Hugo Ekitike was Liverpool’s headline act on a night of pure theatre at Anfield which was high on emotion and rich in thrilling drama, but was also played out under the shadow of allegations of racist abuse.
Ekitike might face a future fight for his place only weeks after making a £70m from Eintracht Frankfurt, with Newcastle United rebel Alexander Isak still on Liverpool’s agenda – but he stated his case eloquently with a superb individual display that made him an instant hero on The Kop.
Liverpool’s 4-2 win, secured with late goals from Federico Chiesa and Mohamed Salah, was packed with sub-plots – not all of them good. Indeed, the scoreline barely touches the sides of a chaotic night.
It all started with emotional tributes to Diogo Jota, the Liverpool striker killed in a car crash in July, along with his brother Andre Silva.
The Kop was adorned with banners paying tribute to Jota, including one for his family reading: ‘Anfield will always be your home. You’ll Never Walk Alone’ before a minute’s silence.
Jota was remembered in song throughout, with a rousing minute of applause after 20 minutes for the beloved striker who wore the number 20 shirt.
It was a night when Liverpool’s expensive transition was on display, with four Premier League newcomers including Ekitike and Florian Wirtz, as well as full-back pair Jeremie Frimpong and Milos Kerkez.
The scale of change is illustrated by the fact that, excluding the inaugural 1992-93 season, Liverpool are the first reigning champions to name as many as four Premier League debutants in their opening-day starting line-up.
Ekitike was the best of that quartet by a distance, throwing up a conundrum about how head coach Arne Slot will adapt should Liverpool return to Tyneside with a bid closer to the striker Newcastle rate at £150m.
Slot has barely used a strike pairing since he arrived at Liverpool, so it would be a change of gear to combine Ekitike and Isak should the latter arrive.
It may not quite beg the question of whether Liverpool actually need to make such a lavish outlay on another striker, but it will give Slot a conundrum to solve.
When it comes to the Lucy Letby case, there are two parallel universes. In one, the question of her guilt is settled. She is a monster who murdered seven babies and attempted to murder seven more while she was a nurse at the Countess of Chester Hospital between 2015 and 2016.
In the other universe, Letby is the victim of a flawed criminal justice system in which unreliable medical evidence was used to condemn and imprison an innocent woman.
This is what Letby’s barrister Mark McDonald argues. He says he has the backing of a panel of the best experts in the world who say there is no evidence any babies were deliberately harmed.
These extremes are both disturbing and bewildering. One of them is wrong – but which? Who should we believe?
An alternative version of events
The families of the infants say there is no doubt. Letby was convicted after a 10-month trial by a jury that had considered a vast range of evidence. They say Letby’s defenders are picking on small bits of evidence out of context and that the constant questioning of her guilt is deeply distressing.
I have spent almost three years investigating the Letby case – in that time I have made three Panorama documentaries and cowritten a book on the subject. Yet, if true, the new evidence, presented by Mark McDonald in a series of high-profile press conferences and media releases, is shocking.
According to his experts, the prosecution expert medical case is unreliable.
Mark McDonald has not released the panel’s full reports, which are currently with the Criminal Cases Review Commission (CCRC), the body he needs to persuade to reopen Letby’s case, but he has released summaries of the panel’s findings.
Panorama
Barrister Mark McDonald says his panel of leading experts found no evidence that any babies were deliberately harmed
Letby was found guilty of 15 counts of murder and attempted murder, and the jury in her original trial reached unanimous verdicts on three of those cases. That is a good indication of where the strongest medical evidence might lie.
To get a sense of the imperfections woven through both the prosecution and the defence arguments, it’s worth looking at one of those cases in which the guilty verdict was unanimous: that of Baby O.
What really happened to Baby O?
Baby O was born in June 2016, one of triplet brothers. At Letby’s trial, the jury was told that his death was in part the result of liver injuries, which the prosecution pathologist described as impact-type injuries – similar to those in a car accident.
As in other cases for which Letby was convicted, the prosecution said circumstantial evidence also tied her to the crime.
However, a paediatric pathologist who was not involved in the case but has seen Baby O’s post-mortem report, says it was “unlikely” Baby O’s liver injuries were caused by impact – as the prosecution claims.
“You can’t completely rule out the possibility,” says the pathologist, who does not want to be identified. “But in my view, the location of the injuries and the condition of the liver tissue itself don’t fit with that explanation.”
Which raises the obvious question – if the prosecution were wrong about Baby O’s liver injuries, then why did he die?
Questions around air embolism
Letby was accused of injecting air into the blood of Baby O as well as that of other babies. This, the prosecution said, caused an air bubble and a blockage in the circulation known as air embolism.
During the trial the prosecution pointed to several pieces of evidence to make their case, including a 1989 academic study of air embolism in pre-term babies, which noted skin discolouration as one possible feature of it.
Prosecutors argued that these same skin colour changes were observed in several babies in the Letby case.
Reuters
In many aspects of the Letby case, the answer is not clear-cut
However, Dr Shoo Lee, a Canadian neonatologist and one of the authors of that 1989 study, is now part of Letby’s team of defence experts working with Mark McDonald. He argues that his study was misused.
He says skin discolouration has not featured in any reported cases of air embolism in babies where the air has entered the circulation via a vein – which is what the prosecution alleged happened in the Letby case.
In other words, the prosecution was wrong to use skin discolouration as evidence of air embolism.
It sounds significant. But is it enough to defeat the air embolism allegations?
As with many aspects of the Letby case, the answer is not clear-cut.
The prosecution did not rely on skin discolouration alone to make their case for air embolism. And although there have not been any reported cases of skin discolouration in babies where air has entered the circulation via a vein, some critics have argued that the number of reported air embolism cases is small and that the theory is still possible.
Andy Rain/ EPA – EFE/REX/Shutterstock
Professor Neena Modi believes there is some postmortem evidence of air embolism but this is likely to have occurred during resuscitation (pictured far left, with Professor Shoo Lee far right)
To muddy the waters further, another of Mark McDonald’s panel of experts has said that in fact there was post-mortem evidence of air embolism in the babies.
“We know these babies suffered air embolism because of the post-mortem imaging in some of them,” says Neena Modi, a professor of neonatal medicine.
She believes this is highly likely to have occurred during resuscitation, and that there are much more plausible explanations for the collapses and deaths of the babies in the Letby case than air embolism.
The air embolism theory, she said, was “highly speculative”. But her remarks show the debate is far from settled.
The needle theory: another explanation?
There has been another explanation for Baby O’s death.
In December 2024, Mark McDonald called a press conference in which one of his experts, Dr Richard Taylor, claimed that a doctor had accidentally pierced the baby’s liver with a needle during resuscitation. This, he argued, had led to the baby’s death.
Dr Taylor added: “I think the doctor knows who they are. I have to say from a personal point of view that if this had happened to me, I’d be unable to sleep at night knowing that what I had done had led to the death of a baby, and now there is a nurse in jail, convicted of murder.”
The doctor accused of causing the baby’s death was subsequently identified as Stephen Brearey – one of Letby’s principal accusers at the Countess of Chester Hospital.
Mr Brearey says: “Given the ongoing investigations and inquiries, and to respect the confidentiality of those involved, I will not be making any further comment at this time.”
Julia Quenzler / BBC
The needle theory was examined at length during Lucy Letby’s trial
It was a bombshell claim. But does the evidence support it?
One indication that the needle theory might be shaky was that Dr Taylor, by his own admission, had not seen Baby O’s medical notes and was relying on a report that had been written by two other experts.
Another obvious problem with the needle theory is that it had already been examined at length during Letby’s trial.
The prosecution pathologist concluded that there was no evidence that a needle had pierced Baby O’s liver while he was alive and the paediatric pathologist we spoke to agrees.
They told us: “These injuries weren’t caused by a needle. They were in different parts of the liver and there was no sign of any needle injury on the liver.”
Even if the needle had penetrated the baby’s liver, it cannot explain why Baby O collapsed in the first place or why he died – the needle was inserted after the baby’s final and fatal collapse towards the end of the resuscitation.
When asked if he still stood by his comments about the doctor’s needle, Dr Taylor told us that while the needle may not have been the primary cause of death, his “opinion has not substantially changed”.
He said the “needle probably penetrated the liver” of Baby O, and “probably accelerated his demise”.
Lack of consensus among the experts
The question of where this leaves the case presented by Mark McDonald’s panel of experts when it comes to the needle theory is a difficult one to answer.
It would appear that among Letby’s defenders, there is not consensus.
Consultant neonatologist Dr Neil Aiton is one of the authors of the original report on which Dr Taylor based his comments. Dr Aiton says that he has examined the evidence independently and has concluded that Baby O’s liver injuries were caused by inappropriate resuscitation attempts, including hyperinflation of the baby’s lungs.
However, he also says it was “pretty clear” a needle had punctured the liver during resuscitation.
When Dr Aiton was told that other experts, including the paediatric pathologist who spoke to the BBC, have examined the case of Baby O and said that it is implausible to conclude this happened, he said that there were two possibilities. Either the liver ruptured because of a needle or it ruptured spontaneously.
Dr Aiton’s position appears to be that poor resuscitation caused the baby’s liver injuries and whether it was a needle or not is “not important”.
That is a contrast from what Dr Taylor said in that December press conference. And critics say Dr Aiton’s account still does not explain why Baby O collapsed in the first place and why he needed such desperate resuscitation.
A summary report from Letby’s expert panel appears to back further away from the needle theory. It says a needle “may have” punctured the liver.
Other experts, including the paediatric pathologist, said that Dr Aiton’s observation of hyper-inflated lungs would not explain Baby O’s liver injuries.
Once again, the case illustrates how difficult it is to distinguish between plausible and implausible claims.
The debate around birth trauma
Since that press conference, other experts working for Letby’s defence team have put forward another theory for Baby O’s death. They say his liver injuries were the result of traumatic delivery at the time of birth.
Professor Modi says this was a “highly plausible cause”.
But that has been contested from a surprising direction. Dr Mike Hall, a neonatologist, was Lucy Letby’s original defence expert and attended court throughout her trial.
He has been a staunch critic of her conviction, arguing her trial wasn’t fair and that there is no definitive medical evidence that babies were deliberately harmed.
Panorama
Dr Mike Hall, Letby’s original defence expert, says there is no record of a traumatic delivery in Baby O’s medical notes
However, Dr Hall’s view is that evidence for the birth trauma theory is simply not there. He notes that Baby O was born in good condition by caesarean section and there is no record of a traumatic delivery in the baby’s medical notes.
“There’s still no evidence that anyone did anything deliberately to harm Baby O,” he adds. “However, something was going on with Baby O, which we haven’t explained.
“We don’t know what the cause of this is. But that doesn’t mean that we therefore have to pretend that we know.”
The insulin evidence
For the jury, Baby O was one of the clearest cases that proved Letby was a killer. And yet there appears to be flawed expert evidence on both sides.
There were two other cases where the jury returned unanimous verdicts – the cases of Babies F and L.
The prosecution argued that both babies had been poisoned with insulin and highlighted blood tests that it said were clear evidence of this. For the prosecution, the insulin cases proved that someone at the Countess of Chester Hospital was harming babies.
Letby’s defence have, meanwhile, marshalled numerous arguments against the insulin theory. One is that the blood test used – an immunoassay – is inaccurate and should have been verified. But even Letby’s experts accept the test is accurate around 98% of the time.
Another argument is that premature babies can process insulin differently and that the blood test results are “within the expected range for pre-term infants”. But the medical specialists we’ve spoken to are baffled by this claim and say it goes against mainstream scientific understanding.
PA
For the jury, Baby O was one of the clearest cases that proved Letby was a killer
Of course, mainstream opinion can be wrong. But it is difficult to tell because Letby’s defence team have not shared the scientific evidence.
One of the experts behind the report – a mechanical engineer who carries out biomedical research – clarified that his analysis says the blood test results were “not uncommon”. However, Letby’s defence declined to show the BBC the published studies that support this claim.
Once again, the claims of both the prosecution and defence are not clear-cut.
Ultimately, the question of whether Letby’s case should be re-examined by the Court of Appeal now lies with CCRC. They have the task of studying Mark McDonald’s expert reports.
If he is successful and Lucy Letby’s case is referred back to the Court of Appeal – that is ultimately where the expert evidence on both sides will face a true reckoning.
Lead image credit: Cheshire Constabulary, PA
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In the wake of January’s horrific fires, detractors of Los Angeles — an urban reality often seen as a toxic mixture of unsustainable resource planning and structurally poor governance systems — are having a field day.
Los Angeles knows how to weather a crisis — or two or three. Angelenos are tapping into that resilience, striving to build a city for everyone.
Their criticism is not new: For most of the 20th century — and certainly for the last five decades or so — Los Angeles has been seen by many urbanists as less city and more cautionary tale — a smoggy expanse of subdivisions and spaghetti junctions, where ambition came with a two-hour commute.
Planners shuddered, while architects looked away, even as they accepted handsome commissions to build some of L.A.’s — if not the world’s — most iconic buildings.
In 1961, Jane Jacobs, the famed urban theorist and community activist, referred to “the ballet of the good city sidewalk” in her landmark 1961 book “The Death and Life of Great American Cities.” If Manhattan was her “ballet of the sidewalk,” L.A. was a suburban parking lot with delusions of grandeur.
“Los Angeles is a city of pleasure and peril; we’ve always known this,” Zeina Koreitem, founding partner of Downtown L.A. architecture studio Milliøns, said following the fires. “We consume our environment instead of living with it.”
And yet, like so many Hollywood plot twists, maybe we misunderstood the protagonist.
What if L.A.’s so-called flaws — its low density, car culture and decentralized sprawl — weren’t liabilities in a changing world, but underappreciated assets? Not because they were the right urban solutions all along, but because the systems beneath them are shifting?
Urban form has always followed transportation infrastructure. Roman roads influenced the creation of grid-based military cities. Railways shaped satellite towns. Subways gave rise to vertical density.
Today, the emergence of autonomous mobility solutions like robot taxis as well as distributed energy — decentralized, small-scale energy generation located near where energy is actually consumed — is redrawing those relationships once again — and the L.A. model just may be a big beneficiary in the long run.
Dismissed as the nemesis of sustainable urbanism, L.A. can, in fact, be well-positioned for the next chapter. Technologies like rooftop photovoltaics, vehicle-to-grid systems and AI-optimized resource flows do not depend on compactness. They benefit from space, sunlight and flexibility — qualities that Los Angeles has in abundance across its 1,600 square miles of urbanized area.
That vast, polycentric mass — long derided by urban experts residing in denser cities — can also be an asset in the years ahead as autonomous mobility becomes ubiquitous. Elastic, demand-driven autonomous services — which will inevitably also extend to Los Angeles airspace — can and will complement an increasingly built-out Metro light rail system and increased bus rapid transit routes, helping open up economic opportunities to those in once disadvantaged, isolated neighborhoods.
Instead of forcing the city into a European mold, perhaps the question is how the city’s existing DNA might evolve. Could its low-rise form become a testing ground for neighborhood-scale energy networks? Could it become a solar-powered metropolis built on microgrids, where each district produces and manages its own resources?
There is already a shift underway. L.A.’s wide boulevards and streets are being reimagined for a new mix of mobility modes: e-bikes, delivery bots, shared shuttles, autonomous vehicles. A city that was once an ode to the freeway is fast becoming a globally recognized source of innovations in multimodal transport. This is what CoMotion LA has been looking at for the last eight years: bringing together public and private stakeholders to imagine a city of seamlessly connecting mobility options.
Young Angelenos increasingly prioritize neighborhoods where walking, biking and public transit are viable. Following a COVID-induced hiatus, downtown’s renaissance, with banks converted into lofts and vibrant public spaces, is showing — once again — a new appetite for urban living.
Cul-de-sac homes in Calabasas in October 2024. Dismissed as the nemesis of sustainable urbanism, L.A. can, in fact, be well-positioned for the next chapter.
(Brian van der Brug / Los Angeles Times)
Los Angeles is even emerging as a global pioneer in rethinking the curb — often treated as an afterthought — looking at ways those stretches of sidewalk can serve new functions: a charging node, a logistics port, a civic gathering point.
Meanwhile, the scattershot green spaces across Los Angeles offer another opportunity. Rather than a singular large park like New York’s Central Park or Boston Common, the city could develop an ecological mesh, a “sponge city” capable of managing stormwater and heat while fostering public life. Because sustainability is not only about emissions or energy. It is also means access, health and shared space.
This isn’t about longing for midcentury Los Angeles, or about replicating Copenhagen. It’s about testing new possibilities — much like what we’re exploring this year at the Biennale Architettura in Venice. There, participants from diverse disciplines are investigating how we can adapt to a changing planet. We begin with the understanding that climate change is no longer a distant threat; it is a present condition. Our response must be adaptive, experimental and iterative: a continuous process of design evolution, shaped by trial and error, much like nature itself.
But the United States and the world do not need a single model of urban sustainability — they need many. New York might go vertical and social. Barcelona is building out superblocks for pedestrians. Rotterdam is going resilient and water-wise. And Los Angeles? It could — and we believe, it will — become a solar-powered, biodiversity-rich metropolis that helps us rethink what urban sustainability really means.
The sustainable city of the future should not look the same everywhere. It should build on the best of what each place already is and push that to its most imaginative conclusion. “No city has ever been produced by such an extraordinary mixture of geography, climate, economics, demography, mechanics and culture,” said Reyner Banham, the British architectural historian who wrote about Los Angeles a half-century ago. “Nor is it likely that an even remotely similar mixture will ever occur again.”
Los Angeles may have been the warning of the 20th century. But it could become the blueprint of the 21st.
John Rossant is chief executive of CoMotion and international impresario of the multimodal transportation world.
Carlo Ratti is the director of the Senseable City Lab at MIT and the curator of the Biennale Architettura 2025.
All unhappy families of addicts are unhappy in their own way. Unless, of course, you’re a stage family, overrun with “characters” who don’t so much speak as deliver laugh lines and dispense nuggets of moral wisdom. Those families tend to be all alike, regardless of the superficial differences among them.
Grandparents play a larger role than usual in Jake Brasch’s “The Reservoir,” which opened Thursday at the Geffen Playhouse under the direction of Shelley Butler. But the theater’s ability to turn family dysfunction, be it alcoholism, Alzheimer’s or just garden-variety existential agony, into entertainment and instant illumination, has long been a staple of the American stage.
My tolerance for the artificiality of the genre may be lower than most theatergoers. Some take comfort in hoary comic patterns, souped-up eccentricity and reassuring pieties. Overexposed to this species of drama, I slump in my seat.
Indeed, my patience was as thin for “The Reservoir” as it was for “Cult of Love,” Leslye Headland’s drama about a family breakdown during the holidays that made it to Broadway last season after its 2018 premiere at L.A.’s IAMA Theatre. Neither play is beyond pandering to its audience for an easy laugh.
Serving as protagonist and narrator, Josh (Jake Horowitz), the queer Jewish theater student on medical leave from NYU who wakes up one morning after an alcoholic bender at a reservoir in his hometown of Denver, exhibits the snappy, manic banter of a drunk not able to face up to his problem. Patricia (Marin Hinkle), his long-suffering mother, has had it with Josh’s relapses, but how can she turn away her son who lies bleeding on her couch?
With his mother’s help, Josh gets a job as a clerk at a bookstore as he tries once again to pull his life together. Fortunately, Hugo (Adrián González), his manager, is quick to overlook his lax performance. Apparently, drinking has so scrambled Josh’s brain that alphabetizing books takes every ounce of his strength.
Marin Hinkle, left, Lee Wilkof, Jake Horowitz, Geoffrey Wade and Liz Larsen in “The Reservoir.”
(Jeff Lorch)
I didn’t quite feel as indulgent toward Josh, but not because I didn’t sympathize with his struggles. My beef was that he sounded like an anxious playwright determined to string an audience along without forced exuberance and sitcom-level repartee. (Compare, say, one of Josh’s rants with those of a character in a Terrence McNally, Richard Greenberg or Jon Robin Baitz comedy, and the drop off in verbal acuity and original wit will become crystal clear.)
What gives “The Reservoir” a claim to uniqueness is the way Josh’s four grandparents are conscripted not just into the story but into the staging. Seated in a row onstage, they serve as chorus to their grandson’s travails, chiming in with their own opinions and acting out his description of the way his thoughts compulsively take over his mind, like an unstoppable train or a raging river.
Each also has an individual role to play in Josh’s recovery. Patricia’s mother, Irene (Carolyn Mignini), for example, has been transformed by dementia since Josh has seen her last. She’s always been his favorite grandparent. He fondly recalls baking cookies, playing Uno and singing along to “The Sound of Music” with her. Even when she pulled away after he came out in high school, his affection has remained steadfast.
He would like to connect with her again and fears he has lost his chance. At the bookstore, he reads up on Alzheimer’s disease and hatches a plan to build up the cognitive reserve of all his grandparents by feeding them spinach and keeping them mentally engaged. He’s trying, in effect, to save himself by saving them, but they’re too feisty to be corralled by their unstable grandson.
Irene’s fiercely protective husband, Hank (Geoffrey Wade), an arch religious conservative, is too grumpy. As for Josh’s paternal Jewish grandparents, Shrimpy (Lee Wilkof) is too much of a practical joker with sex on his mind. And Beverly (Liz Larsen), an electrical engineer who doesn’t mince words, is too gimlet-eyed not to see that Josh is focusing on his grandparents to avoid doing the hard work of recovery.
Having been sober for many decades herself, Bev recognizes the narcissism of addiction, the way addicts have a tendency to put themselves at the center of the universe. She offers Josh the tough love that he needs, forcing him to see that a grandparent isn’t just a grandparent but a human being with a complicated history that needn’t be worn like a Kleenex visible from under a sleeve.
Josh sets out to be a savior but ends up getting an education in the reality of other people. Brasch’s intentions are noble, but “The Reservoir” doesn’t plunge all that deep. The play draws out the distinctiveness of the grandparents by ratcheting up their zingy eccentricities. How easily these characters fall into a punch-line rhythm. Larsen has the most consequential role and she imparts just the right note of astringency. But the staginess of the writing makes it difficult for any of the actors to transcend the shtick that’s been assigned to them.
Hinkle brings a depth of realism to her portrayal of Patricia, but the character isn’t fully developed. Whole dimensions of Patricia’s life are veiled to us. Both Hinkle and Gonazález gamely play other characters, but these sketched presences compound the general impression of a comic world drawn without much nuance.
The staging is frolicsome but visually monotonous — a problem for a play that is much longer than it needs to be. More than two hours of looking at the fey-preppy outfit costume designer Sara Ryung Clement prepared for Horowitz’s Josh becomes a kind of fashion purgatory for audience and protagonist alike.
I’m not sure why a production that doesn’t take a literal approach to settings has to repeatedly trot out the front seat of a car. The spry assistance of stagehands, who not only move set pieces but help flesh out the world of the play, is a jaunty touch. But the sound and lighting effects get rather heavy-handed during Josh’s hallucinatory meltdowns. Blame for the inexcusably clunky dream scenes, a writing fail, can’t be pinned on the designers.
Horowitz had the Geffen Playhouse’s opening-night audience in the palm of his hand, but I heard an actor playing his comic lines more than his character. Horowitz, however, is only following the direction of a playwright, who has a harrowing story to tell and needs you to enjoy every tricked-up minute of the zany-schmaltzy telling.
‘The Reservoir’
Where: Gil Cates Theater at Geffen Playhouse, 10886 Le Conte Ave., Westwood
When: 8 p.m. Wednesdays-Fridays, 3 and 8 p.m. Saturdays, 2 and 7 p.m. Sundays. Ends July 20
Bitcoin Hyper is building something real and powerful. It is a Layer 2 solution created specifically for the Bitcoin blockchain. The platform’s core mission is to make BTC faster, cheaper, and more useful.
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This article is for informational purposes only and does not provide financial advice. Cryptocurrencies are highly volatile, and the market can be unpredictable. Always perform thorough research before making any cryptocurrency-related decisions.
