golden

As summer heats up alongside the exhausting news cycle, it’s crucial to find ways to unplug and wind down. Golden Hour in the newly renovated sculpture garden at the Norton Simon Museum is just the thing. Taking place tonight (Friday), and on two more Fridays this season (July 31 and Aug. 28), the event lasts from 4:30-6:30 p.m. and features a different musical group each time.

Tonight is the Verbena Quartet; a North Indian ensemble and a jazz trio are upcoming.

The fun is free with museum admission, and guests are encouraged to bring blankets to relax in the grass. I took my family of four to a recent event and it proved to be the rare occurrence when both the 10-year-old and the 17-year-old were happy. The museum provides all kinds of great art supplies on a big table by the entrance, including sketch paper, clipboards, colored pencils and charcoal drawing utensils.

There are also sheets of paper encouraging creative ways to approach drawing various sculptures in the garden, alongside a family-friendly Golden Hour bingo card with squares including “Spot something framed by tree branches” and “Look at the space between two objects.”

I did some drawing with my toes in the grass while my kiddos curved their necks over their own mini masterpieces. My husband read a book. The sun slanted low as the afternoon melted into early evening, casting lovely shadows on the families, couples, friend groups and solitary artists scattered around the garden sipping wine and snacking on cheese and crackers from the nearby cafe.

When we had our fill of relaxing, we ambled into the museum. My daughter wanted to gaze at the Picassos and the Van Goghs. As did I. I never don’t cry when I look at “The Mulberry Tree.”

“Can you imagine what he was thinking?” I asked my 10-year-old as we regarded the painting. “The pain and the beauty of it?”

She nodded sagely, gently smoothing her thumb against her own recent drawing, her deep inner world a mystery to me. The beauty and the pain of it. I was glad we had cuddled together in the late afternoon sunshine.

I’m arts editor Jessica Gelt, wishing you and your loved ones peace. This is your arts and culture news for the week.

The week ahead: A curated calendar

FRIDAY

Antigone
The Bebelos Players present a back-to-basics production of Sophocles’ classic drama about a young woman who defies a king to honor her dead brother.
7 p.m. Friday-Sunday. Theosophy Hall, 245 W. 33rd St. eventbrite.com

“Horse,” by Rick Bartow, 2014, wood, tar, wax, false teeth, nails. 56 x 42 x 12 in.


(Yubo Dong, ofstudio)

Rick Bartow
Last chance to catch “All of these things have happened,” an exhibition of works on paper by the late Native American artist that touch on tragedies from throughout his life, as well as “Horse,” a 2014 sculpture covered in tar, wax, false teeth and nails that is “a study of sustained resilience.”
Noon-5 p.m. Friday-Sunday, Wednesday and Thursday (last day). Timothy Hawkinson Gallery, 7424 Beverly Blvd. timothyhawkinsongallery.com

Spencer Finch
“Balboa of House and Garden,” composed entirely of new work, is the artist’s first exhibition in Los Angeles. The show includes more than 50 unique works on paper, a site-specific skylight installation and a monumental outdoor sculpture. Finch’s “Memory Landscape (Nairobi, Chicago, Honolulu, Jakarta),” 2025, a commissioned tile wall mural inspired by places from President Barack Obama’s formative years, was recently installed at the Obama Presidential Center in Chicago.
Opening, 6-8 p.m. Friday; 10 a.m.-6 p.m. Tuesday-Saturday, through Aug. 22. Lisson, 1037 N. Sycamore Ave. lissongallery.com

Bodo Mato
The pseudonymous multidisciplinary artist uses a subconscious dreamworld to access a legendary lost city to find real-world parallels in the exhibition “Atlantis: Echoes of Hubris.”
Opening reception, 6-10 p.m. Friday. 11 a.m.-5 p.m. Saturday-Tuesday. 7811 Gallery (West), 7813 Melrose Ave. 7811gallery.com

Raymond Saunders, “Layers of Being,” 1985. Mixed media on canvas, 81 x 59 15/16 x 1 in.

(Carnegie Museum of Art, Pittsburgh / Gift of Mr. and Mrs. William Block / © 2025 Estate of Raymond Saunders)

Raymond Saunders
“Flowers From a Black Garden” is a career-spanning look at the painter (1934-2025) as he moved from Dada, expressionism and assemblage to Fluxus, Pop and postmodernism, beginning in the 1960s.
11 a.m.-6 p.m. Wednesday-Sunday, through Jan. 3. UC Irvine Langson Orange County Museum of Art, Segerstrom Center for the Arts, 3333 Avenue of the Arts, Costa Mesa. langson.uci.edu

SATURDAY

Chrysalis prototypes deployed in Joshua Tree, 1970, reproduction.

(Chrysalis Corporation)

Alternative Palm Springs: Other Desert Architectures
In some parallel reality there may exist a Coachella Valley unlike anything you’ve ever imagined. In lieu of that, this exhibition shares the unbuilt visions of prominent architects, off-grid designs of the counterculture, and private and public worlds created by the LGBTQ+ during the 20th century, yielding an expanded view of the area’s architectural ambitions.
10 a.m.-5 p.m. Friday-Sunday; noon-8 p.m. Thursday; through Jan. 4; closed June 26 and July 4. Architecture and Design Center, Edwards Harris Pavilion, 300 S. Palm Canyon Drive, Palm Springs. psmuseum.org

Declarations of Independence
Gay Men’s Chorus of Los Angeles and guest artist Justin Tranter celebrate national and individual freedom and pride for America’s 250th anniversary.
7 p.m. Saturday; 3:30 p.m. Sunday. Saban Theatre, 8440 Wilshire Blvd., Beverly Hills. gmcla.org/declarations

A Great Night in Hip-Hop
The Roots return for their third year at the Bowl, joined by Nas, with appearances from T.I., Bun B, De La Soul and more.
7:30 p.m. Hollywood Bowl, 2301 N Highland Ave. hollywoodbowl.com

Rota Fortunae
A one-night-only experimental opera featuring Jordan Slaffey reimagines the four women of the 1996 crime thriller “Set It Off” using movement, live music and fashion. Directed by Chris Emile, music by composer and DJ Cody Perkins and designs by James Flemons.
7:30 p.m. Indoor Swap Meet, 128 S. La Brea Ave., Inglewood. eventbrite.com

Peter Stampfel
An innovator of anti-folk, freak-folk and psych-folk, the 87-year-old co-founder of the Holy Modal Rounders makes a rare West Coast appearance.
8 p.m. McCabe’s Guitar Shop, 3101 Pico Blvd., Santa Monica. mccabes.com

THURSDAY

Ojai Film Society Summer Screening Series
Annual presentation of independent, foreign, documentary, critically acclaimed and classic films kicks off Thursday with Taika Waititi’s 2016 adventure comedy “Hunt for the Wilderpeople,” starring Sam Neill. Other screenings: “Selena Y Los Dinos” (July 10); “Cookie Queens” (July 17); “Best in Show” (July 24); “Arrival” (Aug. 20); and “Jurassic Park” (Aug. 27).
7:30 p.m. Thursday; various dates through Aug. 27. Libbey Bowl, 210 S. Signal St., Ojai. ojaifilmsociety.org

Tank and the Bangas
The Grammy-winning New Orleans music group shares its signature blend of funk, soul, hip-hop, rock and spoken word. Featuring an opening set by Butter Funk Family and DJ sets by Tosstones.
7 p.m. Skirball Cultural Center, 2701 N. Sepulveda Blvd. skirball.org

Arts anywhere

Meryl Streep, from left, and Amanda Seyfried, Rachel McDowall and Ashley Lilley in the 2008 movie version of “Mamma Mia!”

(Peter Mountain / Universal Pictures)

Broadway unbound

Two of the biggest hit musicals ever are in town simultaneously starting this week — “Mamma Mia!” is at the Ahmanson through July 19 and “Phantom of the Opera” plays the Hollywood Pantages through Aug. 9. If you want to bone up beforehand or relive the hits after you’ve been to the theater, the cinematic adaptations of both are widely available. The 2008 movie version of “Mamma Mia!” starring Meryl Streep and Amanda Seyfried streams on Prime through the end of June and the 2004 “Phantom” with Gerard Butler and Emmy Rossum is streaming on Prime and Apple TV. Both films are available to rent or buy on various platforms and, if you’re into physical media, relatively inexpensive Blu-ray and DVD versions can be had online. Public libraries are also great resources for arts-related content.

— Kevin Crust

Culture news and the SoCal scene

Passengers wait to board the first train to arrive at the Metro D Line at the Wilshire/Fairfax Station in Los Angeles on May 8, 2026.

(Genaro Molina / Los Angeles Times)

With the new Metro D Line subway extension up-and-running with new stations at Wilshire/La Brea, Wilshire/Fairfax and Wilshire/La Cienega, we asked architecture writer Sam Lubell to take an aesthetic look at these new displays of public art. “Suddenly the city feels different. Not transformed, exactly. But more connected,” wrote Lubell. “The fracturing grip of the city’s incomprehensible expanses, clogged arteries and stagnant governance — all intimidating barriers to healthy civic life — feels a little looser. … The stations, too, feel more connected, with art, architecture and infrastructure blending seamlessly into a cohesive experience … But above ground, it’s a tale of two (transit) cities. Outdoor plazas lack the kind of textured civic presence that’s been created below.”

The Hollywood Bowl opened its summer season with a lavish production, “The Best of Broadway,” starring Lea Salonga, Brian Stokes Mitchell, Darren Criss, Renée Elise Goldsberry and Halle Bailey, and hosted by Billy Crystal. The program including a selection of Broadway tunes old and new, was delivered with flair to an appreciative audience. “I had a lovely time,” reports Times theater critic Charles McNulty, “but I can’t say the concert lived up to its title. Not that impressive virtuosity wasn’t on display, but Broadway is truly at its best when musical numbers are embedded in a story, allowing the performers to feed off each other and reach heights that they might not be able to reach on their own. Too much of the bill required the actors to stand and deliver, ‘American Idol’-style. It was a little unfair to place such a heavy burden on them.”

McNulty also reviewed the Geffen Playhouse’s Los Angeles premiere of Pearl Cleage’s “Angry, Raucous, and Shamelessly Gorgeous,” about an American expat actor angling for her big comeback. The play, wrote McNulty, “is hamstrung with exposition. More time is devoted to setting up the dramatic situation than to activating it. … The intentions are noble and the themes are handled with admirable complexity, but the writing is sluggish. The plot is like an old car whose engine just refuses to start on a cold winter morning.”

After 20 years as LA Opera Music Director James Conlon will step down.

(Robert Gauthier / Los Angeles Times)

The final show of L.A. Opera’s production “Marriage of Figaro” last Sunday also marked the end of James Conlon’s tenure at the podium as the organization’s music director. Stepping down after 20 years, Conlon spoke to Times classical music critic Mark Swed. “I love L.A. and I’m not going to leave,” said Conlon. “I am absolutely happy at this point in my life. You know my age is 76. It is not a secret. I wear it proudly. But I’ve been a music director for 47 years, and I don’t want to be a music director any longer. I will still conduct.” Will he return regularly to L.A. Opera? “That’s the theory,” he said

Another maestro who can’t quit L.A. is Esa-Pekka Salonen. Last weekend, the beloved composer and conductor, who is back with the L.A. Phil as creative director, returned to the Ojai Music Festival after a quarter-century absence. “Salonen found renewal not from the desperation of rethinking but from freshening, illuminating the perception of exceptional young musicians first encountering greatness,” wrote Swed in his review of the four days. “In these uncertain times, that may be the most remarkable act of artistic optimism.”

Spanish artist Nieves Gonzalez stands next to one of her paintings that is part of her solo show at the Richard Heller Gallery at Bergamot Station in Santa Monica on June 18, 2026.

(Genaro Molina / Los Angeles Times)

Not yet 30, Spanish painter Nieves González is a burgeoning international art star with an exhibition at Richard Heller Gallery in Santa Monica. “Fashion inspires me,” she told writer Jane Horowitz in a recent interview. “Just as 17th century artists drew inspiration from the fashion of their day — often creating paintings that served as catalogs of current styles — I do the same. The goal is to not merely convey a specific message or ideology but to create a testament to a generation and the era in which we live.”

“California Gothic: A Bus Tour,” an avant-garde sightseeing event organized by the New Theater Hollywood, turns Tinseltown “into a stage, drawing locals for a mash-up of state history, gothic storytelling and public-intellectual riffing on the broken California dream,” wrote Times staff writer Eloise Rollins-Fife. The tour ended its latest run in mid-June, but will reopen during the last week of October for a special “ghost tour” edition.

Times columnist Patt Morrison reported from the City of Lights on Paris-born street artist JR’s “La Caverne du Pont Neuf,” which she describes as “an enormous art installation, a trompe l’oeil inflatable snow-clad mountain range … an homage to the innovative work of groundbreaking environmental artists Christo and Jeanne-Claude.” The work uses about 200,000 square feet of printed fabric on the city’s oldest bridge to create the illusion and the artist told Morrison, “Your eye wants to believe it, and for a moment you let yourself. That gap between knowing and believing is where the play happens, and people love being inside that gap.”

Stewart McLaurin, president of the White House Historical Assn., displays a newly-acquired suite of four interrelated paintings by Norman Rockwell titled, “So You Want to See the President!” at the association’s offices Wednesday, June 10, 2026, in Washington.

(John McDonnell / Associated Press)

In the 1940s, Norman Rockwell spent time in the visitor’s lobby of the White House sketching U.S. senators, members of the military, the press and a Miss America as they awaited entry into the Oval Office to see President Franklin D. Roosevelt. Eight decades later, four of the sketches have been acquired by the White House Historical Assn. for $7 million, according to the Associated Press. Titled “So You Want to See the President!” the sketches will be on public display through June 2027 at the historical association’s “The People’s House” education center near the White House.

It was a busy week for announcing some of this fall and winter’s Broadway openings. Lincoln Center Theater’s Vivian Beaumont will host a revival of Aaron Sorkin’s “A Few Good Men,” starring Bradley Whitford and Tom Blyth, directed by six-time Tony winner Michael Arlen, starting Oct. 8. In March 2027, LCT Artistic Director Lear deBessonet will helm a new production of Rodgers and Hammerstein’s “The Sound of Music,” for its first Broadway run in nearly 30 years. A revival of Richard Greenberg’s “Three Days of Rain” lands in February 2027 at a Shubert Organization-owned theater to be announced with Anna D. Shapiro directing. The cast will include “Heated Rivalry’s” François Arnaud and David Corenswet of “Superman” in their Broadway debuts, joined by Yvonne Strahovski of “The Handmaid’s Tale.” The play was previously on Broadway in 2006 with Julia Roberts, Bradley Cooper and Paul Rudd. Walter Hill’s 1979 gang saga “The Warriors” will make the leap from screen to stage as a musical, with a book, music and lyrics by Lin-Manuel Miranda and Eisa Davis. Previews begin at Broadway’s Lunt-Fontanne Theatre in March 2027 with an opening slated for April. Jenny Koons will direct.

— Kevin Crust

And last but not least

We cover a lot of awards in this space, but today we get to give a shout-out to one of our own. Times theater critic Charles McNulty was awarded the prestigious Nell Minow Award for Cultural Criticism by the National Press Club this week. His submission included a reflection on the Los Angeles wildfires through the poetry of Shakespeare’s “The Tempest”; a tribute to South African anti-Apartheid trailblazer Athol Fugard; and an essay on the complexities of Audra McDonald’s performance in “Gypsy,” among others. The Times also won the Breaking News Award in the print/online category for its reporting on the January 2025 L.A. firestorms. A presentation ceremony and dinner will take place Aug. 27 at the National Press Club in Washington, D.C. For the complete list of winners, visit press.org.

The race for the Golden Boot at World Cup 2026 is shaping up to be one for the history books.

After just two games, Argentina talisman Lionel Messi leads the way with five goals, followed by France’s Kylian Mbappe and Erling Haaland of Norway with four goals each.

Germany’s Deniz Undav has three with Jonathan David of Canada on the same mark after a hat-trick against Qatar.

A further 20 players have scored twice in their opening two games, including 2018 Golden Boot winner Harry Kane of England, Cristiano Ronaldo of Portugal, Vinicius Jr of Brazil and Mikel Oyarzabal of Spain.

The stars are all shining and, given the rate of scoring so far, it seems possible double figures might be needed to win the Golden Boot, something done only three times in history – by Hungary’s Sandor Kocsis in 1954, Just Fontaine of France four years later and Gerd Muller of Germany in 1970.

Fontaine holds the record of 13 goals in one World Cup in just six matches in Sweden, but the expanded 48-team format in 2026 means the nations qualifying for the semifinals in July will play an unprecedented eight games in this edition.

At the 2006 World Cup in Germany and in South Africa four years later, only five goals were needed to claim the Golden Boot while nobody has scored more than eight in the past 13 editions, a feat achieved only by Brazil’s Ronaldo in 2002 and Mbappe four years ago in Qatar.

Why have so many goals been scored at World Cup 2026?

It took just 33 matches for a century of goals to be racked up in this edition, second only to 1954 in terms of pace.

After Portugal’s 5-0 win over Uzbekistan on Tuesday, 139 goals had been scored across the first 45 games – the most in the group stages of a single edition of the finals, overtaking the 136 scored in 2014 in three fewer matches.

The record number of goals in one edition came in Qatar 2022 with 172 from 64 games. With an extra 40 matches in the new expanded format that went into effect this year, it was always likely to be broken, but the rate of scoring suggests the old mark will be obliterated.

One reason for the increase in goals might be the Adidas Trionda ball, which FIFA commissioned for this World Cup.

Before the tournament, FIFA said it boasts several key performance innovations, including intentionally deep seams designed to produce optimal in-flight stability by ensuring sufficient and evenly distributed drag as the ball travels through the air – in short, it flies through the air – while the surface of the ball is designed to increase grip when striking or dribbling in wet or humid conditions, which we have seen plenty of in the opening matches.

Austria head coach Ralf Rangnick said: “This ball is as fast as a cannonball. If you kick the ball in the right position, it’s extremely difficult to save.”

The controversial addition of hydration breaks to each half may also mean players are performing at their peak for longer, leading to the glut of late goals so far. Of course, the fact that 48 teams are taking part, drawn from the world’s leading 85 teams in the rankings, means there are some mismatches in the first phase.

Colombia coach Nestor Lorenzo also said attackers are more protected by officials than they used to be, which may contribute to the increased scoring, adding: “They didn’t have this protection some 20, 30 years ago when they were hit a lot more, when rough play was a lot more common.

“Today, any team that defends well and uses counterattacks and tries to play can manage to do well.”

Who is likely to win the Golden Boot?

Much will depend on fitness and, of course, how deep a country goes in the tournament, but Messi has to be considered the favourite to win his first accolade.

The 38-year-old scored seven goals at the last World Cup and has now scored in six straight tournament matches, having netted in every knockout round in Qatar and the first two games of this edition. He even missed a penalty against Austria, which would have made it back-to-back hat-tricks.

Argentina’s final group game on Sunday is against already eliminated Jordan although Messi’s inclusion from the start in that one is by no means a given as his side have already secured the top spot in Group J.

They look set for favourable knockout fixtures, though, with the potential for Uruguay or Cape Verde in the last 32, potentially Australia or Iran in the round of 16 and the possibility of Croatia or Colombia in the quarterfinals, should they make it.

Only in the semifinal might they come up against a powerhouse nation, likely in the form of England or Brazil or dark horses Japan, Norway or Mexico.

Mbappe also looks likely to have a favourable run and is likely to feature against Norway on Friday in the group finale, which will decide the top spot in Group I.

Winning the group could mean a round of 32 meeting with Sweden, Germany the potential opponents in the last 16 and the Netherlands or Morocco awaiting in the last eight.

Whoever finishes second out of France and Norway could face a tricky task against the Ivory Coast in the last 32 with Brazil or Japan awaiting the winners and the possibility of England lurking in the quarterfinals, which might put a ceiling on Haaland’s prospects, despite having scored 59 goals in 52 international games for Norway.

Kane will seek to enter the conversation with England facing a must-win Group L finale on Sunday against Panama with the prospect of a last-32 meeting with Cape Verde to follow and Mexico likely lying in wait in the Azteca (known during the World Cup as Mexico City Stadium) in the round of 16.

Cristiano Ronaldo may have left it too late to begin a real quest, given Portugal face Colombia on Sunday in their final Group K game and could face resolute Ghana in the last 32 with Spain potential opponents in the last 16.

But Vinicius Jr could add to his two goals when Brazil face Scotland on Thursday in their final Group C game although the knockout rounds would appear a stiffer test.

Records have been falling from day one for the game’s most feared forwards.

Messi now leading the all-time World Cup list has taken a lot of the headlines, and rightly so.

But he isn’t the only one who has been setting records this tournament.

Mbappe now tops France’s goalscoring charts, Haaland is Norway’s leading World Cup scorer – after just two games – while Kane has equalled Gary Lineker’s World Cup record for England.

And all of them will have their sights set on France’s Just Fontaine’s 1958 record of 13 goals scored in one tournament.

Only three players – Fontaine, Gerd Muller for Germany in 1970 and Hungary’s Sandor Kocsis in 1954 – have ever hit double figures at a single World Cup.

It would not be a surprise if that select list has grown by the end of this tournament.

The new 48-team format certainly looks to have increased the potential for goals. With more lower-ranked teams, the world’s best attackers have prospered.

The World Cup winners will also have to play one more round than ever before – again increasing the chance for goals.

Former France defender Gael Clichy told BBC Sport: “Kylian Mbappe is part of the generation which [has] that fearless factor.

“I remember when I started you had to give respect to the older generation when you came in, and you were not trying to do a nutmeg to the old men.

“This generation, they have respect, but differently. Don’t talk about age, talk about performance.”

So, back to the small matter of the race for the Golden Boot.

“It’s not something I’m thinking about right now,” said Mbappe. “Leo always scores. He always has and always will.

“If I start watching him, I’ll feel like I have to do even more, so no, I don’t watch what he’s doing. I’m only thinking about helping my team – by helping the team, I score goals and get closer to that kind of level.”

Norway boss Stale Solbakken has, perhaps unsurprisingly, pushed Haaland’s cause.

“He is the best striker – he is not playing for France or Argentina, he scores for Norway. He’s scored four goals now, two braces on the biggest stage,” he said.

“It’s easier to win the Golden Boot when you play for France and Argentina, but we’ll try to give Erling more games, and more help also in the next games. So he’s on fire and I’m very happy for him that he can score on the biggest stage.”

USA striker Folarin Balogun has made a decent enough start to the tournament himself, with two goals in his first two games.

But he probably summed it up the best, when he joked: “I think it’s annoying. Seeing players like Messi, Mbappe, Haaland – they’re so inevitable. I think they’re scoring a goal a game, sometimes more.

“For me, it’s just about trying to get to that level – to be inevitable as well.”

One day, when people say “they don’t make ’em like they used to,” they will be saying it about “Industry.”

First filmed before the pandemic and launched in its throes, a survivor of the era of streaming wars, corporate consolidation and Hollywood strikes, HBO’s addictively dissolute workplace drama remains as ambitious and authoritative as ever. Indeed, despite being divided from predecessors like “Mad Men,” “Succession” and “The Leftovers” by a series of epochal crises, it more closely resembles a vestigial tail of the medium’s past than most of its current counterparts: Out of place and out of time, “Industry” can best be understood as the last great drama of TV’s golden age.

Cast member and “Game of Thrones” alum Kit Harington, resident expert on series that reshaped the medium, agrees that “Industry” is a bit of a throwback in this respect.

“If you scroll back to ‘Game of Thrones’ in the first two seasons, it wasn’t a massive Goliath success, and it exploded after Season 3 with the Red Wedding. I think there’s a similar story going on here,” he says. “So often in TV at the moment, you’re given one season and everyone needs to pack in f— everything to get people hooked. But they’re burning through too much story. Season 2 is then done; the characters haven’t got anywhere to go. I think this is where this show has been successful, is that it was given that time to breathe.”

Earlier this spring, I convened “Industry’s” creators and cast in a conference room at The Times to walk me through its evolution into one of the best shows on television, and what to expect from its impending end.

Marisa Abela, left, Kit Harington and Myha’la.

(Jason Armond / Los Angeles Times)

‘What the f— are you thinking, guys?’

A trading-floor knife fight of hot, young strivers, or “grads,” competing for a permanent place at the fictional Pierpoint investment bank, the first season of “Industry,” filmed in 2019, premiered in the waning months of 2020 as a warped love letter to office culture. But for Konrad Kay and Mickey Down, the emerging writers at the helm, the voice of the series didn’t fully take shape until they’d found their main cast, including Myha’la, as hard-charging American Harper Stern, and Marisa Abela, as privileged publishing heiress Yasmin Kara-Hanani.

Kay: Season 1, me and Mickey were really green.

Down: We actually pitched HBO on the idea that it was going to be eight episodes, it was going to be in different months, and the big-bang dramatics were going to happen between the episodes. A bit like “Boyhood.” Huge things would happen in between episodes, and the episode would be about the reaction to those huge things. And they were like, “What the f— are you thinking, guys?” It was so antidramatic.

Abela: I had a lot of rounds of auditioning for Yasmin. They weren’t sure about me at all. I think part of it was because they were quite hellbent on her being vulnerable, on her being soft, and that was what I was playing in those first two, three episodes. … And what happens in any functional collaboration is you start to see what they really want from you — what it is that they need from your character. And in those moments of conflict, the moments of change, Yasmin has to stand up for herself at some point, otherwise it’s too wet.

Mickey Down.

(Jason Armond / Los Angeles Times)

Down: Yasmin was all vulnerability masked by Prada in script, and then you came in and you were very hard. [Laughs.]

Abela: There is one scene with [Yasmin’s abusive supervisor] Kenny [played by Conor MacNeill] in Season 2 where … Yasmin turns around to him and tells him to f— off, basically: “You don’t have a disease, you’re a narcissist, with a new excuse to lord it over people. You’re weak.” I think that’s the first time that Yasmin became a gangster. I was watching “Real Housewives of New Jersey” at the time, being completely honest. She can go really mob wife really quick.

Myha’la: I had almost the exact opposite experience in terms of finding or deciding who Harper was. When I read the scripts initially, I just thought, “There’s no way in hell that Harper can’t be steely and [on offense], because she’s clearly feeling out of her depth, and as a young woman of color going into a new space like this, you can’t show up like you’re vulnerable. You’re already expected to do poorly.” … On the page, Harper was an anxious person when I first met her in the pilot episode. She was sweaty and clammy and stammering. And I just thought, “Hell no!”

Down: Sometimes when we write the character, we focus on one thing, and then the actor comes in and then that one thing we thought the character was becomes the artifice that they have to play.

Harington: Great TV writers genuinely learn their actors as well as their characters, and they tie those things in as it goes through.

Abela: As much as they know how we speak now, we know how they speak. If Yasmin has a “F— off,” I know what they want with that. If she says “F— off,” it’s very different to “F— you.”

Down: It’s like playing the piano with the foot pedal, blindfolded.

Kay: When you get super-talented actors doing your writing, you sort of fall in love with them doing everything. There’s no story we can’t tell with them.

‘Am I being fired?’

The series’ second season, which opens with Pierpoint’s post-COVID return to office, found the grads established enough to become “active characters,” and the creators confident enough to begin breaking the mold they’d set for themselves in Season 1. From the nail-biting trade sequence with which Harper wins over hedge fund manager Jesse Bloom (Jay Duplass) to her firing from Pierpoint in the Season 2 finale, it marked the arrival of “Industry’s” distinctive, go-for-broke aesthetic.

Kay: [In] Season 2 we were still figuring out what the show was, and we had Jami O’Brien as our co-showrunner, who really professionalized me and Mickey towards the American system, towards how to be producers, curbed some of our more bombastic instincts, made us more professional in terms of some of the style of the writing we were doing, found a cleaner version of the show and a cleaner version of the story.

Konrad Kay.

(Jason Armond / Los Angeles Times)

Down: [The Bloom trade] was one of the first times in the show where we were like, “Wow, we’ve actually created something kind of singular,” in that we were able to create scenes of people trading, [using] financial jargon that no one understands, and make it feel like a car chase. The contrast between the Harper that’s on the trading floor being able to be in command of that with all the people looking at her, and then the Harper that’s in the loo afterwards in floods of tears, that for me was kind of the moment where we thought that we had a completely 3D, rounded character.

Myha’la: If you asked me to do the Jesse Bloom trade scene again, I’d piss myself. Because at least when I did it two seasons ago, I could have anxiety and fear percolating inside me. If I had to do it today, I’d have to do it confidently, and I would have to try really hard because so much of the language is truly blind memorization and being able to juggle particularly the f— phones. … You have to get the choreo[graphy] so good and you have to know the words so well so that you can do the important part, and that’s the subtext — communicating the feelings of the thing, which are not in the words. Which I love. It is so hard.

Harington: When you first read the scripts, you can’t understand a lot of what’s on the page. … You look at it, you go, “This is f— impossible.”

Myha’la.

(Jason Armond / Los Angeles Times)

Myha’la: This is not spoon-feeding the audience. “I’m sorry that you’re hurting because I know last summer your mom died in a car crash.” They don’t do that.

Kay: Do you know who hates that about us? Network executives. [Laughs.]

Down: We had a kind of mantra the first season especially, and then going into the second, that we would never have a scene that didn’t have one of our four main leads in it. And then, just for the necessity of the storytelling, we said, “We have to pop out of that perspective.” I don’t think HBO realized what a big decision that was, because I don’t think they’d actually realized we’d kept this mantra that we were never going to go away from the perspective of the grads.

Kay: It’s also where we broke the rule of, “We’re not going to just tell the bottom-up story; we’re going to go to the top.” When we sold the show, we were like, “This is a bottom-up story,” and then by that point we were like, “Actually, we have these older characters who might have these really rich inner lives that we should also explore.”

Myha’la: We blew the s— up. [Harper’s firing] forced us all outside the bank, which was dangerous and scary for me and really exciting and was how we got to see all the other things that Mickey and Konrad are capable of doing. I think they didn’t tell me before, so I was like, “Am I being fired?” [Laughs.]

Down: We thought we were all being fired. The reason the show evolves so much is because we basically never know whether we’re coming back, so we just blow up everything. We try to leave the audience with a satisfying conclusion. And then we get renewed, and then we have to basically write ourselves out of a corner. So Harper getting fired could have ended the whole show.

‘Oh, poor Henry’

Given time to develop its characters, refine its style and grow its audience, “Industry” returned for Season 3 with all the trappings of a series that had finally arrived: effusive critical acclaim, proliferating fan accounts and buzzy arcs by Sarah Goldberg and Harington, as playboy and erstwhile green–energy executive Henry Muck. Had it premiered just a few years later, “Industry” may have ended up on the chopping block before finding its footing; instead, it was allowed to achieve “terminal velocity.”

Kay: What happened between Seasons 2 and 3 was, we got renewed. We didn’t think we were going to get renewed. We operated from the principle of, “We might never get to do this again.” And that was incredibly freeing for me and Mickey because it was just like, “We’re gonna get eight hours, let’s just do everything we possibly can within that eight hours. Let’s indulge every creative impulse we’ve ever had. Let’s take the stabilizers off the story. Let’s not necessarily keep it within Pierpoint.” What we felt like was a perfect marriage of creative latitude, trust in ourselves and the right point in our arc of writing the show and directing and producing. We reached terminal velocity, where we could actually do all of the stuff that we were pretending we could do in the first two seasons.

Kit Harington.

(Jason Armond / Los Angeles Times)

Harington: When I joined up in Season 3, I had a good handful of friends who watched the show. It may be bigger than you think it was from the inside. It’s been fascinating for me, joining when I did and seeing it grow again … We all want to do stuff that people actually watch. We’d be lying if we said we didn’t. We’ve all done jobs that we really love and no one’s f— seen. When there’s a focus in on something that you know is good and you love, that’s more rare than you think. I started in this job in “Game of Thrones” and just assumed, “That’s, like, how jobs go. You get invited to the Emmys every year and everyone frigging watches it.”

Kay: The softness in Henry was a function of Kit playing the character and us writing to that vulnerability. There’s a totally different version of that character which never unlocks that kind of thinking in me and [Mickey].

Harington: You know that moment where it’s all going to s— with Lumi and he just gets up and he’s like, “None of this is real” and he f— off? For me, that was it. Because it was like, “Wait a minute, he can’t just leave the f— room” — and he does. I think that kind of sums him up. I got a handle of him properly then, and that was quite an early one we shot.

Down: He has a sense of entitlement most of the other characters don’t have.

Myha’la: But you still manage to make me feel bad for you. I’m like, “Oh, poor Henry.” Do you know what I mean? Isn’t that psychotic?

Down: I said it to him in an email recently. Somehow he managed to make an ex-Tory minister who bankrupted his company twice and needed bailouts from the British public — [a] junkie, adulterer — the most vulnerable and probably most empathetic character on the show, in some respects.

Harington: He’s one of the few characters who is actually trying to do good. Even if it’s about him being perceived as doing good. … It’s also very smartly done in how you demarcate addiction and drug-taking. You’ve got most of the characters, who can kind of put it down, but then you’ve got Rishi [a Pierpoint trader played by Sagar Radia] and Henry, who are a different kettle of fish. And also how it creeps up.

Kay: As a sober person playing that stuff, is there a psychic trigger in your brain that sort of feels like it’s happening?

Harington: I was very worried about coming in and doing some of this stuff, but quite quickly realized I was A) sober enough for long enough to go back there safely; and B) it was a sort of muscle memory, a lot of it. I get to exorcise this stuff in my job. How many ex-addicts get to do that? It was a kind of cathartic thing.

Marisa Abela.

(Jason Armond / Los Angeles Times)

Abela: There’s a real freedom that comes with drugs, alcohol, whatever it is, for the character. Those are the moments when you can really open the lid on something.

Myha’la: When you’re f— up, you’re uninhibited, so you can do your own thing, but I think you’re also taking the other person at face value. I feel like it sort of takes the judgment away. It creates a kind of childlike innocence.

Down: If you’re in a situation like that, you can skip like five stages of relationship if there’s a big bag of drugs in front of you. That’s something we try to capture.

‘Where we leave the characters feels so perfect’

Earlier this year, HBO announced that “Industry” had been renewed for a fifth and final season. But it was Season 4 — which finds Harper and Yasmin’s friendship in tatters, Yasmin and Henry’s marriage at an end, and the structure of the show evolving yet again to draw on new characters and genre influences — that led Down and Kay to determine that the series’ time had come.

Kay: We did think to ourselves, “OK, so we’re going to do a Season 4, which means the show is a kind of success in and of itself, which means we can start to think about ending. If you get four seasons, you’re probably going to get five. So we felt that it created latitude there. What we thought to ourselves was, “We meet these two women in the pilot. If you’re going to spend five seasons of TV with them, what is the starkest contrast you can do between how you meet them and where they end up?” … When we started, the show was about not having power. Five seasons in, they have it. Then what do you do with it? The phrase me and Mickey have been talking about is this idea of “arrival fallacy.” You climb and climb, you’re at the top of the mountain. Is there another peak? Do I sit here and enjoy the view?

Down: We’re writing Season 5 right now, and without giving too much away, we’re approaching that season very differently in terms of how information’s parceled out.

Kay: It’s very dense, though, isn’t it? Honestly, it might be the densest season. There’s a lot of theology in it, actually.

Down: We talked about doing a sixth [season], and then quite honestly we thought that was going to be diminishing returns. … We would have been pulling our punches constantly. This has been one of the most creatively fulfilling versions of the show, because we are writing towards a conclusion that we know is the conclusion. We’re thinking of images for the last 10 minutes that we know are going to be what the audience is left with, and that’s really, really thrilling for us as writers. I’ve never once thought, “God, I wish we were doing a sixth one,” as much as I love writing and making the show. Where we leave the characters feels so perfect.

I HAVE just stumbled upon ­Tenerife’s best-kept secret.

Instead of packed resorts teeming with Brits, I’m strolling across lush, undisturbed landscapes that stretch out for miles and quiet coves where the golden sands remain relatively untrodden.

And while some parts of the Canary isle are blisteringly hot in summer, here, temperatures are milder all year round.

That’s why the destination got its nickname the Island of Eternal Spring.

This is the north of Tenerife, a less commercialised area that’s so different from the south, it’ll have you questioning whether you’re even in Tenerife at all.

Instead of heaving crowds and sunbed-hoggers, hotels have more of a boutique feel to them, while the beaches are peaceful.

TOP TEN

Tenerife golf break for a bargain £859pp for 7 nights in the sun

COSTA YOU MORE

All Brits visiting Spain face new rules that could refuse you entry

My family and I were staying at the 4* Precise Resort, perfectly positioned atop a cliff over the Atlantic, on the edge of the pretty seaside town of Puerto de la Cruz.

Unlike some of the mega resorts down south, this place felt relaxed and sophisticated — with an airy lobby designed like an open Spanish courtyard, traditional wood-panelled ceilings and marble floors.

Rooms had a relaxed feel to them, too ­— pristine, clean and spacious with soft boho decor.

The hotel has the Atlantic on one side and mountain views on the other, but we opted for a balcony room with sea view so we could listen to waves washing against the rocks and soak up glorious sunrises and sunsets.

Along with all the usuals, such as fancy-smelling toiletries, rooms come with slippers, flip-flops and an eco-friendly jute beach bag which guests can keep afterwards.

The truly fabulous thing about the Precise Resort, though, is that it’s got all the elements of a luxury resort and more.

The palm tree-lined area, overlooking the ocean, is the perfect spot for a little sunbathing, with plenty of comfy loungers for everyone — so no stress about sunbed battles.

Beyond the main swimming pool is a newly built spa, next to a more secluded peaceful outdoor area featuring a hot tub, saunas and wooden cabanas with stunning sea views.

The hotel is also surrounded by 40,000sqm of sub-tropical gardens, with paths that meander past ponds and even a waterfall.

Plus, there’s three full-size tennis courts, four padel courts, a fully equipped gym, and an 18-hole crazy golf course.

We were instantly hooked after trying padel for the first time, and the following morning were able to stretch our tired muscles with an early yoga session.

Of course, you’ll need fuel if you’re exerting all that energy. And let me tell you, the hotel’s La Bodega restaurant did not disappoint.

With skilled chefs serving up a seasonal blend of delightful Canary Island and Mediterranean dishes, the buffet felt like a treat every night.

Dinner highlights included umami sea bass and Iberian pork cheek.

This is also where breakfasts are served each morning, with a plentiful buffet spread that will keep even the fussiest eaters happy.

If you’re after just a drink or a bite for lunch, the outdoor Cocoloco bar by the main and children’s pools operates during both the day and evening — make sure to try the burrata salad and club sandwich.

Or, for a change of scenery, the hotel runs a complimentary shuttle bus to the centre of Puerto de la Cruz, where you’ll find a flurry of easy-going bars and restaurants serving up authentic local grub.

As for entertainment, there’s plenty of that nearby, too. Five minutes from the resort is Loro Parque Zoo, home to a wide variety of animals including killer whales and dolphins.

We couldn’t resist a visit to the beautiful old town of La Orotava either — the bus is cheap and easy or the hotel will call you a taxi.

Here, we wandered among the beautiful colonial buildings, some with ornate wooden balconies, and enjoyed popping in to the independent shops selling everything from clothes and souvenirs to local food.

If you’re a keen rambler, head to the Orotava Valley, which leads from the sea to the mighty Mount Teide — but you’ll need to book the summit-trail treks in advance.

It’s a nature lover’s paradise, although the 12,188ft climb to the mountain’s peak may leave you feeling a little knackered.

Luckily, there’s several pools and an ice-cold pint waiting for you back at the resort.

SARATOGA SPRINGS, N.Y. — Golden Tempo closed out the Triple Crown season Saturday the same way he began it: In the winner’s circle.

The circumstances were different from the Kentucky Derby, when the late-running son of Curlin was helped by a hot pace that tired out the front-runners.

There was no such setup in Saturday’s Belmont Stakes, but Golden Tempo showed he didn’t need it.

Ridden again by Jose Ortiz, the Derby champion stormed into the stretch and outfinished Commandment to win a thrilling stretch duel by 1¼ lengths at Saratoga Race Course.

“Golden Tempo is amazing. Jose is amazing,” said trainer Cherie DeVaux, who added to her historic win as the first woman to capture the Derby by becoming the first woman to win two Triple Crown races.

“Amazing feeling,” she said on Fox Sports.

Golden Tempo was sent off as the co-fourth choice with Commandment at 6-1 and returned $14 for a $2 win ticket. Renegade, the Derby runner-up, finished third as the 17-10 favorite and Chief Wallabee, the second choice at 5-1, was fourth. The rest of the finishing order: Emerging Market, Growth Equity, Vitruvian Man, Ottinho and Powershift.

This marked the second straight year the Derby winner also captured the Belmont after skipping the Preakness, with Golden Tempo following Sovereignty. It’s the fifth time in the past six years that a horse used that formula to win this race.

Could Golden Tempo have won the Triple Crown?

“It’s not something I want to think about,” DeVaux said. “We made our decision and he won today and we’re going to be happy about that.”

Trainer Cherie DeVaux lifts the August Belmont Trophy as she stands next to winning jockey Jose Ortiz, left, after Golden Tempo’s victory in the Belmont Stakes on Saturday.

(Al Bello / Getty Images)

Golden Tempo, a homebred of owners Phipps Stable and St. Elias Stables, won for the fourth time in six starts. He earned $1.2 million from the $2-million purse to push his career total past $4.6 million.

Despite his victory five weeks ago in Kentucky, the general feeling about Golden Tempo entering the Belmont was pessimism. Not one of the 19 experts surveyed in Saturday’s Daily Racing Form selected him to win, with just two picking him second. The consensus was he would not finish in the top four.

The lack of pace was one reason, and sure enough, the race played out pretty much as expected, with Renegade’s stablemate, Powershift, dawdling through the first six furlongs in 1 minute, 12.38 seconds, about a second and a half slower than the same distance for the Derby (1:10.90).

Golden Tempo, ridden by jockey Jose Ortiz, crosses the finish line to win the Belmont Stakes on Saturday.

(Yuki Iwamura / Associated Press)

As he was in the Derby, Golden Tempo was last for more than half the race, but Saturday he trailed eight horses instead of 17 and never was more than about eight lengths behind the leader.

Growth Equity, who had been stalking Powershift, took the lead as the field turned into the stretch, but he soon was passed by Chief Wallabee. Before the field had run another furlong, though, Golden Tempo had moved around Renegade to the front. Commandment was on Golden Tempo’s outside but was unable to get past in the final furlong. In fact, the winner was pulling away as they reached the finish.

The final time wasn’t fast, 2:03.49 for 1¼ miles at Saratoga, which was hosting the Belmont for the third and final year while Belmont Park is rebuilt. The race started about five minutes after rain began falling in upstate New York.

Baffert’s Nysos dominates Met Mile

Nysos crosses the finish line to win the 133rd running of the Met Mile at Saratoga on Saturday.

(Yuki Iwamura / Associated Press)

The afternoon did not begin well for trainer Bob Baffert, who saw his top 3-year-old, Crude Velocity, routed by DeVaux’s Englishman in the Woody Stephens and his leading sprinter, Imagination, come up empty in the True North. But Nysos, the best horse in Baffert’s barn, salvaged the day — and then some — with a dominant win over Journalism and five others in the Grade 1 Met Mile.

“I’ve always thought he was one of the best horses in training and today he showed it,” Baffert said of the 7-5 favorite, who returned $4.94 after clocking 1:34.85, just 0.13 off the track record.

The victory was not without an anxious moment or two. Jockey Flavien Prat rushed Nysos to the lead out of the gate, but when he was joined on the pace by Antiquarian, Saudi Crown and Knightsbridge, the jockey dropped Nysos back to fourth place at the midway point.

“When he took him back I just thought, ‘I hope he knows what he’s doing,’” Baffert said.

Not surprisingly, Prat did. After Knightsbridge passed Antiquarian on the far turn, Prat took Nysos around those two as they moved into the stretch and pulled away. Knightsbridge was four lengths back in second with Journalism another three-quarters of a length behind in third.

“It felt like down the backside, the pressure from the outside never really stopped,” Prat said. “I figured I had to give him a chance, knowing he was carrying 126 [pounds] and he hasn’t run for [four] months, and it just played out good. When I tipped him out, he gave me a great run.”

It was the eighth win in 10 lifetime starts for Nysos, a 5-year-old son of Nyquist. He was second in the two defeats.

“He’s one of the best horses I’ve ever trained,” Baffert said.

The victory earned Nysos a berth in the Breeders’ Cup Dirt Mile in October at Keeneland, but the horse won that race last year and Baffert has a bigger prize in mind.

“We’re going for the Classic,” he said, mentioning the Aug. 22 Pacific Classic at Del Mar as a possible race to bridge the gap between now and Oct. 31.

SARATOGA SPRINGS, N.Y. — The Belmont Stakes is less than 34 hours away, and Cherie DeVaux is feeling stressed.

Not about the race. DeVaux has done what she can do to prepare her 3-year-old colt, Golden Tempo, for Saturday’s third leg of the Triple Crown. Questions about post position, track bias, even the increasing threat of potentially severe thunderstorms before the evening post time (4:04 PDT, Fox) are brushed aside because, as she said, those are all out of a trainer’s control.

No, it’s her makeup bag.

She forgot to bring it with her to Saratoga Race Course and she has a Fox Sports TV interview scheduled right after she finishes speaking with a reporter inside her small office adjacent to Barn 83.

“I have to be on national TV, and I have not a stitch of makeup on right now, all the while having to try to make sure I enter my horses and not forget and mess that up too badly,” DeVaux said, smiling. “So it’s been a lot.”

But DeVaux is not complaining, because it’s been a lot since 7:10 p.m. EDT on May 2, the exact time Golden Tempo crossed the finish line first in the Kentucky Derby. And those 35 days have been filled with many great experiences.

Golden Tempo’s trainer Cherie DeVaux kisses a trophy after winning the Kentucky Derby.

(Michael Reaves / Getty Images)

The coolest?

“We won the Derby,” she said. “I don’t know if there’s anything cooler than that.

“There have been a lot of really neat opportunities,” she added. “A lot of different people have reached out. But you know, just the whole experience itself.”

Winning the Derby changes anyone’s life, but it’s magnified when you make history, as DeVaux did by becoming the first female trainer to win the world’s most famous horse race. It began a whirlwind that included more than 65 TV interviews and dozens upon dozens of text messages and phone calls.

And, truthfully, there was one experience that, for a college softball player and lifelong New York Yankees fan, exceeded the others.

“I did get to throw the first pitch out at a Yankees game, which I thought was amazing,” DeVaux said. “To stand on the field and look at the cheap seats [where I sat] when I was a kid. … And I’ve had much better seats in recent times, but to really sit there and have that dichotomy of that was where you started and this is where you are, was really a profound feeling.”

Kentucky Derby winning trainer Cherie DeVaux and jockey Jose Ortiz throw out the first pitch at Yankee Stadium on May 7.

(Ishika Samant / Getty Images)

Technically she’s back home for the Belmont, which is being run at Saratoga for the third and final year while Belmont Park is rebuilt. But she has few memories of Saratoga as a child; the family moved to Florida when she was 9 and she lived there until she was 19. Much of her family, including her parents and several siblings, live in the area, though, and DeVaux, who spends most of the year in Kentucky, said she’s been able to enjoy some time with them this week.

The big question is whether her large cheering section will be able to celebrate another victory. Handicappers are more than a bit pessimistic. Saturday’s Daily Racing Form has 1-2-3-4 selections by 19 experts, and not one selected Golden Tempo. Just two picked him second and five had him third. The consensus was he would not finish in the top four.

His chances in Kentucky were aided by a fast pace that tired out the front-runners, and on paper the Belmont figures to be run at a more moderate pace, which doesn’t always help a late-running horse. But he is a colt who relishes the distance and he has improved his Beyer Speed Figure with every start.

DeVaux is excited for the race, obviously, but she’s also eager for this “season” to end. She knows life will never be the same as it was before May 2, but she’d like to slow down a bit, in part, so she can enjoy the feeling of winning the Derby.

“I couldn’t prepare myself,” said DeVaux, who had never had a Derby starter. “I didn’t really think about winning the race. I thought Golden Tempo was going to run really well. I thought he would hit the board, … but I never allowed myself to think that he would win and what that would look like.

“And I’m one of those people I want to think about, you know, we win the race, what does that look like? But I was just so excited to be at the Derby and I wanted to just really be present, that it really didn’t cross my mind what would happen if we won the race.”

Golden Tempo’s trainer Cherie DeVaux holds her nephew while speaking to reporters after winning the Kentucky Derby on May 2.

(Andy Lyons / Getty Images)

Others weren’t prepared, either. DeVaux was carrying one of her nephews on her hip immediately after the Derby, and some people watching on TV immediately praised her for being a working mom. One problem: She doesn’t have children of her own (her husband has full custody of a teenage girl).

“Can I just not be a really good horse trainer that did something really profound and amazing in a short amount of time after I had to work my rear end off for it?” DeVaux said. “Like, why can’t that just be the story?”

Etc.

The Belmont is the 13th race on a 14-race card that begins at 8 a.m. PDT. The first seven races will be on FS2 before coverage shifts to Fox at noon (the Belmont show starts at 1). A separate handicapping-oriented show will air from 1-4:30 p.m. on FS1.

There are five Grade 1 races scheduled, including Bob Baffert’s Nysos against Michael McCarthy’s Journalism in the Met Mile (2:32 p.m.) and Baffert’s Crude Velocity against DeVaux’s Englishman in the Woody Stephens (1:52 p.m.). The Belmont is slated to start at about 4:10 p.m.

England have a golden opportunity for victory in the first Test against New Zealand despite a chaotic collapse of four wickets for one run in 11 balls on the second day at Lord’s.

After 16 wickets fell on day one, another 17 came on Friday on a devilishly difficult surface for batting – an alarming amount of uneven bounce has been added to the sideways movement.

At the end of it all, New Zealand are 36-3 in pursuit of a victory target of 254. Captain Tom Latham was out to the third ball of the chase and, crucially, Kane Williamson was palpably lbw to Josh Tongue, before Gus Atkinson cleaned up nightwatchman Will O’Rourke.

Though the weather forecast for Saturday and Monday is poor, there will be a result in this match, with England strong favourites to secure a morale-boosting win following their heavy Ashes loss.

Ollie Robinson marked his comeback with best Test figures of 5-39, taking the final wicket as New Zealand were bowled out for 113 in their first innings – an England advantage of 27.

England, helped by Emilio Gay’s half-century on debut and more New Zealand dropped catches, steadily built what looked to be an imposing lead. Gay was put down and could have been out lbw in his 57.

When Gay eventually fell, it began the carnage. Harry Brook, Joe Root and Ben Stokes all followed inside two overs. While an England implosion was familiar, perhaps only Stokes was culpable for his dismissal.

England’s lead was 154, with four wickets in hand. They were in danger of handing the initiative to New Zealand, only for important runs from the lower-order. Jamie Smith made 39, Atkinson 14 and Robinson swiped 29.

The hosts were eventually bowled out for 226, New Zealand’s Nathan Smith outstanding for his six wickets.

No-one has won the World Cup Golden Boot more than once – but two men have a good chance to become the first to do so this summer.

Mbappe scored four goals in World Cup qualifying and as one of the strongest squads in the tournament, it is likely that 2022 finalists France will reach the latter stages of the competition.

Another striker seeking a historic second boot is Kane. At 32, he is as we know significantly older than the average winner – but with 54 goals for his club this season, Kane is no average player. If Thomas Tuchel’s side go deep into the tournament, Kane is surely certain to score his fair share.

Messi has claimed plenty of personal accolades in his career, but there is a Golden Boot-shaped gap next to the eight Ballon d’Or trophies in his cabinet. Aged 38, the 2026 tournament is his final chance.

At the other end of the age scale, Yamal will turn 19 the week before the final. Spain have not progressed beyond the round of 16 since their 2010 tournament win, but Luis de la Fuente’s men showed they have the mettle to go the distance at Euro 2024 and were impressive in qualifying.

Premier League Golden Boot winner Erling Haaland has scored 26 league goals for Manchester City this season but his bid for the boot might depend on how long Norway stay in the tournament. Haaland scored 16 goals in eight qualifying games.

If you’re planning a trip to Japan, don’t just go to the big cities, instead head to another island which has golden sands and an unbeatable experience you’ll never forget

A stunning island just three hours away from Tokyo must be added to your Japan bucket list, because it was one of my favourite days of our five-week trip.

The little-known island is about 15 minutes by boat from Ishigaki, off Okinawa, and we actually flew from Osaka and were meant to fly direct to Ishigaki. However, our flight was cancelled without our knowing, so we ended up having to fly to Okinawa, and then catching a (very tight) connection to Ishigaki. However, flight drama aside, when we decided to go to Taketomi, we didn’t think there would be much to do or that we’d want to spend very long there. But we were so wrong…

Taketomi is within the Yaeyama District of Okinawa Prefecture, Japan. Taketomi is one of the Yaeyama Islands, which are a tropical archipelago in southwestern Okinawa Prefecture, Japan, known as the nation’s southernmost and westernmost inhabited islands.

They feature coral reefs, lush jungles, and a laid-back, rural atmosphere, serving as a popular destination for snorkelling, diving, and experiencing traditional Ryukyu culture.

When we went, we immediately got a minibus to where we could catch a ride on water buffalo carts. It is an iconic 30-minute guided tour through the traditional Ryukyu village, featuring red-tile roofs and sandy streets.

It was absolutely amazing, an experience we’ll never forget, and our tour guide even played traditional Okinawan music on a sanshin, which is a stringed instrument. I felt like I was in a movie! It was certainly an experience that I won’t forget in a hurry.

Then, once we bought the professional photo (we had to), we headed to get some lunch. It’s worth remembering that an estimated 300 to 360 people live on Taketomi, so don’t expect any chain restaurants or anything you’re probably used to if you’re from the UK.

But the total change of pace to even big Japanese cities was amazing, and it was nice to spend time doing a variety of things while we were in Japan.

After, we went to the beach, where I was gobsmacked by the golden sands and the clear sea. Ishigaki was the first proper tropical island I’d ever been to, and Taketomi had all the same fantastic features. I’m now enamoured.

We had a little paddle in the sea, and I was gobsmacked to find that it was actually so warm, and while you’d have to go quite far out into the sea to actually be able to swim, it was definitely worth paddling.

If you’re going to Japan, make sure you add Okinawa or Ishigaki to your list of places to visit. I’d highly recommend Ishigaki, but I’m definitely biased. I think that Okinawa is a lot more touristy now, so Ishigaki suited us perfectly, especially as my partner is a scuba diver.

We loved it so much that we hope to go back to another of the Yaeyama Islands in the future. It is worth noting, however, that Ishigaki is located in an earthquake-prone area; tsunami awareness is essential year-round. Typhoon season runs from June to November, with the highest risk occurring from July to October.

WASHINGTON, May 19 (UPI) — President Donald Trump‘s move to build a national missile defense system would leave millions of Americans vulnerable to nuclear attack despite the program’s exorbitant cost, the author of a new scientific report said at a press conference Tuesday outside the U.S. Capitol.

The report simulated a “best case scenario” in which the Golden Dome system shot down 80% of incoming missiles, said Ira Helfand, the report’s main author and a co-founder of Physicians for Social Responsibility, an anti-nuclear weapons organization.

Under those circumstances, more than 300 warheads still would reach the United States, the report found, and that Russia would have a 95% chance of being able to destroy any one of 132 major population centers in which a combined 75 million Americans live.

“Let’s be clear what Golden Dome is: a vanity project of one person, Donald Trump,” said Rep. Jim McGovern, D-Mass., using Trump’s chosen moniker for the missile defense system. McGovern was one of two Massachusetts lawmakers who led the press event.

“We must suffer the Trump arch, the Trump ballroom, the Trump battleship and now Trump’s Golden Dome. Each are the egotistical fantasies of an aging man who needs psychiatric care,” McGovern said.

Soon after taking office in 2025, Trump directed the Defense Department to develop a homeland air and missile defense system. The order called for protecting the U.S. “against ballistic, hypersonic, advanced cruise missiles and other next-generation aerial attacks from peer, near-peer and rogue adversaries.”

This initiative, later named Golden Dome for America, echoes earlier missile defense efforts, such as President Ronald Reagan‘s Strategic Defense Initiative, commonly known as Star Wars. It was never fully build or deployed.

“Building an effective and reliable shield against any realistic attack by nuclear-armed ICBMs is technologically infeasible for the foreseeable future,” said Laura Grego, a physicist who specializes in nuclear security at the Union of Concerned Scientists.

“But also attempting to build one would be hugely expensive — wasting time and resources — and accelerate the nuclear arms race.”

The report was released by the Nobel Peace Prize-winning International Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War, Physicians for Social Responsibility and Back from the Brink, all advocates for abolishing nuclear weapons.

The press conference came after a Congressional Budget Office report released last week found that a missile defense system designed to counter a small-scale nuclear attack would cost $1.2 trillion.

A more robust system in line with Trump’s aspirations of “ending the missile threat to the American homeland,” would come with a $3.6 trillion price tag, according to a 2025 estimate by the American Enterprise Institute, a right-of-center think tank. Trump initially offered a price tag of $175 billion for the project.

“The Golden Dome is fool’s gold,” said Sen. Ed Markey, D-Mass. “It’s a gold-plated boondoggle that will enrich defense contractors and ignite a new nuclear arms race.”

Rep. Austin Scott, R-Ga., who sits on the House Armed Services Committee, told Medill News Service that he did not agree with the report’s conclusion that the Golden Dome would be too ineffective and costly to justify. On the contrary, Scott said, nuclear modernization efforts underway by U.S. rivals required a response.

“The weapons coming from China and Russia are faster and stronger,” Scott said. “And we have to be able to pick them up faster.”

Between 2014 and 2024, the estimated number of Chinese nuclear warheads doubled, from 250 to roughly 500, according to the China Power Project at the Center for Strategic and International Studies.

China, however, has maintained a no-first-use policy since it first detonated a nuclear weapon in 1964, which commits Beijing to only employ its nuclear weapons in response to a nuclear attack by another country.

When asked about claims made by Helfand and others at the press conference that the Golden Dome would spur a new global nuclear arms race, Scott disagreed again.

“It’s a defensive system,” he said, “not an offensive system.”

The planned outlays for the Golden Dome come in tandem with other Trump administration priorities that have raised eyebrows on Capitol Hill, including a $1.5 trillion defense spending package for 2027, $400 million for a new White House ballroom that will sit atop a bunker and $29 billion so far for the war in Iran.

At the same time, in its proposed budget, the White House moved to cut non-defense discretionary spending by 10%. The spending category comprises public health, scientific research and scores of other domestic programs.

At Tuesday’s press conference, Markey said the United States doesn’t have trillions of dollars to waste on a system that “is not going to protect the American people,” and he decried funding cuts to social programs that “actually do provide security for families in their own homes.”

Jannik Sinner has completed the coveted Golden Masters in tennis to become only the second man after Novak Djokovic to win all nine Masters 1000 events, the biggest tournaments outside the Grand Slams.

Top-ranked Sinner’s 6-4, 6-4 victory over Casper Ruud in Sunday’s final of the Italian Open also made him the first Italian man to win the tournament since Adriano Panatta in 1976.

“There’s no better place to complete this set,” Sinner said after winning the title and accomplishing the feat on the red clay of the Foro Italico in Rome in front of jubilant home fans who finally saw the half-century-long wait come to an end.

“For an Italian, it’s one of the most special places we play tennis in. To win at least once in my career means a lot to me.”

Djokovic completed the career set in 2018 in Cincinnati, Ohio, in the United States at the age of 31 and then went on to win each event at least twice. Sinner is 24, and with his only real rival, Carlos Alcaraz, currently sidelined due to a right wrist injury, he is proving hard to beat.

“Welcome to the exclusive club, Jannik,” Djokovic wrote on Instagram.

Sinner extended his winning streak to 29 matches. He hasn’t lost since being beaten by Jakub Mensik in the Qatar Open quarterfinals on February 19 . And he’s now 17-0 on clay this year as he is poised to enter the French Open, which starts on Sunday.

Sinner celebrated calmly as usual, revealing a wide smile when he landed an inside-out forehand on the line on his first championship point, then held his hands over his head in apparent relief. Then he waved to the crowd, which included former Italian professional tennis player Adriano Panatta sitting in the front row.

“Adriano, after 50 years, we’ve won back a very important trophy,” Sinner told the 75-year-old Panatta, who participated in the trophy ceremony.

Roland Garros is the only Grand Slam that Sinner hasn’t won. He has two Australian Open titles and has won Wimbledon and the US Open once each.

Sinner’s triumph came – also with Italian President Sergio Mattarella in attendance – after he lost last year’s final in Rome to Alcaraz in his first tournament back after a three-month doping ban. That defeat came a day after Jasmine Paolini became the first Italian woman to win the Rome singles title in 40 years. She also claimed the doubles trophy with Sara Errani.

With many of Sinner’s fans dressed in orange – his theme colour, which matches his curly hair – the capacity crowd of 10,500 on Campo Centrale created a football-style atmosphere with chanting and loud cheers for the player who has become far and away Italy’s most popular athlete.

After several key points, the crowd erupted into a cheer of “Ole, Ole, Ole, Ole; Sin-ner, Sin-ner.” Then there was more chanting during the trophy presentation.

Angelo Binaghi, the president of the Italian tennis federation, suggested that even if there was a 25,000-seat centre court in Rome – bigger than the US Open’s Arthur Ashe Stadium, the world’s largest tennis arena – it would have been full.

No signs of fatigue

Sinner overcame exhaustion to beat Daniil Medvedev in the semifinals in a rain-delayed match that required two days to finish. But there were no signs of fatigue against the 25th-ranked Ruud, who has been one of the circuit’s top clay-court players for years.

Ruud reached two finals at Roland Garros, losing to Rafael Nadal in 2022 and Djokovic in 2023. But the Norwegian wasted an early break and a 2-0 advantage at the start of the first set against Sinner, who quickly broke back and then broke again towards the end of the set with the help of three key drop shots – two of which were so well-placed that Ruud didn’t even run for them.

A big backhand winner up the line gave Sinner another break in the opening game of the second set.

Sinner improved to 5-0 in his career against Ruud.

“What you’re doing this year, it’s hard to describe in words,” Ruud told Sinner during the trophy ceremony. “It’s really an honour to watch you play. … Congratulations for making history.”

Day to remember for Italy

It was an extra special day for the host nation after Simone Bolelli and Andrea Vavassori became the first Italian duo to win the men’s doubles title in Rome since 1960.

Bolelli and Vavassori beat Marcel Granollers and Horacio Zeballos 7-6 (8), 6-7 (3), 10-3.

For both the singles and doubles finals, there was a packed crowd watching on a jumbo screen on the statue-lined court of the Nicola Pietrangeli Stadium next to Campo Centrale.

Elina Svitolina beat Coco Gauff in the women’s singles title match on Saturday.

It could cost nearly $1.2 trillion to develop, field, and operate a new missile defense shield like the one the Trump administration proposes to establish under its Golden Dome initiative, according to a new estimate. Deploying and sustaining a constellation of 7,800 space-based anti-missile interceptors accounts for more than 60 percent of that projected price tag. This puts a particular spotlight on the potential costs of what is arguably viewed as the most critical and controversial aspect of the Golden Dome plan. At the same time, even with this grand investment, the ability of the space-based interceptor layer would only be able to engage 10 targets simultaneously, according to the Congressional Budget Office (CBO).

CBO released a detailed cost estimate of what it described as a notional “National Missile Defense System” yesterday. CBO’s $1.191 trillion figure covers various expenses over a 20-year timeframe. This is more than double the projected price tag that CBO had put forward last year. President Trump first announced plans for a new national missile defense architecture in January 2025. The initiative was originally dubbed Iron Dome before being renamed Golden Dome.

“The analysis is based on the objectives laid out in the President’s executive order titled ‘The Iron Dome for America.’ The Department of Defense’s (DoD’s) implementation of that order – an initiative now called the Golden Dome for America (GDA) – is in the early stages,” CBO’s latest estimate explains up front. “Although documents from DoD’s budget request for the 2027 fiscal year provide five-year projections of funding plans for GDA, details about what and how many systems will be deployed – the ‘objective architecture’ – have not been released, making it impossible to estimate the long-term cost of the GDA system being contemplated by DoD. In the absence of specific plans for GDA’s objective architecture, CBO has estimated the cost of a notional NMD architecture based on the defensive systems and capabilities that are called for in the executive order.”

“DoD’s stated cost appears to cover a shorter time frame than CBO’s analysis and may reflect a different scope of activities and budget categories. Even so, that stated cost is far lower than CBO’s estimate for a notional NMD architecture consistent with the ‘Iron Dome” executive order,” CBO’s assessment adds. “That difference suggests either that GDA’s objective architecture is more limited than CBO’s notional NMD system or that DoD expects significant funding from other accounts to contribute to GDA (or both). For example, procurement of interceptors might be funded directly through the services’ missile procurement accounts instead of the GDA fund.”

For its part, the Trump administration has most recently pegged the price tag for Golden Dome’s “objective architecture” at approximately $185 billion. Last year, President Trump himself had put forward a $175 billion figure, which he said would include systems to be fielded “in less than three years.” TWZ has noted on several occasions now that the administration’s estimates may just cover a portion of the planned Golden Dome architecture, which could easily cost hundreds of billions in total to field and operate.

CBO’s analysis is broken into six main elements – the space-based interceptor constellation, upper wide-area surface sites, lower wide-area surface sites, regional sectors, self-defense for four existing surface sites, and a space satellite constellation for tracking targets – as well as a collection of miscellaneous ancillary costs. The surface site and regional sector categories primarily consist of costs associated with expanding on existing land and sea-based anti-missile interceptor and sensor capabilities, such as Aegis Ashore, the Terminal High Altitude Area Defense (THAAD) system, and the Next Generation Interceptor (NGI).

An all-new constellation of 7,800 space-based interceptors is, by far, the largest single component of CBO’s projection. This capability is estimated to cost $723 billion to acquire, and then another $1 billion annually to operate and maintain ($20 billion over 20 years), for a total of $743 billion. This is 60 percent of the total estimated $1.191 trillion price tag, and 70 percent of the projected acquisition costs.

CBO provides a detailed breakdown of how it arrived at these figures.

“The average cost per SBI [space-based interceptor] satellite would be $22 million. That average is for the initial 7,800 SBIs as well as the nearly 1,600 SBIs that would be needed each year thereafter because of the satellites’ short five-year service life. The need to periodically replace SBIs means that the acquisition costs would be spread over the life of the system,” according to the cost assessment. “The total is based on a cost of $500 per kilogram to launch the SBIs into orbit. Although that launch cost is lower than typical launch costs today, it is thought to be achievable using the new generation of heavy-lift rockets, such as the Space-X [sic] Starship, that are being developed. Even lower launch costs may be realized in the future, but that could have only a limited effect on total costs for the SBI layer because, even at $500 per kilogram, launch costs account for less than 5 percent of the total.”

“Both the very large number of SBIs needed to engage just 10 targets simultaneously and the SBIs’ short service life are the result of how the satellites move in orbit. To be close enough to reach their targets within the three to five minutes available in the boost phase, SBIs must be in LEO at altitudes of roughly 300 to 500 kilometers,” it continues. “However, the characteristics of satellite motion in LEO affect the size of constellations meant to provide continuous coverage over specific locations on Earth. (For boost-phase SBIs, “coverage” is relative to an ICBM’s [intercontinental ballistic missile] launch location, not the location of the ICBM’s target.)”

“Satellites in LEO cannot be fixed over specific points on Earth; they orbit in a band centered on the equator and bounded equally north and south by their orbital inclination (usually measured in degrees of latitude). Therefore, constellations of many SBIs are needed to ensure that a sufficient number (20, for example, if two shots are needed against 10 ICBMs) are always close enough to potential launch locations to reach targets during the boost phase,” the assessment adds. “The total number of satellites in a constellation depends mainly on the speed of the interceptors, how quickly they can be launched, the number of simultaneous targets the system needs to handle, and the latitudes to be covered.”

“Because atmospheric drag at the altitudes at which SBIs would orbit causes their orbits to decay over time, each satellite would need to be replaced roughly every 5 years. (By contrast, the service life of surface-based interceptors can be 20 years or more, and surface-based interceptors can be maintained and upgraded during that time.),” CBO also says. “For CBO’s notional constellation, roughly 30,000 satellites would be needed to keep 7,800 in orbit for 20 years.”

All this being said, CBO’s notional space-based interceptor architecture is still predicated only on defeating a relatively limited strike (a single wave of 10 ICBMs) from “a regional adversary,” a term typically used to describe countries like North Korea and Iran. The Trump administration has indicated in the past that Golden Dome is intended to defend against a much broader array of threats, including from peer adversaries like Russia and China.

Furthermore, CBO points out that its cost estimate does not include additional space-based interceptors designed to engage missiles during the mid-course portion of their flight, which are also being explored now as part of the Golden Dome plan.

“Although the notional NMD system analyzed by CBO would be far more capable than defenses the United States fields today, it would not be an impenetrable shield or be able to fully counter a large attack of the sort that Russia or China might be able to launch,” the latest cost estimate also stresses. “As a result, the strategic consequences of deploying an NMD system with the capacity considered here are unclear because they hinge on an adversary’s perception of the defense’s capability and how that adversary chose [sic] to respond.”

“Such a deployment could prompt regional adversaries to increase their inventories of long-range missiles (nuclear or conventional) or to pursue more effective countermeasures to improve their chances of penetrating the NMD system,” the assessment notes. “Peer or near-peer adversaries could overwhelm CBO’s notional NMD system with salvoes of many missiles in a large-scale attack with their current nuclear forces, although they still might choose to increase their arsenals of long-range missiles (both nuclear and conventional) to ensure they maintain that capability.”

With this in mind, “DoD could opt to build a national missile defense system that was smaller or larger than (or altogether different from) CBO’s notional system. A larger system designed to handle a full-scale Russian ICBM attack, for example, could include more space-based interceptors or more NGIs at the three upper wide-area surface layer sites,” it also cautions. “It could also include more interceptors at lower levels. A smaller system, by contrast, might be able to engage fewer missiles or protect fewer areas. The total number of regional sectors in CBO’s notional system is based on providing some terminal coverage to the entire country as suggested by the language in the ‘Iron Dome’ executive order.”

As mentioned, putting interceptors in space has been one of, if not the highest profile aspect of the stated Iron Dome/Golden Dome plan from the very start. Space-based weapons were also a central element of the Reagan-era Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI), which was directly referenced in the original executive order outlining the new missile defense initiative. Infamously dubbed “Star Wars” by its critics, SDI never came close to achieving its ambitious goals. Its planned anti-missile capabilities in orbit were especially hampered by technical challenges and high costs.

The U.S. Space Force is already leading a new SBI program, with a stated goal of demonstrating a relevant capability integrated into the larger Golden Dome architecture by 2028. Space Force has already awarded deals with a combined value of $3.2 billion to 12 companies for SBI-related work. Several firms, including Lockheed Martin, Northrop Grumman, and Anduril, have already announced work on prototype interceptor designs.

The Northrop Grumman video below includes a computer-generated clip depicting a space-based interceptor engaging a target outside the Earth’s atmosphere, starting at 0:13 in the runtime.

Northrop Grumman Third Quarter 2025 Highlights

Over the past year and a half or so, U.S. military officials have voiced particular support for the space-based component of Golden Dome, saying that advances in relevant technologies in the decades since SDI make it a more viable concept today. They have also downplayed the costs, as well as the geopolitical ramifications of further weaponizing space, as necessary to defend Americans against growing missile threats.

“I think there’s a lot of technical challenges,” Chief of Space Operations Gen. Chance Saltzman said during a live interview as part of Defense One‘s State of Defense 2025: Air Force and Space Force virtual conference last year. “I am so impressed by the innovative spirit of the American space industry. I’m pretty convinced that we will be able to technically solve those challenges.”

“Depends on where you sit, right, you know? But to say that it’s the responsibility for the U.S. government to protect its citizens from emerging threats makes perfect sense to me,” he added at that time when asked about the potentially destabilizing impacts of Golden Dome. “And we clearly see a country like the PRC [People’s Republic of China] investing heavily in these kinds of threats, whether it’s hypersonic [weapons], whether it’s threats from space. And so now it’s time for the U.S. government to step up to the responsibilities to protect American citizens from those threats.”

“We’re basically responding to a warfighting domain where our adversaries have already put interceptors in space, and we want to make sure that we rebalance that in terms of deterrence,” Saltzman said more recently in response to a question from our Howard Altman at a roundtable on the sidelines of the Air & Space Forces Association’s (AFA) annual Warfare Symposium in February.

“Interceptors by definition refer to a handful of well-acknowledged capabilities that other countries have, like ground and air-launched anti-satellite missiles or capabilities like the SJ-21, which has a grappling arm,” a Space Force spokesperson later clarified to TWZ when asked for further details about the “interceptors in space” Saltzman had mentioned.

This all highlights the very real prospect of actual fighting in space during future conflicts, something the U.S. military is increasingly preparing for, as you can read about more here. What would be necessary to protect 7,800 anti-missile interceptors in orbit, as well as critical associated space-based sensors and communications constellations, could easily add to Golden Dome’s total cost.

As CBO makes clear in its latest assessment, much is still unknown publicly about the actual scale and scope of Golden Dome, and what it might therefore cost in the end. At the same time, space-based interceptors are a very real part of the planned architecture, with work underway now to develop those capabilities.

The concept that CBO has outlined already involves an extreme expenditure of money and resources, all for a capability it still assesses to be useful only against relatively limited barrages from rogue states. Those are threats that could well be addressed using far less expensive surface-based systems, though not ones that can intercept targets in their boost phase.

As underscored now by CBO’s latest cost projection, a relevant constellation of interceptors in space remains likely to be the most costly and complex aspect of Golden Dome, if it comes to fruition at all.

Contact the author: joe@twz.com

NEW YORK — The NHL docked the Vegas Golden Knights a second-round pick in next month’s draft and fined coach John Tortorella $100,000 on Friday for violating media access rules after their series-clinching Game 6 victory over the Ducks on Thursday night.

Tortorella refused to speak to reporters after Vegas routed the Ducks 5-1 to move on to face Colorado in the Western Conference final. The Golden Knights also did not open their locker room in accordance with league and NHL Players’ Assn.-negotiated regulations.

The NHL in a statement announcing the punishment said the penalties for these “flagrant violations” come after previous warnings were issued to the Golden Knights. The team has been offered the opportunity to appeal to Commissioner Gary Bettman’s office in person at the league’s New York headquarters next week.

“The Golden Knights are aware of today’s announcement from the NHL regarding the postgame media availability following Game 6 in Anaheim,” the team said in a statement posted to social media. “The organization will have no further comment.”

The carriage has turned back into a pumpkin, the ballgown is once again just tattered clothing and all the horses have gone back to being mice.

The Ducks’ Cinderella run through the NHL playoffs came to an end Thursday in a 5-1 loss to the Vegas Golden Knights in Game 6 of their second-round Stanley Cup playoff series. And the end came well before midnight, with goals by Mitch Marner and Brett Howden in the first 8½ minutes giving Vegas a commanding lead before many in the late-arriving weeknight crowd had made it to their seats at the Honda Center.

The Golden Knights will move on to the Western Conference final with the Colorado Avalanche next week while the Ducks will move on to summer. But it’s the team’s latest start on the offseason since 2017, the last time the Ducks made it to the second round of the playoffs. So even if the glass slipper didn’t fit this time, the Ducks have reason to celebrate.

“I think our team, we learned, myself included, just how to play in those games,” said winger Troy Terry, the only remaining link to the Ducks’ last playoff team. “That’s kind of the difference in some of these games, a team like Vegas, learning how to manage those close games. It stings right now, but I think I speak for everyone that we’ll be hungry going into the summer.

“It was fun to play in this. It’s been a long time.”

Ducks center Leo Carlsson passes the puck as Vegas’ Shea Theodore defends during the second period.

(Allen J. Schaben / Los Angeles Times)

This team, after all, wasn’t supposed to be at the ball this long. Fourteen players on its roster had never been to the postseason before; most of them had never even played for a winning team in the NHL before. But the team’s youth and inexperience proved to be a strength, not a weakness.

They didn’t know they weren’t supposed to win in the playoffs, so they did, dispatching the Edmonton Oilers — who made the last two Stanley Cup finals — in the first round and outplaying the veteran Golden Knights, a playoff team in eight of the franchise’s nine seasons, throughout much of the second round.

Rookie Beckett Sennecke, just 20, had four goals and an assist in the six games with Vegas. Winger Cutter Gauthier, just 22, led the team with 12 points in his first trip to the playoffs. Defenseman Olen Zellwenger, also 22, had a goal and assist in his first two playoff games and Olympic gold medalist Jackson LaCombe, 25, led the team in ice time — and was third in points with 10 — in his first postseason.

That’s the core of the team going forward and the playoff experience they got this spring will be invaluable.

“We’ve got a super young core here,” Sennecke said. “We’re a fast team and we play with a lot of skill, a lot of pace. … The next few years are exciting.”

Ducks left wing Alex Killorn moves the puck ahead of Vegas right wing Keegan Kolesar in the first period.

(Allen J. Schaben / Los Angeles Times)

“It doesn’t make this any easier,” added center Mikael Granlund, at 34 the second-oldest Duck to play Thursday. “Tonight was kind of the story of the season. In the first period we’re down three goals. In the regular season, we were able to come back. But in playoffs, it’s not easy.

“So yeah, there’s a lot of good signs in this team, but at the same time, it’s never easy.”

However, the fairy godmother’s spell wore off early in Game 6, which was just 62 seconds old when Vegas went ahead to stay.

Marner opened the scoring with a spectacular breakaway goal, skating on to William Karlssson’s two-line pass as he entered the offensive zone and beating LaCombe up the center of the ice to the crease. When he got there, he pulled up, turned his back to goalie Lukas Dostal, then shoved the puck just inside the right post for his seventh goal of the playoffs.

Howden doubled the lead with a shorthanded goal 7½ minutes later, finding miles of space just to the right of the goal and banging in a pass from Marner that split LaCombe and Alex Killorn. The goal was Howden’s eighth of the playoffs, temporarily giving him the NHL postseason lead, while the assist gave Marner 18 postseason points, also best in the league.

“I thought we had a really good vibe going in and felt good about guys being excited,” Ducks coach Joel Quenneville said. “Couple of quick goals, and we certainly lost a lot of our excitement. That was tough.”

When Shea Theodore scored off a faceoff seconds into a power play late in the period, it gave the Golden Knights a 3-0 lead at the intermission with the goals coming on a power play, the penalty kill and with the teams at even strength.

The Ducks led the NHL with 26 comeback wins during the regular season, but against the poised and patient Golden Knights the deficit was too big. The Ducks left the ice to a chorus of boos after the period, though they came back to dominate the second period, getting the only score at 12:46 when Mikael Granlund notched his fifth goal of the playoffs on a power play, lining a snap shot into the side netting from the middle the left circle.

But the Ducks would get no closer, with Vegas icing the game on two third-period goals from Pavel Dorofeyev, who had four goals in the final two games. The first came off a turnover from the Ducks’ John Carlson deep in his defensive end 2:52 into the final period and the second on a shot from a difficult angle to the right of the goal that ricocheted in off Dostal with 6:28 left in the Ducks’ season.

The two goals gave Dorofeyev nine for the playoffs, passing Howden for the league lead.

“They worked for what they got,” Quenneville said of the Golden Knights. “They deserve to move on.”

May 12 (UPI) — A nonpartisan office said Tuesday that President Donald Trump‘s proposed Golden Dome missile defense system could cost $1.2 trillion over two decades – far more than the $175 billion he said it would cost last year.

The Congressional Budget Office said in a report that this analysis isn’t based on final blueprints, as full details of the system’s architecture haven’t been announced, Time reported. It said this estimate shows the price of “one illustrative approach rather than an estimate of a full Administration proposal.”

The CBO said that acquisition costs for the system would alone cost more than $1 trillion, and of that, about 70 percent of the cost would be for the interceptor layer, orbital weapons meant to destroy missiles after they’re launched, The Hill reported. This would include about 7,800 satellites.

Gen. Mike Guetlein, the Pentagon official in charge of the project, said in March that it would cost about $185 billion. The CBO report said that this difference in estimated price may mean that the “objective architecture is more limited” for the project than the system accounted for by the CBO, The Hill reported.

Congressional Republicans have earmarked $25 billion for the project in the 2025 One Big Beautiful Bill Act. The Pentagon has asked for $17 billion more in a reconciliation bill this year.

The Trump administration’s fiscal 2027 budget request, which includes $750 billion earmarked for the Golden Dome system, says the system “keeps Americans safe, while using innovative program management and acquisition approaches to prudently employ taxpayer dollars,” The Hill reported. Trump has said he wants the system operational by the end of his term.

The CBO said the system it used in its estimate could counter a limited attack but would be overwhelmed by a large-scale one, Time reported. Israel’s similar air-defense system, often called the Iron Dome, has intercepted missiles from Iran and other localized groups but is meant for a smaller area and shorter-range threats, as opposed to the United States’ need to defend a much larger area from long-range attacks, it said.

Sen. Jeff Merkley, D-Ore., requested the CBO report. He said Tuesday that the report shows the Golden Dome project “is nothing more than a massive giveaway to defense contractors paid for entirely by working Americans” that will “do little to advance American national security.”

WASHINGTON — President Trump’s plan to put weapons in space — pitched as a “Golden Dome for America” missile defense program — is estimated to cost $1.2 trillion over a 20 year period, according to a new analysis from the Congressional Budget Office, a far heftier sum than the initial $175 billion price tag he gave last year.

The nonpartisan CBO report, published Tuesday, is described as an analysis that reflects “one illustrative approach rather than an estimate of a specific Administration proposal.”

The futuristic system was ordered by Trump in an executive order during his first week in office. He said then that he expected the system to be “fully operational before the end of my term,” which wraps up in January 2029.

“Over the past 40 years, rather than lessening, the threat from next-generation strategic weapons has become more intense and complex with the development by peer and near-peer adversaries of next-generation delivery systems,” Trump said in his executive order, justifying the need for the missile defense system.

The CBO’s estimates are in part based on a lack of details from the Defense Department about what and how many systems will be deployed, “making it impossible to estimate the long term cost” of the Golden Dome system, the report says.

The concept for the missile system is at least partly inspired by Israel’s multitiered defenses, often collectively referred to as the “Iron Dome,” which played a key role in defending it from rocket and missile fire from Iran and allied militant groups as it prosecutes the war on Iran alongside the U.S.

The U.S. Golden Dome is envisioned to include ground and space-based capabilities able to detect, intercept and stop missiles at all major stages of a potential attack.

Congress has already approved roughly $24 billion for the missile defense initiative through Republicans’ massive tax and spending measure signed into law last summer.

Sen. Jeff Merkley, D-OR, who requested the estimate from the CBO, said in response to the report that the missile defense project is “nothing more than a massive giveaway to defense contractors paid for entirely by working Americans.”

Last May, the president said the Golden Dome would cost $175 billion. The CBO last year estimated that just the space-based components of the Golden Dome could cost as much as $542 billion over the next 20 years.

Hussein writes for the Associated Press.

There will be no Triple Crown winner in horse racing this year. There won’t even be an attempt.

Trainer Cherie DeVaux on Wednesday announced Golden Tempo, the horse that made her the first female trainer to win the Kentucky Derby, would skip the Preakness Stakes next week at its temporary home, Laurel Park in Laurel, Md.

Just hours after Golden Tempo returned to the racetrack at Keeneland for the first time since his victory Saturday at Churchill Downs, DeVaux posted a statement on X.

“After much thoughtful discussion as a team, we have decided that Golden Tempo will bypass the Preakness Stakes,” the statement read.

“We are incredibly appreciative of the excitement and support surrounding the possibility of a Triple Crown run. The enthusiasm from racing fans, our owners, and our entire team has meant more to us than we can properly express. Golden gave us the race of a lifetime in the Kentucky Derby, and we believe the best decision for him moving forward is to give him a little more time following such a tremendous effort. His health, happiness, and long-term future will always remain our top priority.”

The Preakness, set for May 16, is the second leg of the Triple Crown, followed June 6 by the Belmont Stakes, which for the third straight year will be contested in Saratoga, N.Y. Since 1978, the only horses to sweep all three races are American Pharoah in 2015 and Justify in 2018.

Golden Tempo is the second straight horse and third in the last five years not to run in the Preakness. Sovereignty, who did not participate last year, won the Belmont and later the Travers and was voted Horse of the Year.

Unlike in the past, trainers almost never run horses with just two or even three weeks’ rest. That has prompted talk that the Preakness — which has been run 14 days after the Derby since 1950 — and Belmont could be moved back to allow horses more time between races. Sports Business Journal reported last month that the Preakness was “set to make a historic shift to one week later,” though many trainers have said that won’t make a difference.

DeVaux was asked the day after the Derby if having the Preakness four weeks after the Derby would make her decision easier.

“I mean, it would make anyone’s decision easier, but that’s not the Triple Crown,” she said. “So, the Triple Crown is hard to win for a reason. And I appreciate the history of it.

“You know, the horses are definitely different. They’re not built the same. They’re not trained the same as back then, but current times have shown that it can be done with the right horse.”

There is no shortage of horses aiming for the Preakness, which is limited to 14 starters. One of those — and the likely favorite if he runs — is Crude Velocity, who won the Pat Day Mile on Saturday at Churchill Downs in just his third career start. But trainer Bob Baffert, who has won the Preakness a record eight times, has yet to decide whether he wants to run the horse in two weeks.

“I’m still on fence,” Baffert said Wednesday via text. “Tempted but I’m not leaning yet.”

The Daily Racing Form reported Ocelli, the maiden who finished third in the Derby, is now expected to run in the Preakness. Trainer Whit Beckman told the Form he had Ocelli jog Wednesday and “he looked better than great.”

Added Beckman: “You wouldn’t know this horse ran Saturday. He’s made of something different. Every indication he’s given me is to point to this race. … We’re having fun, the horse is having fun. If everybody’s having fun, why stop the fun?”

According to a news release from the Preakness, other horses under consideration who didn’t run in the Derby are Chip Honcho, Corona de Oro, Crupper, Express Kid, Great White, Iron Honor, Napoleon Solo, Pretty Boy Miah, Silent Tactic, Taj Mahal, Talkin, Talk to Me Jimmy and The Hell We Did.

The Racing Form reported jockey Jose Ortiz, who rode Golden Tempo to his Derby win, will ride Chip Honcho in the Preakness.

LOUISVILLE, Ky. — Cherie DeVaux made history Saturday as the first female trainer to win the Kentucky Derby when Golden Tempo rallied from far back to capture the race over Renegade at Churchill Downs.

“I don’t even have any words right now,” DeVaux said on NBC. “So, so, so happy for Golden Tempo. [Jockey] Jose [Ortiz] did a wonderful job, masterful job. He has had so much faith in this horse.

“I’m glad I could be representative of all women everywhere, that we can do anything we set our minds to.”

It was the first Derby win for Ortiz, whose brother, Irad Ortiz Jr., rode Renegade.

“I’m glad I get my lifetime dream achieved,” said Jose Ortiz, who also won the Kentucky Oaks on Friday with Always a Runner.

Sent off at 23-1, the winner paid $48.24 for a $2 bet after running 1 1/4 miles in 2 minutes, 2.27 seconds.

Ocelli was third, Chief Wallabee fourth and Danon Bourbon, who had the lead at midstretch, fifth. So Happy, the Santa Anita Derby winner, finished ninth.

Great White, another long shot, was scratched just before post time after he bucked and fell over at the starting gate.

The latest live semi final Golden Buzzer act on Britain’s Got Talent was announced by Alesha Dixon and while viewers were happy with the decision, they still had complaints to share

Britain’s Got Talent viewers weren’t impressed by the studio audience as Alesha Dixon chose an act to go straight to the live final. Week two of the live semi-finals got under way and viewers of the ITV competition let their feelings be known as the judge gifted LMA an automatic route through.

The 66-person dance troop, Sadeck Berrabah & LMA, from the Liverpool Media Academy (LMA) University took to the stage and put on a stunning display that more than matched their impressive audition. After Simon labelled it “gobsmackingly beautiful” and called it the best live performance to date, it was left up to Alesha to have her say.

And she did just that. She said: “Do you remember what I said to you in the auditions. That if I had a golden buzzer, I would have given it to you.”

READ MORE: Leigh-Anne Pinnock’s cheeky response to Celebrity Traitors announcementREAD MORE: Maya Jama’s plea to fans after Celeb Traitors reveal

She then rose to her feet to smash the buzzer and cause the confetti to rain down on the act, leaving them in tears.

Viewers on Twitter/X were pleased with the call, too. One user wrote: “They definitely deserved the golden buzzer #bgt #britainsgottalent” Another added: “Well deserved golden buzzer !!#BritainsGotTalent”

A third commented: “LMA act was so beautiful and deserved the golden buzzer. They could use fans for the final. #BGT #BritainsGotTalent.”

But, despite many agreeing it was a well deserved choice, it was the audience that received complaints online. One user wrote: “The audience screaming “Push The Gold” like they haven’t shouted that after every act! #BGT #BritainsGotTalent“

Another moaned: “#BritainsGotTalent Mute the b****y audience…” And a third said: “The audience on #BGT is ruining the show. It’s like a mob. It would be much better if the audience did the shouting and screaming when the judges stop talking. #BritainsGotTalent.”