why are the Argentine authorities not working more closely with their UK counterparts? 

For Liam’s family, the wait for justice is becoming a cruel joke. 

The UK inquest has been delayed repeatedly, first pushed to May 2026, and now stalled again because British coroners are still waiting on fully translated case files and evidence disclosures from the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office.

Coroner Crispin Butler told a pre-inquest hearing there had been no updates since a last review in January 2025, when he said he would seek full reports and eyewitness statements before a final inquest.

He added: “We have had no further disclosure of evidence from Argentina via the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office.”

It has been 24 months. Why are the Argentine authorities dragging their heels in handing over the final, unredacted timeline?

BBC sitcom Daddy Issues will come to an end after the third series has aired but not before a star-studded lineup of guest stars has joined the cast for its final outing

Daddy Issues will come to an end after the third and final series has aired, the broadcaster has confirmed. The BBC Three sitcom stars Aimee Lou Wood as Gemma and David Morrissey as Malcolm, following a pregnant party girl who moves into a flat share with her recently-divorced father.

The first series aired in August 2024, and a follow-up series was broadcast in August the following years but now the third run of episodes, which is currently being filmed in Stockport, will be its last.

But the programme, which is Danielle Ward and co-written with David Reed has confirmed a string of guest stars for its final outing. Men Behaving Badly star Neil Morrissey will be amongst those joining the cast, taking on the role of as Malcolm’s new friend Ellis.

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Shobna Gulati, best known as Sunita Alahan in Coronation Street and Anita in dinnerladies, will play new neighbour Odette whilst former Peep Show star Sophie Winkleman will play campsite owner Mary.

Sarah Hadland, best known for her role as Stevie Sutton in Miranda and for her Strictly Come Dancing stint, will be back as Rita, joining fellow returning cast members David Fynn as Derek, Taj Atwal as Cherry and Celebrity Traitors star Sharon Rooney as Catherine.

The new run of six episodes will focus on Gemma’s newfound set of calamities as she tries to settle into her new promotion at the salon whilst daughter Sadie thrives at nursery. Chaos ensues when the flat she still shares with her dad floods, and a new romance leaves her stuck in a web of lies.

Over the last few years, actress Aimee, who the BAFTA Television Award for Best Female Comedy Performance after making her screen debut in Netflix hit Sex Education, has enjoyed global success with US comedy drama The White Lotus.

Through her role as Chelsea, she earned Emmy and Golden Globe nominations. Aimee has also hosted an episode of Saturday Night Live UK, starred as Sally Bowles in the West End production of Cabaret and is due to appear in a string of Hollywood films including The Beatles, Anxious People, and The Idiots.

Speaking about the series coming back, Aimee shared nothing but excitement as she expressed her joy at being part of the comedy series.

She said: “I’m so happy to be back with David and the brilliant Daddy Issues cast for one final time. Gemma and Malcolm are one of the funniest and sweetest comedy double acts on TV, and I’ve loved being a part of it.”

Meanwhile, David Morrissey added: “I love doing Daddy Issues so much, such a great cast and crew! So I’m delighted to be coming back to have more adventures with Gemma, Malcolm and the gang!”

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THE Pussycat Dolls shrugged off the Lil Kim ‘tour axe’ while stripping to some striking outfits at their packed London gig on Tuesday night. 

Lady Marmalade star Lil Kim, 52, didn’t appear for the final night of the Pussycat Dolls’ run at London’s O2 Arena, with the headline act fed-up of her unpredictable behaviour.

A source said: “Kim didn’t show up to their gig in Manchester on Saturday night, and it was all very last minute. It threw everything into chaos and a sign just went up at the last minute to say she wouldn’t be performing. 

“As a result, she hasn’t been asked back for the closing night in London tonight, which was seen as the grand finale.” 

But shrugging it off entirely, Nicole Scherzinger and her glam bandmates  Ashley Roberts and Kimberly Wyatt looked sensational in racy outfits at the gig. 

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The girls opted for silver leotards, with Ashley wowing in a two piece and showing off her toned physique. 

Kimberly had her long pins on display with cut out tights on and white boots. 

And Nicole looked as glamorous as ever in her dazzling bodysuit, embellished with sequins. 

The Pussycat Dolls all rocked beautiful makeup looks and styled their hair down, while having the time of their lives on stage.

The girls wowed their fans and put Lil Kim’s tour axe. 

No official reason for support act Kim’s absence in Manchester was given, though some fans claimed she was ill.

However, others noticed she had shared social media videos of herself on her tour bus in the build-up to the gig where it looked she was playing video games.

One fan wrote on TikTok: “She was on the tour bus prepping for GTA 6.”

Another posted: “Omg we were there last night how bad is that, not even a comment on sorry she’s no show or anything, playing GTA in the trailer apparently, previous videos of her trying glad she didn’t show.”

Kim also came under fire from baffled fans at a previous gig in Paris when a music video playing on the big screens behind her during her set appeared to be synced from her phone and private messages kept popping up before the feed was quickly pulled.

Kim, whose real name is Kimberly Denise Jones, shot to fame in 1994 after being discovered by late rap legend The Notorious B.I.G.

The larger than life star then invited Kim to join the Brooklyn-based rap group Junior M.A.F.I.A, before she launched her solo career with her double-platinum album Hard Core, which debuted at number 11 on the Billboard 200.

Grammy-winner Kim’s biggest hits in the UK are all collabs, including the 2001 number one ‘Lady Marmalade’, a cover commissioned for the Moulin Rouge soundtrack, and 2003 track ‘Can’t Hold Us Down’ with Christina Aguilera, which reached number six.

The Sun contacted representatives for the Pussycat Dolls and Lil’ Kim.

BREAKING Bad star RJ Mitte made his final public appearance just days before he tragically passed away.

The actor, 34, smiled on the red carpet at the premiere of his new movie, Talking to Strangers, on September 30 in California.

RJ, who played Walter White Jr. in the Emmy Award-winning show, died on Monday in Brownsville, Texas.

Announcing his passing, the actor’s representative told Deadline: “It is with profound sadness that we share the tragic passing of beloved actor, philanthropist, and passionate disability rights advocate RJ Mitte.

“Drawing from his own experience living with cerebral palsy, RJ brought authenticity to the role and built a platform on disability awareness and inclusion.”

RJ’s cause of death was not immediately disclosed, however, TMZ reported that he died by suicide.

‘PART OF ME’

Breaking Bad star told those with cerebral palsy ‘never give up’ before death

GONE TOO SOON

Breaking Bad star RJ Mitte dead at 34

His new movie tells the story of introvert with cerebral palsy who meets a vibrant force of nature who he goes on to form an unlikely and complicated friendship with.

Talking to Strangers is available to stream on Prime Video.

Just four days before his death, RJ posted to Facebook about the movie.

He wrote: “Had the pleasure of attending the LA premier for a film I made, Talking to Strangers The Movie, now streaming on Amazon Prime Video.

“It’s got a little love, some comedy, and maybe even some drama.”

Speaking on a podcast, RJ praised the film for “pushing social norms” and “stepping out of the realm of comfort”, pagesix reports.

RJ was diagnosed with cerebral palsy at age 3, and used his stardom as a Hollywood actor to become a leading disability rights advocate.

He served as a proud celebrity ambassador for several organizations, including United Cerebral Palsy and Shriners Children’s.

Giving advice to young people with disabilities, he told Future of Personal Health: “My hope is to inspire a ‘never give up’ mentality.

“If there is something you want in life, pursue it no matter how hard it may be.

“Keep your dreams alive. Don’t lose sight of who you want to become.”

In Breaking Bad, his character also had cerebral palsy, although the actor’s real-life condition was milder compared to his character.

RJ played the son of Bryan Cranston and Anna Gunn’s characters on the hit crime drama.

He appeared in 56 episodes.

Last year the late actor got engaged to his girlfriend Kennedy Suarez after years of dating.

If you or someone you know is affected by any of the issues raised in this story, call or text the 988 Suicide & Crisis Lifeline at 988, chat on 988lifeline.org, or text Crisis Text Line at 741741.