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TD Bank Group’s (TD) merchant solutions business unit will offer the Clover commerce platform in Canada to help its clients accept payments and manage their business through a single, integrated ecosystem, the company said Monday.
The partnership between TD Bank
When the cast members and creators of the 1990s “X-Men: The Animated Series” reunited at the 2019 Hill Country Comicon in New Braunfels, Texas, they went out for dinner and collectively yearned to one day work together again.
“We said, ‘Let’s put it to the universe: Universe, why don’t you manifest that somebody buys the rights to the show and decides to reboot it and bring us all back.’ We toasted the universe and here we are,” recalls Canadian actor Lenore Zann, the voice of the irresistibly tough Rogue, during a recent video call while visiting Los Angeles.
The result of that metaphysical request is Marvel’s “X-Men ’97,” which debuted in 2024 on Disney+, not as a reboot but as a continuation of the original 1992 classic animated show.
The first season of this new era for the X-Men received an Emmy nomination for animated program. Now, the long-awaited second season has arrived, with the fourth episode streaming this week. Even after the controversial firing of showrunner Beau DeMayo, “X-Men ’97” has already been renewed through Season 4 and the voice cast has started recording their lines for Season 3, Zann says.
The show’s success with both fans and critics is in large part due to its commitment to honor the original ‘90s show, about a group of mutants fighting for themselves and for humanity, not only by preserving its hand-drawn animation style and mature themes but also the voices and personalities of the characters.
“When I pitched the show to Kevin [Feige], he got it immediately and his first question was, ‘Are you going to get the original cast back?’ And I was like, ‘Yes, we are,’” says Brad Winderbaum, head of Marvel Television, Animation, Comics and Franchise at Marvel Studios.
Several voice actors from the original “X-Men” animated series returned for “X-Men ‘97,” which has returned for Season 2. From left, Beast (George Buza), Bishop (Isaac Robinson-Smith), Rogue (Lenore Zann), Professor X (Ross Marquand), Magneto (Matthew Waterson) and Nightcrawler (Adrian Hough).
(Marvel)
Not everyone was still around to return — Norm Spencer, voice of Cyclops, died in 2020 — but in addition to Zann, actors George Buza (Beast), Alison Sealy-Smith (Storm), and Cal Dodd, the voice of the lovable clawed grouch Wolverine, have reprised their roles in “X-Men ’97.” Their emblematic voice performances, Winderbaum says, are baked into his psyche.
“Any time Lenore says the word ‘sugah,’ it just makes me melt into a puddle on the floor,” Winderbaum says, laughing. “She is Rogue and, when she turns it on, she becomes an icon.”
Busy with her political career as part of Canada’s parliament, Zann stepped away from the entertainment business for over a decade. Zann was back home in Truro, Nova Scotia, figuring out her next chapter when she received an email from a friend who said producers at Disney were looking to have her audition for a show. She was skeptical.
Zann eventually got a call from casting director Meredith Layne and a screenplay with lines that were instantly familiar from her time voicing Rogue, the spunky heroine whose touch can be deadly, in the ‘90s.
”I thought, ‘I guess they’re looking for Rogue, so I’ll just give them Rogue,’” she recalls, laughing. “And I did my Rogue voice, which is basically just my own, but with a bit of a Southern accent thrown on,” she adds with a slight twang.
The producers then asked her if she would reprise her superhero for a new generation of kids.
Doing her Rogue voice, Zann recalls: “I said, ‘You had me at hello, sugah.’”
She revels in the similarities between her and Rogue. “We’re both social justice warriors. We really fight for people to be accepted as who they are.”
In 2024, Zann published “A Rogue’s Tale: A Memoir,” a tome recounting her storied life, titled after a memorable episode in the ‘90s series that revealed her beloved mutant’s backstory.
Wolverine in a scene from Season 2 of “X-Men ’97.”
(Marvel)
For Dodd, leaving behind Wolverine after five seasons of the original show felt like losing a part of himself. “X-Men ’97” offered him a chance to feel complete once again.
“I was so happy because when I first created the voice of Wolverine in ‘92, he became very quickly like my brother or my right arm,” Dodd says during a recent video call. “I got my arm back, and my brother.”
After all these years, Dodd was also pleased to see how the most important character of his career looked in the new series. “Out walks Wolverine and I just went, ‘Holy crap, you look great, bub,’” he recalls, laughing about his first time recording lines for “X-Men ‘97.”
When he first auditioned for the role in the ‘90s, Dodd had no idea who Wolverine or the X-Men were. At the time, he was making a living as a singer for commercials and jingles in Toronto.
Dodd remembers the lines he was asked to deliver were directed at the villainous mutant Sabretooth. He had never seen an image of Wolverine or any of the characters. “At one point, I said to them, ‘Is this an animal cartoon?’ They just thought I was a complete imbecile,” he recalls with a chuckle.
In that initial scene, where Sabretooth attacked Jubilee, a member of the X-Men who Wolverine sees as a daughter, his line was: “All right, you egg-sucking piece of gutter trash. You always like pushing around people shorter than you. Well, I’m shorter. Try pushing me.” Dodd recites it from memory in Wolverine’s voice with a growl.
“The lines I was reading, I’d heard them before in the small town that I grew up in Canada; it’s a fisherman’s town, a tough little town,” says Dodd about his reference for Wolverine’s voice. “I knew guys that were exactly like him, and I knew the way they sounded.”
Even without any notion of the X-Men, he nailed it.
“The next morning, they called me and said, ‘We would love to have you as our Wolverine for the very first X-Men animated series,’” Dodd recalls. “And I said, ‘I would love to be your Wolverine, whoever, and whatever he is.’”
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1. Cal Dodd, voice actor for Wolverine in “X-Men ’97.” 2. Lenore Zann, who voices Rogue. (Pauline Aguirre)
When Rogue came into Zann’s life, she already had a notable career as a screen and stage actor. Zann had starred as Marilyn Monroe in a rock opera about the actor’s life, for which she received much praise. “My agent called me and she said, ‘Lenore, they’re doing this animated series, and they’re looking for “a woman with a deep husky, sexy voice who can do a Southern accent,”’” Zann recalls, laughing. “And she said, ‘That’s you!’”
Back then, Zann wasn’t interested in doing voice work, so she missed the first auditions. But about a month later, she says, her agent called again. They still hadn’t found the right voice, so she pushed Zann to audition. She walked in and looked at a drawing of Rogue that Larry Houston, the storyboard artist and director of the show, had drawn.
“She had a very sassy attitude, and she had her hand on her hip and her head back with the hair flowing. I was like, ‘Yeah, I can do that.’ And then I went into the studio, put the headphones on, and opened up my mouth, did the first line: ‘I remember I had a boyfriend, when I kissed him, poor boy went into a coma for three days,’” she says in Rogue’s voice. That was enough for her to land the life-changing part.
At the end of the first season of “X-Men ’97,” both Rogue and Wolverine find themselves in difficult times. Wolverine’s clash with Magneto, the perennial antihero, left him severely injured, physically and mentally.
“He’s as tough as nails and he is more pissed off than anything that he was the only one that stood up to Magneto. He’s disappointed,” says Dodd. “And it’s a struggle for him in Season 2 for a lot of it. And then you see what happens. He’s in a funky place, but he’ll handle it.”
Part of that healing process will involve leaning into the humor tat Dodd imbues in his delivery. “What I think is surprising when you go back and watch that original animated series is how funny Cal is,” says Winderbaum. “Wolverine has amazing one-liners throughout that original series.”
As for Rogue, she is grieving the loss of Gambit, a.k.a. Remy LeBeau, who died in the first season. To voice Rogue’s sorrow, Zann leaned into her own grief over the passing of her 17-year-old niece from cancer. In Season 2, Rogue is trying to move forward.
“She’s still basically on a hero’s journey wanting to get justice for what happened to Remy and for the genocide that she witnessed and that she is a survivor of,” Zann says. “She still got survivor’s guilt, and she’s still trying to find her place within the X-Men now that the one that she loves is gone.”
At comic conventions, Zann and Dodd often meet fans of the original show, who are now adults, and their children, who have also come to love the characters. The emotions that people share with them are at times overwhelming.
“Many times, they tell us that this show saved their lives. They were either LGBTQ+ or they were bullied, or they just felt othered,” Zann explains. “A lot of folks who are Latino tell me that when they were little kids, their parents were agricultural workers, and they learned how to speak English from watching our show. We made them feel it’s OK to be different.”
“I see grown men in tears. They’re in their 40s and they’re crying,” Dodd says about meeting lifelong fans. “I can tell you that Wolverine can cry as well.”
Zann believes the X-Men are like modern-day mythological heroes. Through their fantastical ordeals, the X-Men illustrate qualities that inspire viewers, young and old.
“They are a group of misfits who band together to learn how to control the things that make them different and learn to accept and love themselves,” she says. “It’s an honor to be part of this incredible group of people and these characters that can really touch lives and help change them for the better.”
In 1975, 31-year-old Mick Jagger told People magazine that “I’d rather be dead than sing ‘Satisfaction’ at 45.” The Rolling Stones’ frontman is still very much alive, despite having performed that song in concert hundreds of times since then, most recently in 2024 during the band’s “Hackney Diamonds” tour. Jagger was 80 at the time.
“Time waits for no one,” as the Stones once sang, but apparently that doesn’t apply to the “World’s Greatest Rock and Roll Band.” To paraphrase the group’s first Top 10 U.S. hit in 1964, time is on their side. Yes, it is.
Consider the fates of the British Invasion superstars who emerged from England alongside the Stones in the 1960s. The Beatles broke up in 1970. The Kinks dissolved in 1996. The original Animals imploded in 1966. The Who called it quits in 1982 but has reunited repeatedly, including for its recent North American farewell tour.
And then there’s the indestructible, indefatigable Rolling Stones. With the partnership of Jagger and guitarist Keith Richards still front and center, the Stones will release their 27th studio album, “Foreign Tongues,” on Friday. Over the decades, they have produced classics such as “Exile on Main St.” and “Some Girls,” mediocrity like “Steel Wheels,” and abominations such as “Dirty Work.” We rank the group’s six-decade studio output from worst to first. All albums are the U.S. editions.
Never has an album cover so captured a band’s mood. “Dirty Work” features a photo of sullen, unsmiling Rolling Stones looking like they’d rather be anywhere else. The music reflects that disinterest. Apart from the cover of “Harlem Shuffle,” nothing here is memorable. It’s no surprise that the Stones nearly broke up during this period.
The follow-up to the brilliant “Tattoo You” landed with a thud. Although the song “Undercover of the Night” nicely melds a solid guitar riff with trenchant lyrics about political corruption and violence in South America, the rest of the album wilts.
Another in a series of disappointing releases, “Bridges to Babylon” has one great song, “Saint of Me,” and lots of filler.
Touted as a return to form, this album certainly outshines “Undercover” and “Dirty Work.” But that’s not saying much. With dated production and too many songs that make a good first impression but fail to stick, “Steel Wheels” has gathered moss over the years.
Like its predecessor “Steel Wheels,” this is another attempt to recapture their classic sound. To an extent, the record succeeds. “You Got Me Rocking” sounds like a throwback to something on “Exile on Main St.,” while the ballad “Out of Tears” echoes “Angie.” With the exception of “Love Is Strong,” however, most of the songs here are little more than pleasant exercises in nostalgia.
A solid debut, “England’s Newest Hitmakers” features covers of songs by Willie Dixon, Chuck Berry and Jimmy Reed, firmly grounding the group in its American blues and R&B influences. The sole Jagger/Richards original here, “Tell Me,” only hints at the duo’s future songwriting prowess.
After guitar virtuoso Mick Taylor’s departure from the Stones in late 1974, the band used “Black and Blue” to audition potential replacements. They settled on Ronnie Wood, a former member of the Faces who, ever since then, has engaged in the ancient art of guitar weaving with Keith Richards. Heavy on grooves and jams, this album sometimes feels unfocused and indulgent. The excellent ballads “Memory Motel” and “Fool to Cry” are essential.
A step forward from their debut, “12X5” has the magnificent covers “Time Is on My Side” and “It’s All Over Now.” For those who like their Stones bluesy, early albums like this offer a cornucopia of treasures.
Recorded in just three days, this album of blues covers sizzles. The Stones sound absolutely committed, with Jagger’s harmonica and vocals particularly strong.
On the band’s third U.S. album, the Stones rock harder and softer. Their version of Willie Dixon’s “Little Red Rooster” is a slow burn. The ballad “Heart of Stone,” one of their best early originals, made the Billboard Top 20.
The Stones have rarely sounded looser or more alive. Produced again by the classic-rocker whisperer Andrew Watt (Paul McCartney, Elton John, Pearl Jam), the band delivers a clutch of strong songs. In a just world, the single “In the Stars” would be a hit. “Back in Your Life,” fueled by some of Wood’s most sensitive and impassioned playing, is a stunner. At 14 songs and 62 minutes, the album would have benefited from trimming three or four of the more generic tunes. Still, it’s amazing that Jagger and Richards, both 82, and Wood, 79, have made such a fresh and vital record. Sometimes you can get what you want.
For the band’s first album of originals in eight years, the Stones remind you what makes them great. The first of their three late-career triumphs, “A Bigger Bang” brings attitude, funk, dirty rockers and dreamy ballads. The blazing “Rough Justice” and the slinky, sexy “Rain Fall Down” are topflight.
Eighteen years passed between the release of “A Bigger Bang” and this album. It was worth the wait. “Hackney Diamonds” is another strong effort, with the banger “Angry” sounding urgent and, well, genuinely angry. The gospel-tinged “Sweet Sounds of Heaven,” featuring Lady Gaga, finds her and Jagger trading vocals and pushing each other to the stratosphere. It’s the best song the group has made since “Tattoo You’s” “Waiting on A Friend” and “Start Me Up” in 1981. The absence of late drummer Charlie Watts is felt, but Jagger and Richards prove that old geezers can still rock.
A very strong outing that includes originals “The Last Time,” “Play With Fire” and “Satisfaction,” one of the best rock songs ever written.
Keith Richards’ deepening heroin problem meant Jagger had to carry more of the load himself. On this album, he acquits himself admirably. The anthemic title track positively swaggers. The poignant “Time Waits for No One” features one of Taylor’s most beautiful solos, a fitting coda to the end of his five-year career with the Stones. A fine album with several good songs and a couple great ones.
A hodgepodge of live cuts, outtakes, British LP tracks and singles, this album shows the Stones rapidly gaining confidence and playing with equal parts finesse and fire. Any album with “Get Off of My Cloud” and “As Tears Go By” is worth the price of admission.
Released months after “Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band,” this occasionally ill-advised foray into psychedelia pales in comparison to the Beatles’ masterpiece. That doesn’t mean it’s bad. In fact, the Stones never sounded as adventurous or experimental. When it works, as it does on “She’s a Rainbow” and “2000 Light Years From Home,” candy-colored bliss follows.
An underrated gem often overshadowed by its predecessor, “Some Girls,” and its successor, “Tattoo You,” “Emotional Rescue” finds the Stones in fine form at the dawn of a new decade. The rhythm section of bassist Bill Wyman and drummer Watts locks in, while Richards and Wood converse with their guitars as only they can. Jagger sounds energized on the rockers “Let Me Go” and “She’s So Cold” and sexy on the incredibly funky “Dance (Pt. 1).”
Considered a big letdown after the magisterial “Exile on Main St.,” this album has received a well-deserved critical reappraisal and aged like a fine wine. It’s not the Stones at their peak, but close enough. “Angie” is absolutely gorgeous, while “Star Star” captures the Stones at their most profane.
Needing new material for their 1981 tour, the Stones cobbled together “Tattoo You” from leftovers and half-finished songs dating back to “Goats Head Soup.” Jagger penned new lyrics, recorded new vocals, and presto — the band made its last classic. “Start Me Up,” the band’s best rocker since “Brown Sugar,” propelled the album to multiplatinum sales and shook stadiums around the world. It still does.
The first Stones album composed entirely by Jagger and Richards, “Aftermath” represents a quantum leap forward or two. Brian Jones, before drugs and paranoia dimmed his creative spark, made some of his greatest contributions, elevating “Paint It Black” with his sitar and adding the indelible marimba riff to “Under My Thumb.” The Stones had finally lived up to all the hype.
The American version kicks off with the one-two-three punch of “Let’s Spend the Night Together,” “Yesterday’s Papers” and “Ruby Tuesday” and doesn’t let up. Arguably the band’s poppiest album, it sounds like groovy Swinging London set to music.
After the lackluster “Black and Blue” and the mixed critical reception of “It’s Only Rock ‘n Roll” and “Goats Head Soup,” some wondered if the Stones had lost their musical magic. They needn’t have worried. The band, hungry to prove the doubters wrong, made one of its strongest albums. With Wood now fully integrated into the group , punky, guitar-centric rockers like “Respectable,” “When the Whip Comes Down” and “Shattered” snarl. Jagger, entranced by the sounds coming out of New York’s discos at the time, contributed the No. 1 “Miss You.” Add “Beast of Burden” and the countryish “Far Away Eyes” to the mix and you have the ingredients for a stunning comeback.
The start of one of the strongest four-album runs in rock history, “Beggars Banquet” is a near-perfect listen from beginning to end. New producer Jimmy Miller helps strip the band down to its rawest, raunchiest essence on songs like “Sympathy for the Devil,” “Stray Cat Blues,” and “Street Fighting Man.” For the first time, the Stones had released an album on par with some of the Beatles’ best work. Indispensable.
Unbreakable love (“Wild Horses”); heartbreak (“I’ve Got the Blues”); slavery, interracial sex and heroin (“Brown Sugar”); addiction (“Sister Morphine”) — “Sticky Fingers” has it all, along with some of the most powerful music in the Stones’ catalog. If a Martian came to Earth and wanted to know what made the Stones special, a listen to “Sticky Fingers” would make it abundantly clear.
By the end of the ’60s, the dream had faded. Vietnam, inner-city riots, and the assassinations of Robert F. Kennedy and Martin Luther King Jr. had cast a pall over the Day-Glo optimism of the Love Generation. The Rolling Stones were there to chronicle the impending hangover. “Gimme Shelter” reflected the growing dread of the times. It’s among the darkest, grittiest and most transcendent songs ever recorded, with Jagger singing about rape and murder over Richards’ shimmering guitar. In the powerhouse “Midnight Rambler,” Jagger takes on the persona of a killer, even name-checking the Boston Strangler. Dark stuff. Yet the superb “You Can’t Always Get What You Want,” replete with a gospel choir, the country stylings of “Let It Bleed” and “Love in Vain,” sung by Jagger with utter conviction, give the album incredible diversity and depth.
And then there was one. Recorded largely in the steamy, sweltering basement of Richards’ rented French villa, Nellecôte, “Exile” reeks of filth, decadence and decay. With Jagger’s vocals often buried deep in the muddy and murky mix, the album initially sounds like a druggy demo. But listen again. And again. Slowly, it reveals itself as quintessential Stones, a potent admixture of styles, sounds and soul. Richards tosses off one indelible riff after another, making “Rocks Off,” “Happy,” “Tumbling Dice” and “All Down the Line” rock and roll perfection. You like your Stones with a dash of Americana? “Sweet Virginia” might be the band’s best country rocker. Blues? Try “Ventilator Blues.” Gospel? “Shine a Light,” accented with Billy Preston’s piano and organ, transports listeners to a higher place. Other Stones records contain more classics and better production, but none holds together as well as a whole or comes as close to the sublime as this one.
Marc Ballon, a former Times, Forbes and Inc. Magazine reporter, teaches an advanced writing class at USC. He lives in Fullerton.
The L.A. Zoo’s elephants are now in Tulsa, and the zoo’s longtime nonprofit partner is now in bankruptcy court.
The litany of woes at the L.A. Zoo grew longer last month as the city’s nonprofit partner, the Greater Los Angeles Zoological Association, filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy, citing “incessant litigation” from the city of Los Angeles as the cause.
The city sued GLAZA — its partner for more than half a century — in 2024 over a $50 million endowment that each side argued was theirs to steward.
The city won a preliminary injunction in Los Angeles Superior Court that barred GLAZA from keeping the money when its contract with the zoo ended last year. Following the split and lawsuit, GLAZA dwindled in size from 42 full-time employees to just four part-time employees.
Now GLAZA says it owes its creditors, including more than $300,000 that it needs to pay a law firm that has represented the nonprofit in its legal battle with the city.
“The City has designated an army of eight attorneys to overwhelm GLAZA with endless discovery, depositions, and court filings all to run up GLAZA’s legal fees,” the nonprofit said in a statement shared with The Times. “As a result, GLAZA has been left with no options other than to seek protection from the bankruptcy court to ensure the survival of GLAZA and the protection of its donors.”
Following its separation from the city, GLAZA executives hope the nonprofit can work in the animal conservation efforts in Southern California.
On July 1, the City Council approved $250,000 in outside lawyers related to the bankruptcy case.
The zoo is facing headwinds as membership has declined precipitously and facilities have deteriorated, according to an Los Angeles County civil grand jury report.
The city attorney’s office didn’t respond to a request for comment on GLAZA’s bankruptcy.
Former mayoral candidate Spencer Pratt was far from Los Angeles as he took a meeting with President Trump in Washington, D.C., a few days ago.
Pratt, who came up short of the Nov. 2 runoff by a few percentage points, met with the president in the Oval Office, posting a photo of the rendezvous to social media Tuesday.
“I will never stop fighting for my community,” he wrote.
Pratt paired the visit with an announcement of a new media endeavor he plans to launch called “WAR.” He said the foundation will fight against political corruption, advocate for transparency in government and “restore common sense.”
The website for the foundation doesn’t have additional details, just a link to contribute and a link to a website selling Pratt merch.
The White House didn’t respond to a request for comment.
Pratt also posted a 9-minute video Wednesday calling out California’s election system, claiming that the results of the June 2 primary were skewed by fraud.
Representatives for Pratt’s campaign didn’t respond to a request for comment.
After the flag salute and brief comments, L.A. City Council meetings kick off with a public comment period, during which crusading citizens often let loose on city officials as the council members quietly listen, leave the room or chat among themselves.
It’s not always L.A.’s finest hour, as certain commenters often resort to slurs and ad hominem attacks about the council members’ race, ethnicity and even physical appearance.
On July 1, public comment expanded as new state law, SB 707, went into effect, requiring the council to take telephonic public comment.
The council also had to verbally state the amendments they make to motions due to the new law, Council President Marqueece Harris-Dawson noted. Historically, the council has affixed amendments to a bulletin board in council chambers.
After frequent speaker Armando Herman used the N-word at the July 1 meeting, Harris-Dawson noted that the state legislature had done nothing about offensive comments at public meetings.
“Our friends in the state legislature made the decision to require us to have telephonic public comment. They did nothing, zero, about what we just heard. Since they want to intervene in our meetings, I’d call on them to do something about what they just heard,” he said.
The council did ban commenters from using the N-word and C-word last year. Speakers who use those words receive a warning and are booted from the meeting if they do it again.
Harris-Dawson said the new state law was “problematic” and noted another issue.
“We can’t verify if calls are bots or foreign agents, which poses a security risk,” he said in a statement to The Times.
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— BOYLE-ING OVER: Mayor Karen Bass, Councilmember Ysabel Jurado and County Supervisor Hilda Solis were roundly booed and heckled by Boyle Heights residents during a town hall Thursday about the Boyle Heights fire. The three officials struggled to speak over the irate audience.
— SOLAR FLARE: Before the Boyle Heights warehouse fire, Lineage representatives lobbied City Hall over the rooftop solar array. The company says it was seeking a safer alternative to rapid shutdown devices.
— FISCAL EDUCATION: The Los Angeles Unified School District is facing “severe” indications it could be insolvent as soon as next year and has 45 days to fix its budget or risk an outside takeover. The Los Angeles County Office of Education has projected a $231 million cash shortfall by 2027.
— HIT THE STREETS: The LAPD is considering shutting down its police academy for part of 2028 to allow hundreds of officers to hit the streets for the Olympics, according to department sources. The move could lead to a drop in police hiring.
— LEGEND GONE: Billy G. Mills, one of the first Black men elected to L.A.’s City Council, died June 27. Mills was a civil rights leader before being elected to the legislative body in 1963, the same year Tom Bradley was elected to be a council member.
— IT TAKES A VILLAGE: Billionaire developer Rick Caruso’s Palisades Village will reopen in August after more than $100 million in renovations following the January 2025 wildfire.
— EVICTION BENEDICTION: Thousands of formerly homeless people whose housing subsidies will expire in December are no longer at risk of eviction, local housing officials announced Thursday. An infusion of new funds approved by Congress this year and a waiver of eligibility procedures have staved off a potential crisis that would have left 4,200 back on the street.
That’s it for this week! Send your questions, comments and gossip to LAontheRecord@latimes.com. Did a friend forward you this email? Sign up here to get it in your inbox every Saturday morning.
IT HAS been 30 years since the Spice Girls dropped their debut single Wannabe and kickstarted one of the most remarkable pop juggernauts of all time.
But while they once defined girl power for a generation, Geri Halliwell-Horner, Mel B, Victoria Beckham, Emma Bunton and Melanie C are now more divided than ever before – with their long-hoped-for reunion concert a distant dream.
With the bandmates at each other’s throats, this week’s anniversary celebrations have amounted to little more than a few posts on Instagram and a show from Emma Bunton on Heart Radio – despite promoters initially planning a tour for the group to mark the occasion.
And the reunion pleasantries didn’t last long, after Mel B appeared to have blocked Geri Horner on Instagram.
The pair clashed in 2022, after Mel B claimed Geri lied about her age, with the pair unfollowing each other on social media.
And now fans have claimed Scary Spice has blocked her former bandmate, after Geri was unable to properly tag her in a post marking the anniversary of their 1996 breakthrough track.
Geri shared a photograph of the band, also made up of Victoria Beckham, Mel C and Emma Bunton, with the caption: “30 years of Wannabe…Thank you to my beautiful Spice sisters.”
All of Geri’s tags for her bandmates registered, apart from Mel B’s – which happens when a user has been blocked.
The Sun can also reveal that dates were looked at for a global jaunt for 2026, although the plans never got off the ground.
And now it is looking increasingly likely that we may never see the Spice Girls on stage together again.
To make matters worse, Mel C confirmed this week that the group’s relationship with their former manager Simon Fuller is over, which puts paid to the ambitious plans he had for their legacy.
We revealed last April that Geri had flown to Miami to meet with Simon about exciting ideas for the group, in the hope he could persuade the reluctant star to return to the fold.
The following month it was revealed that he was shopping around the idea of a Spice Girls digital avatar show, much like ABBA Voyage, which could take place in London or Las Vegas.
However, that is now believed to have been put on ice as divisions over the direction of their legacy deepen.
And a Netflix drama about the group, which was to be scripted by Bad Boys writer Jack Rooke, has also been shelved.
The most reluctant to return has long been Victoria, having declined the opportunity to take part in their sold out, 13-date stadium tour in 2019.
They last performed as a five-piece at the 2012 Olympics Closing Ceremony.
Geri has said she is only prepared for a reunion if it includes all five girls. And now it is Ginger Spice who, like Posh, is reluctant for anything else.
She has retreated from public life and is said to be anxious at the prospect of returning to the stage. That isn’t helped by her strained relationship with Mel B, who has also washed her hands of future plans.
Mel, whose 50th birthday party last year was only attended by Emma and Mel C, said of a reunion tour: “I can tell you it’s not happening. If it does, it’ll be a shock to me, let’s put it that way.
“You can’t be nagging everyone to go on tour if they don’t want to. I laid that to rest when I turned 50.”
And on previously-discussed plans for a documentary, she pointedly added: “I think we’ve all been asked and were all thinking about it at some point.
“But it has to be done in the right way, and it has to be honest – and not everybody wants to be honest.”
In October, Geri, Mel C and Emma attended Victoria’s Netflix series launch, and in January, they were all at Emma’s 50th party, although Mel B was absent from both.
Geri and Mel B were once extremely close, but Ginger Spice said it was “hurtful” when Mel claimed in 2019, weeks before their reunion tour, that they had once had a sexual relationship.
Speaking on The Louis Theroux Podcast this week, Mel C admitted the pair’s friendship was often volatile and impacted the group – as it still seems to be doing, 30 years later.
She explained: “Like any group of people there’s a dynamic, and what was difficult for us was that Melanie [B] and Geri were really great mates, but if they had a fallout, it would affect everybody.
“I think because they were both so outspoken and, myself, Emma, and Victoria, I don’t know, we didn’t have as much airtime as the other two girls.
“I don’t mean that in a thingy [public] sense. I mean, like, just in the room. So that would cause issues sometimes.
“If it wasn’t for Geri and Melanie being the way that they are, we wouldn’t have been as successful as we were.”
While Victoria, Geri and Mel B look increasingly reticent, it is Sport Spice Mel C who has become the most loose-lipped of them all – taking over from Scary Spice.
In 2022, Emma said of Mel B: “If we want anything to be kept a secret we don’t tell her.”
But in the last year, it has been Mel C raising fans’ hopes, only for them to be dashed.
She gave several interviews where she teased a tour could happen, and said that exciting plans were in motion for their 30th anniversary.
Even this week, on the prospect of marking it, she teased: “We want to. Everything’s in discussion. But it’s a really positive time for us.”
She then conceded: “There’s nothing in the works, so it’s obviously not going to be anything in time for the anniversary. But we are discussing lots of great opportunities.”
She also claimed the group have won back the rights to their 1997 movie Spice World and that they are in talks to get it on streaming services.
However, sources close to the group insisted no talks are currently taking place.
So while fans may be streaming their hits, buying re-released vinyl or forking out for new merch from their online shop, the dream of seeing all five back together again is something of a pipe dream.
In 2024, Victoria said of their 30th anniversary: “It would be lovely for us to do something to celebrate [the 30th anniversary] – a dinner or a lunch – and reminisce. But yes, it will not be any more than that.”
Judging by the state of relations right now, even that would be a surprise.
Lauren Bennett, the British singer who told millennials to “put yo’ hands up” in LMFAO’s megahit “Party Rock Anthem,” and a member of pop group G.R.L., has died. She was 37.
G.R.L. members Emmalyn Estrada, Natasha Slayton and Paula van Oppen announced Bennett’s death on Monday via social media.
“It is with great sadness that we share the passing of our beloved Lauren,” G.R.L.’s statement read.
“Our hearts are broken, and we cannot begin to express how much she meant to us. We will forever cherish the love, laughter, and countless memories she gave us. Her beautiful spirit touched so many lives, and she will be deeply missed and forever loved. Rest peacefully, sweet Lauren. You will always be in our hearts.”
Bennett’s cause of death has not been revealed.
The British singer first splashed onto the music scene when she appeared on the U.K. “X Factor” in 2006. She was eliminated before the live show round of the series, but the following year she was recruited to join Paradiso Girls, a group launched by Pussycat Dolls founder Robin Antin. In 2009, they dropped “Patron Tequila,” featuring Lil Jon and Eve. The group disbanded in 2010 and their debut album was never released.
In 2011, Bennett joined forces with electronic dance duo LMFAO on “Party Rock Anthem.” The track spent six weeks topping Billboard’s Hot 100 chart and became wildly popular globally. Billboard ranked the megahit second on their official “Top Hot 100 Songs of the Decade” list for the 2010s, behind Mark Ronson and Bruno Mars’ “Uptown Funk.”
In 2012, she and Antin teamed up again, forming pop group G.R.L. (Girls Rock Life) with founding members including Bennett, Estrada, Slayton, van Oppen and Simone Battle. The group debuted on the “Smurfs 2” soundtrack with “Vacation” in July 2013 and, in early 2014, they were featured on Pitbull’s “Wild Wild Love.” In the summer of 2014, they dropped “Ugly Heart,” the lead single of their self-titled EP, but in September, founding member Battle died by suicide. G.R.L. split up the following year. By 2016, the group reformed as a trio with Bennett, Slayton and new member Jazzy Mejia.
Bennett welcomed her daughter, Harlow, with partner and “Footloose” star Kenny Wormald in 2019. Wormald often shared photos of Bennett on his Instagram with loving captions.
Longtime friend and music producer Josh Stevens, who co-wrote and engineered LMFAO’s sophomore album “Sorry for Party Rocking,” posted a tribute to Bennett on Monday, writing, “My friend [Lauren Bennett] we will deeply miss you. I was lucky enough to witness you change the world! We traveled the globe party rocking from night clubs to stadiums, a wild and crazy time. A true legend!
“Later on in life our children had the same birthday, I remember us texting each other while you were in labor and my wife was in labor on the same day, same time, both in the hospital. We were laughing and it somewhat seemed calming to know to each was going thru this at the same time.
“We will very much miss you.”
• American playwrights, recognizing that identity is more complicated and slippery than ideology, have been shedding fresh light on what it means to be an American.
• Writers such as Young Jean Lee, Tarell Alvin McCraney, Quiara Alegría Hudes, Branden Jacobs-Jenkins, Jeremy O. Harris, Ayad Akhtar, and Bess Wohl have been creating drama from the multidimensional, intersectional realities of characters whose backgrounds refuse to be compartmentalized into a single category.
The American democratic experiment stands on shaky ground. Not since the Civil War have these proverbially United States been so disunited. As the nation throws itself a grand old 250th birthday bash in Washington, the mood in much of the country is more funereal than festive.
All-out partisan warfare has sown chaos. Republican legislators, taking their lead from a president who sees half the nation as his personal enemy, have put their own party’s interests over the republic’s. Staying in office has become the only thing that matters. The values imparted to me throughout my public school education — equal opportunity, impartial justice, respect for expertise, basic honesty — have been abandoned by a new breed of politician that has turned governance itself into a blood sport.
Where can one turn for reassurance that America’s best years are still ahead? Would you believe me if I said the theater? I’m not toeing the line for my field. I’m merely calling attention to a development that’s been gaining strength since I first reported on it in 2015. A cohort of playwrights, breathtakingly diverse demographically as well as aesthetically, has been rejuvenating American theater.
These writers aren’t on a sociological mission. They’re not trafficking in grievance or appealing to a particular political base. They let their plays do the talking. And they’ve been trying to have a conversation that isn’t hijacked by the most doctrinaire voices in the room.
From an institutional perspective, the American theater is in bad shape. The triple whammy of the COVID-19 closures, inflation and technological disruption has left everyone hurting. The Mark Taper Forum had to suspend programming for more than a year, smaller companies still in operation are producing fewer shows, and producers everywhere are gravitating toward the bankably familiar.
But despite this difficult terrain, it has been a boom time for American playwriting. For more than a decade, I’ve been teaching a course at the California Institute of the Arts called American Drama Now, and each year the selection of plays has become harder to whittle down. I designed the seminar partly around theater offerings in Los Angeles to connect students to recent developments in the field and to consolidate awareness that something special is happening in the American theater.
The current generation of playwrights has revealed itself to be remarkably resilient and independent. It has had no other choice. By the time many of these rising talents were accruing debt in graduate writing programs, the dream of a sustainable career in the nonprofit theater had already gasped its last breath.
When Wendy Wasserstein, Tony Kushner, Craig Lucas and Jon Robin Baitz emerged in the late 1970s and ’80s, it was still imaginable that a chosen few playwrights could make a living via the regional theater circuit, that constellation of companies founded as an alternative to the Broadway model.
That prospect was growing dimmer a few years later when playwrights such as Suzan-Lori Parks and Lynn Nottage came into prominence. But hope was still alive in the late 1990s and early 2000s. Regional theaters such as Seattle Rep, the Guthrie, the Goodman and Baltimore Center Stage remained committed to their missions while New York nonprofit companies continued to hold the line off-Broadway.
When did the picture change? In 2009, “Outrageous Fortune: The Life and Times of the New American Play” was published by the Theatre Development Fund, and one of the key findings in this study written by Todd London with Ben Pesner and Zannie Giraud Voss is that “there is no way to view playwriting as anything but a profession without an economic base.” A chasm had opened between the network of increasingly corporate-minded nonprofit theaters and the artists this system was built to serve.
The situation has grown bleaker in the last decade and a half as commercial pressures have ramped up and media consolidation and digital shortsightedness have obliterated arts coverage. Yet there’s been an unexpected upside. Theater artists who have come of age in this period have been released from the burden of having to conform to notions of regional theater respectability.
Instead of worrying about the timid taste of subscription audiences, these dramatists have been writing for themselves and their communities, dreaming up plays that don’t have to fit into institutional slots or stay within the staid bounds of traditional proscenium house decorum. The irony is that in not trying to pass muster with more conservative theatergoers (and their fastidious institutional guardians), playwrights have been winning over not just critics but also formerly squeamish artistic directors and perennially nervous Broadway producers.
The playwrights who appear regularly on the syllabus in American Drama Now — Young Jean Lee, Tarell Alvin McCraney, Annie Baker, Branden Jacobs-Jenkins, Samuel D. Hunter, Martyna Majok, Jeremy O. Harris, Will Arbery, Jackie Sibblies Drury, Quiara Alegría Hudes, Ayad Akhtar, among them — are of different ages, sensibilities and backgrounds. What they share is an appreciation of the complexities and contradictions in being an American.
The politics of identity for them is a lived experience. And as dramatists, they’re uniquely positioned to appreciate the conflicted loyalties and communal tensions of American life in dramatic rather than dogmatic terms. Whatever agendas they may personally espouse, these writers are too alert to the messiness of history and human nature to be rigidly ideological in their work.
The ongoing war between woke and anti-woke factions is a fatuous melodrama best left to the satirists. The goal of playwrights grappling seriously with what it means to be an American today isn’t to score social media points but to shed light on the fractured reality of our collective experience.
Characters in plays by Young Jean Lee, such as “Straight White Men,” are often “trying on masks to see what might prove effective in a given situation.”
(Lawrence K. Ho / Los Angeles Times)
Identity is not a fixed fact but a raucous collision of parts. No single category can contain the Whitmanesque multitudes jockeying for position inside us. Race, religion, ethnicity, gender, age, sexuality, class, disability and geography don’t line up in perfect political harmony, and each social marker tells only a fraction of the whole story. (Money, the great unequalizer, may be the most taboo subject of all.) “We are not only but also,” the sociologist and cultural historian Todd Gitlin wrote in his 1995 book “The Twilight of Common Dreams: Why America Is Wracked by Culture Wars.” We also overlap and often even clash with ourselves.
Discussion around identity can be dangerous. How can anyone be expected to navigate the minefield? Tribalists and traditionalists have controlled the terms of the battle, one by simplifying, the other by denying, the way privilege has shaped our compound selves.
Playwrights know better. They understand the way oppression, which falls disproportionately on the marginalized, has warped all of us. History, whether acknowledged or not, is etched in our souls.
It is a long-held tenet of the theater that the most interesting characters, like the most interesting people, are defined by their schisms and paradoxes. (How else could Hamlet have maintained his centuries-long hold?) Dramatists are more cognizant than ever of the sociopolitical import of these contradictions and they’ve been chronicling the way this historically freighted baggage emerges in the drama of everyday life.
All the world is indeed a stage and all its inhabitants merely stock players, as Jaques lays out in “As You Like It.” Hegel described Shakespeare’s characters as “free artists of their own selves.” The truth where we and our contemporary stage surrogates are concerned is somewhat more constrained. Culture and representation largely determine the range of our performance possibilities.
Plays such as Branden Jacobs-Jenkins’ “Appropriate” reexamine “the canon of great American family dramas … to uncover the stories that have been suppressed.”
(Craig Schwartz)
Jacobs-Jenkins has recognized perhaps more acutely than any of his peers the way dramatic forms have locked us into set scripts about our lives. He tackles genres — adapting a Dion Boucicault melodrama in “An Octoroon,” reexamining the canon of great American family dramas in “Appropriate” — to uncover the stories that have been suppressed in the dominant white middle-class narratives that would prefer not to think of themselves as political.
Lee’s standout identity plays — “Straight White Men,” “The Shipment” and “Songs of the Dragons Flying to Heaven” — reject the illusion of stable, coherent characters propagated by psychological realism. The figures in her uncategorizable works are in experimental flux, trying on masks to see what might prove effective in a given situation. Even “Straight White Men,” which uses the old home-for-the-holidays genre as a springboard, can’t help spinning away from the drama’s droll hyper-naturalism toward something resembling performance art. (Not even straight, white men want to be confined to a box, even a relatively plush one.)
“Fairview,” by Jackie Sibblies Drury, “theatricalizes the experience of the white gaze.”
(Jeff Lorch)
In “Fairview,” Jackie Sibblies Drury theatricalizes the experience of the white gaze, ultimately reversing the comfortable position white theater audiences have traditionally held. Bess Wohl’s “Liberation,” this year’s most decorated play, reanimates the history of the 1970s feminist movement by questioning what it could be leaving out of the picture. “The Balusters,” by David Lindsay-Abaire, brings the current culture wars to the stage with unique sensitivity through the squabbles of a neighborhood association torn between protecting its town’s heritage status and coming to terms with the more pluralistic demands of the 21st century.
“Fairview,” “Liberation,” and “The Balusters” are extremely funny plays that also happen to be deadly serious. If philosophy begins in wonder, trenchant social drama seems to start in laughter.
What do theatergoers want? They don’t just want to look; they also want to be seen. Isn’t that what any of us wants when gazing into the mirror held up to nature, as Hamlet describes the theater? To be granted a more expansive view of ourselves and others?
E pluribus unum, the motto of the United States, is so fundamental that it’s printed on our currency. There’s perhaps no place where the truth of this phrase — out of many, one — is more regularly realized than at the theater, where strangers transform over the course of a show into that mysterious organism we call an audience.
Gitlin ends “The Twilight of Common Dreams” with a plea: “For too long, Americans have busied themselves digging trenches to fortify their cultural borders, lining their trenches with insulation. Enough bunkers! Enough of the perfection of differences! We ought to be building bridges.”
A coalition mindset doesn’t mean denying history or pretending that America has been a level playing field. It’s been anything but in this “melting pot where nothing melted,” to quote the rabbi whose eulogy sets Kushner’s “Angels in America” in motion. But history happens to all of us, not just a select few. And to be an American is to be embroiled in the great democratic experiment that has been defined by division from the beginning. Empathy, the nuclear fusion of playwriting, is expanded when we’re allowed to take in more of our patchwork selves. Today’s dramatists have been extending a generous invitation to their compatriots: We’ll show you our complexity, if you’ll show us yours.
Elyas Abu Safia says his father can barely breathe or speak after more than 555 days in Israeli prison.
Published On 5 Jul 20265 Jul 2026
The son of a prominent Palestinian doctor abducted and held by Israel without charge has issued an urgent appeal for his father’s release, warning that his health has sharply deteriorated after more than 555 days in prison, as a rights group warned that his life was in danger.
Elyas Abu Safia, the son of Dr Hussam Abu Safia, said in a video message on Sunday that his father, the director of Kamal Adwan Hospital in northern Gaza, showed signs of severe abuse after Israeli authorities transferred him to solitary confinement in a maximum-security prison.
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“The day before yesterday, the lawyer Nasser Odeh managed to visit my father, where he told us painful details about this visit,” said Elyas, who is also a doctor.
“My father was unable to breathe. My father was unable to speak,” he said, adding: “His face was disfigured from the marks of torture and pain, and the blood he endured inside the prison, especially after the last court session held in Jerusalem.”
Israeli forces arrested Abu Safia at work on December 27, 2024, as they intensified their attacks on northern Gaza’s healthcare system as part of the genocidal war against Palestinians in Gaza. Two months earlier, an Israeli drone attack killed another of his sons, Ibrahim, at the entrance of the hospital where he worked.
Elyas accused Arab and Muslim leaders of abandoning his father.
“You deprived us even of your voices, your solidarity and your support, which should have been there from the start of the detention,” he said.
“But sadly, your silence is a betrayal and a crime, and complicity in torturing my father and the hostages inside Israeli prisons,” he added.
Physicians for Human Rights Israel warned that Abu Safiya’s life is in immediate danger after his transfer to the Rakefet section of Nitzan prison.
The group said lawyer Nasser Odeh visited Abu Safia on July 2 and documented severe injuries, signs of assault, difficulty breathing and repeated loss of consciousness. It said guards brought him into the visit with his hands and feet bound and surrounded him with masked officers.
Odeh also saw fresh bruises and injuries on Abu Safiya’s head, around his eyes, ears and neck. The wounds were so severe that the lawyer struggled to recognise him, the group said.
“The information we received raises serious and immediate concerns for Abu Safiya’s life. The lawyer’s testimony is among the most shocking we have heard since the beginning of the war: a man detained without charge tells his lawyer that he believes they will kill him, after he arrived for the visit injured, suffering from difficulty breathing, and on the verge of losing consciousness,” Naji Abbas, director of the Prisoners and Detainees Department at Physicians for Human Rights, told the official Palestinian news agency Wafa.
Israeli authorities have not filed charges against Abu Safia. They classified him as an “unlawful combatant”, a designation Israel has used to hold Palestinians for prolonged periods without trial.
Physicians for Human Rights has demanded his release, along with other imprisoned Palestinian doctors. In March, United Nations experts also called on Israel to free Abu Safia immediately and ensure he receives medical care.
He is one of 14 Palestinian doctors from Gaza currently held by Israel without charge.
Corona High baseball coach Andy Wise has pulled off the most intriguing acquisition of the summer season.
Former Dodgers relief pitcher Joe Kelly, a Corona graduate, is joining the program as an assistant coach to help guide pitchers.
Known for his quirky personality and ability to thrive under pressure, Kelly has followed the program in recent years after retiring as a player and jumped at the chance to help the pitchers, Wise said.
“My conversations with him over the years have been incredible,” Wise said. “What an asset for the pitching staff and the whole program. He’s got the time and he’s got a lot of kids. He’s not going to be here six days a week. He’s excited.”
The plan came together after Wise went up to Northern California to speak with a group of players with Kelly.
“No stress, no pressure, anything you might help us with would be awesome,” Wise said he told him.
Wise said Kelly has been following the team in person and on GameChanger and offering ideas.
Just having around a 13-year former MLB pitcher should be inspiring to players next season.
“Joe is Joe and I expect him to be Joe,” Wise said.
A promotional poster announces the 36th Gospel Unification Conference, scheduled from 1:30 p.m. Monday through noon Friday at the Osanri Choi Jasil Memorial Fasting Prayer Mountain in Paju, Gyeonggi Province. Capture from Esther Prayer Movement website.
June 29 (Asia Today) — The Esther Prayer Movement began a five-day fasting prayer conference Monday in Paju, Gyeonggi Province, to pray for the salvation of North Koreans and what organizers call “gospel unification.”
The 36th Gospel Unification Conference, also called the Fasting Prayer Assembly for North Korea’s Salvation, will continue through Friday at the Osanri Choi Jasil Memorial Fasting Prayer Mountain.
Organizers use “gospel unification” to refer to reunification accompanied by religious freedom and the spread of Christianity in North Korea.
The interdenominational gathering brings Christians together to pray for what the organization describes as “a holy South Korea,” the salvation of North Koreans and gospel-based reunification.
The fasting prayer gathering began in January 2009 and has since been held twice a year, during the second week of January and the first week of July. The conferences run for five days and are livestreamed on YouTube for viewers in South Korea and abroad.
At its 35th conference in January, the organization announced a 40-day fasting prayer campaign for the country during 2026.
About 600 pastors and church members registered for the campaign, which is continuing throughout the year, organizers said. Members also participated in a 150-day special overnight prayer campaign from Jan. 17 through June 14.
The organization said the latest gathering is intended to draw attention to North Koreans living under the rule of the Kim family.
It said North Koreans are subjected to the state-sponsored deification of the ruling family and compelled to show reverence to statues and portraits of former leaders Kim Il Sung and Kim Jong Il.
Lee Yong-hee, head of the Esther Prayer Movement, cited Hebrews 13:3, which calls on Christians to remember prisoners and people who are mistreated.
He also cited 1 Timothy 5:8, which says believers should care for their relatives and immediate families.
“The Korean church should fulfill its responsibility toward fellow Koreans,” Lee said.
Lee said he had recently heard accounts that North Korean Christians who fasted and prayed during the gatherings experienced what they described as divine grace, including speaking in tongues.
“Let the underground church in North Korea, Korean churches overseas and churches around the world unite and do their utmost in fasting and prayer to bring forward the day of gospel unification,” Lee said.
He said Christians should make every effort if greater participation in fasting and prayer could hasten that day.
— Reported by Asia Today; translated by UPI
© Asia Today. Unauthorized reproduction or redistribution prohibited.
Original Korean report: https://www.asiatoday.co.kr/kn/view.php?key=20260629010009929
A Florida judge set a $1 million bond for former Detroit Lions cornerback Terrion Arnold, who has been in jail since being arrested last week in connection to an alleged armed attack on a group of men in Tampa, Fla., in February.
Arnold will not have to wear an ankle monitor while he awaits trail on eight felony charges of kidnapping and robbery that could keep him in prison for life if convicted, thus clearing the way for him to practice and play football during that span.
He won’t be doing so, however, with the team that drafted him at No. 24 overall in the 2024 draft. The Lions announced Monday afternoon on X that they have released Arnold, with no other details provided.
Hillsborough County Judge Christopher C. Sabella said during Monday’s hearing that Arnold already has a “paparazzi monitor” that would prevent any potential attempts to flee.
“If he is late for practice, ESPN will let us know,” Sabella said. “If he violates the conditions of his bond, he will be found.”
Arnold was ordered to remain at his Tallahassee home except for when he’s playing, training and traveling with the Lions. He also has to turn in his passport and cannot have any contact with other people tied to the case.
The Hillsborough County state attorney’s office had argued for Arnold to remain behind bars until trial. The county jail’s inmate tracker has not been updated and does not indicate if he has posted bond or been released.
According to the Tampa Police Department, Arnold is believed to be the “primary conspirator” in an alleged plot that left three young men with “visible injuries from being battered, held at gunpoint, and pistol-whipped before their personal property was stolen and they were ordered to leave.”
Arnold turned himself in Wednesday night and pleaded not guilty at his arraignment hearing Thursday afternoon.
“Today’s ruling by Judge Sabella confirms that there is very little evidence to even suggest any criminal involvement by Mr. Arnold,” Denise White, chief executive of EAG Sports Management, which represents Arnold, said in a statement emailed to The Times.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
Simon Property Group nears 52-week high: What's behind the REIT stock rally?
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Published On 28 Jun 202628 Jun 2026
Colombia and Portugal played out a breathless 0-0 draw to a wall of sound at Miami Stadium, with both teams advancing to the last 32 of the 2026 FIFA World Cup as the top two in Group K.
The Colombians will rue their profligacy in front of goal on Saturday, but take encouragement from dominating quality European opposition for large periods as they head off to Kansas City as group winners to take on Ghana on Friday.
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Portugal, who needed to win to top the group, go north to Toronto to play Croatia on Thursday, knowing they have not quite yet found a way to blend all the talent in their squad into an effective team.
The match started to a cacophony of noise from the massed ranks of yellow-shirted South Americans, and the decibel levels went up a notch when striker Jhon Cordoba headed the ball over the bar in the first minute.
Jhon Arias caused Portugal problems every time he ran at them, and he set Cordoba free in the 17th minute, the big target man unleashing a rocket of a shot that keeper Diogo Costa did well to stop.
After a lovely flowing move five minutes later, winger Arias took the shot himself and screwed the ball towards the far corner of the net, only for Ruben Neves to arrive just in time to flick it off the line.
Colombia struggled to clear their lines cleanly sometimes, however, and it was this frailty that allowed Portugal their best chances towards the end of the first half.
Bruno Fernandes found himself free in front of goal in the 39th minute, with his shot bringing a fine point-blank save out of Camilo Vargas in the Colombia goal.
Three minutes before half-time, Joao Felix cleverly chested the ball over a defender and flashed an acrobatic volley over the bar.
Colombia pressed forward, looking for the goal their dominance deserved, and both Gustavo Puerta and playmaker James Rodriguez troubled the goalkeeper with shots before the break.
Portugal attacked more after the break, but it was Colombia who continued to carve out the best chances, with Arias setting up substitute Richard Rios for a shot that went wide.
Arias curled a shot at goal, which was well saved by Costa, and Puerta drilled another chance wide just before the hydration break.
A Rodriguez volley was deflected away from its target in the 73rd minute, just before he and Arias were substituted, but Colombia continued to tear forward at every opportunity.
Davinson Sanchez thought he had scored the winner with a far-post header a minute from time, but it was called back for a very tight offside after a VAR check.
Rafael Leao went close to winning it for Portugal in stoppage time with a shot that flashed across goal, before the referee finally called time on the entertaining match, played out in front of a crowd of 64,478 sweltering in the Miami evening heat.
Portugal’s totem Cristiano Ronaldo, booed every time he touched the ball and starved of service, had barely a sniff of a chance, his one shot on target a long-range free kick that went straight to the goalkeeper.
In the group’s other game, Yoane Wissa scored twice as the Democratic Republic of the Congo beat Uzbekistan 3-1 and qualified for the last 32 of the World Cup for the first time in their history on Saturday.
They will meet England after registering their first-ever World Cup win.
Eldor Shomurodov’s lob over Lionel Mpasi gave Uzbekistan a perfect start in Atlanta.
But Newcastle striker Wissa levelled from the penalty spot, before Fiston Mayele’s goal sent the mainly Congolese crowd into a frenzy.
Wissa rounded off a historic night for the Africans with a fine strike in stoppage time for his third goal of the tournament.
Earlier on Saturday, Jude Bellingham dragged England through a stubborn Panama test, scoring and setting up Harry Kane in a 2-0 win that sent them into the World Cup round of 32 as Group L winners.
England were made to work for more than an hour in rainy New Jersey, before Bellingham broke the deadlock, crossing for Kane to head in his 11th World Cup goal, lifting him above Gary Lineker as England’s all-time leading scorer at the tournament.
Meanwhile, Nikola Vlasic headed in Luka Modric’s 83rd-minute corner to lift Croatia to a 2-1 victory over Ghana on Saturday and a second-place finish in World Cup Group L.
Vlasic’s perfect finish off the inside of the left post came 10 minutes after Derrick Luckassen had pulled Ghana level on his international debut, with half the time in between spent on a VAR review determining whether he was onside.
Petar Sucic scored early for Croatia, who needed only a draw to reach the last 32. Claiming the second-place spot guaranteed the 2022 third-place finishers a meeting with Portugal, the second-placed team in Group K, on Thursday in Toronto.
Scotland, who have played at each of the past two European Championships, booked their spot at a World Cup for the first time since 1998 in dramatic fashion with an unforgettable victory against Denmark at Hampden Park in November.
Backed by tens of thousands of fans who had travelled to the United States, John McGinn’s deflected strike against Haiti earned the country’s first win at a World Cup for 36 years.
That would be Scotland’s only goal of the tournament.
They lost to a second-minute strike by 2022 semi-finalists Morocco in their second match, so they entered their final group game against Brazil knowing a draw would probably be enough to send them through as one of the best third-placed teams.
However, first-half defensive errors would prove their undoing.
They once again conceded early when defender Scott McKenna was robbed of possession inside his own penalty area, gifting an opener to Vinicius Jr.
The Real Madrid forward was denied a second when the video assistant referee (VAR) deemed he had fouled Jack Hendry before rolling the ball past Angus Gunn, but just before half-time Scotland again gave the ball away near their own goal and Vinicius Jr nodded in at the back post to make it 2-0.
Matheus Cunha extended Brazil’s advantage after half-time and a late rally failed to yield a reply that would have improved Scotland’s goal difference.
Belgium defeat New Zealand 5-1 to qualify for the World Cup round of 32 as winners of Group G on goal difference.
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Ousmane Dembele’s first-half hat-trick helps France soundly defeat a Norway side without Erling Haaland 4-1 to top Group I at the World Cup.
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Through the first two games of this summer’s World Cup, the U.S. was about as perfect as a team could be. It won both games, never trailed, gave up just a goal and won its group handily, playing with a verve and confidence that erased all the doubts that had shadowed it coming in.
Then came Thursday.
With Mauricio Pochettino making a record nine changes to a lineup that had given the U.S. its most successful start to a World Cup in 96 years, the B team that closed the group stage at SoFi Stadium with a 3-2 loss to Turkey served to remind everyone how flawed this group can be.
The backline was porous, goalie Matt Turner gave up goals on the first two shots he faced and with the exception of midfielder Sebastian Berhalter, who had a goal and an assist, none of the starters really distinguished themselves. Whether any of that matters won’t be known until the U.S. next takes the field in the knockout rounds, facing Bosnia and Herzegovina on Wednesday in Santa Clara, Calif.
For Pochettino, whose contempt for convention has been a hallmark of his team’s World Cup run, clearing his bench and getting a U.S.-record 23 players on the field in the group stage was more more important than the result.
“The objective was to finish first and we are first,” he said. “Now it is the next stage and it is going to be a final. And we are ready. We are much better than before that game because we had players now with 90 minutes in their legs and performing and ready to help if we need from the beginning or from the bench. It’s all positive.”
Maybe. Sure, Christian Pulisic, who hadn’t played since the first half of the first game, got back on the field and looked good in a 32-minute cameo. But other than that the game was meaningless since the Americans had already won the group and qualified for the next round while Turkey was going home no matter the result.
The U.S. came in riding a huge wave of momentum, though, and that’s gone now, erased on Kaan Ayhan’s goal on the last touch of the game.
Does that matter?
“No,” captain Tim Ream said with conviction. “You just turn the page.”
The experience the role players got, he said, is more important than the final score.
“When we say it didn’t mean anything, it’s still a meaningful game, right? It’s a World Cup game,” he said. “So it gives everybody a taste of what life will be like if they are called upon and have to contribute.”
Midfielder Tyler Adams wasn’t so sure.
“I don’t know what it’s going to do,” he said. “I can’t predict the future. I don’t have an eight ball in front of me. We’ll see what happens.”
What Adams can say with certainty, however, is that in the future the U.S. will have no room for error. The games are all elimination matches now and 13 players on the U.S. roster, including Adams, have experienced that first hand, having lost in the round of 16 four years ago in Qatar.
Turner said it’s up to those veterans to impart that wisdom on the 13 who are playing in their first World Cup.
“You need to really take care of the boxes when it comes to knockout round. That’s the biggest lesson that we learned,” said Turner, who started all four games in the last World Cup. “It’s not necessarily how beautiful a style you play. The chances you create is important, [but] the way you defend your box is more important.
“Those games are going to be decided by one goal, they’re going to be narrow, and we’re going to have to be compact and be together, defensively, offensively, and take the chances when they come.”
The U.S. did little of that Thursday.
After a Berhalter corner set up Trusty for the first goal in the third minute, Turkey’s Arda Guler, a Real Madrid midfielder, tied the score seven minutes later, splitting a pair of U.S. defenders and running onto a pass from Kenan Yildiz in the center of the box, then lifting a shot over Turner.
Orkun Kokcu handed the U.S. its first deficit of the tournament when he found another big hole in the U.S. defense, redirecting a cross from Eren Elmali in from the center of the box to give Turkey a 2-1 lead.
Berhalter tied the score again four minutes into the second half, latching onto a loose ball at the top of the penalty area and one-hopping a right-footed shot just inside the near post. The game stayed that way until Ayhan, who came on with two minutes left in regulation, slid between two U.S. defenders to knock in the game-winner eight minutes into stoppage time.
For Berhalter, one of a record 21 Americans to get a start in this World Cup, Pochettino’s decision to clear his bench was not only a reward, it was preparation for what’s to come.
“It’s every little kid’s dream, across the United States of America, to play in a home World Cup. Just in a World Cup in general,” he said. “People made their debuts today, so congratulations everyone. This is what everybody looks forward to.”
More important, he added, “we know everyone’s ready to step up at any moment.”
Which is good because history suggests the road ahead is about the get a lot more challenging. The loss to Turkey was the Americans’ 10th straight to a UEFA team, running their winless streak against European opponents to 13 in a row.
Guess which continent Bosnia and Herzegovina, who the U.S. faces next, is from?
Sports editor Iliana Limón Romero contributed to this story.
MANAMA, Bahrain — U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio said Thursday that relations between the United States and its gulf Arab partners are rock solid, despite fears by some of them that they might be left out of discussions aimed at ending the war with Iran.
Rubio used a three-day, three-nation trip to the United Arab Emirates, Kuwait and Bahrain this week to try to convince all the members of the Gulf Cooperation Council that the Trump administration does indeed have their backs in negotiations to end the war President Trump and Israel launched on Feb. 28.
That conflict sharply curtailed the region’s oil exports and saw several gulf countries take direct retaliatory Iranian missile and drone hits.
“They’ve shared with us some very concrete concerns, ideas,” Rubio said in Bahrain, the last stop on the trip. “And when I say concern, the biggest concern is that they really just want to be informed every step along the way as we enter these negotiations at both the technical and political levels.
“We want them to be involved and we want the views of all these countries to be reflected,” he said. “We don’t want to and will not be making any decisions or commitments that in any way undermines the prosperity, stability or security of our gulf partners.”
Although the U.S. and the gulf council members — Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates — eventually released a joint statement after the meeting that extolled areas of agreement about the end goals of the Iran deal, there were small signs of potential discontent.
The joint statement said the two sides “stressed the need to maintain momentum and unity as negotiations proceed toward a more permanent end to hostilities and the shared objective of preventing Iran from ever developing or otherwise acquiring a nuclear weapon.”
They also expressed opposition to any attempt by Iran to impose tolls or fees, or assert control over the Strait of Hormuz. They welcomed an Omani initiative to create a safe lane to evacuate stranded sailors from the waterway and stressed that any economic benefit Iran might realize “is conditional and reversible, contingent on Iran’s compliance” with the temporary agreement and a final deal.
The joint statement painted a rosy picture, yet the council secretary, Gen. Jasem Mohamed Albudaiwi, suggested in a statement that doubts remain.
He said it was emphasized during the meeting that any future understandings or arrangements must incorporate the requirements of the gulf council countries to safeguard their interests and ensure “their security and stability.” His statement, released by the group, hinted that the gulf council members felt snubbed in the earlier talks.
“Such arrangements must be based on the principles of international law, respect for state sovereignty, good neighborliness, and non-interference in internal affairs, thereby contributing to the consolidation of regional security and stability,” he said.
Before Rubio spoke to the group, the meeting host, Bahraini Foreign Minister Abdullatif bin Rashid Al Zayani, said that although the memorandum of understanding is welcome, many questions remain outstanding.
“While this progress is encouraging, it is critically important that Iran fully adheres to its obligations,” including under the memorandum, he said.
He said that means preventing Iran from getting a nuclear weapon, preserving freedom of navigation, ending all missile and drone attacks, halting support for proxy groups and abandoning attempts to interfere with Iran’s neighbors.
Lee writes for the Associated Press.
IsiMS/iStock via Getty Images
Wise Group (WSE) stock surged 5.4% in Thursday after-hours trading after the fintech said it plans a new share repurchase program that it expects to exceed $500M.
About 40% of the buyback program is expected to be allocated to its recurring
From Eduard Cauich: Mexico’s national team overcame a lackluster first half to rout Czechia thanks to a dream second half that allowed it to finish the group stage undefeated on a night that will be remembered as one of the greatest in Mexican World Cup history.
The celebration of Mexico’s 3-0 win Wednesday at Azteca Stadium turned into a tribute to legendary goalkeeper Guillermo Ochoa, who entered the game in the final minutes to receive a standing ovation unlike any other for a Mexican player in the history of the tournament.
Czechia was eliminated after failing to earn more than one point in the tournament. In the other group match, South Africa defeated South Korea 1-0 in Monterrey and advanced in second place. South Korea will have to wait to find out whether it advances as one of the eight best third-place teams.
Czechia put up a strong performance during the first 45 minutes, while Mexico showed little offensive clarity, mainly because of a lack of control in midfield.
Everything changed in a matter of six minutes during the second half, when El Tri figured out Czechia and secured its best victory in the group stage.
World Cup recap: South Africa beats South Korea, advances to play at SoFi Stadum
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Group A
Mexcio 3, Czechia 0
South Africa 1, South Korea 0
Group B
Bosnia-Herzegovina 3, Qatar 2
Switzerland 2, Canada 2
Group C
Morocco 4, Haiti 2
Brazil 3, Scotland 0
All times Pacific
1 p.m., Curacao vs. Ivory Coast, FS1, Telemundo
1 p.m., Ecuador vs. Germany, Fox, Telemundo
4 p.m., Japan vs. Sweden, FS1, Telemundo
4 p.m., Tunisia vs. Netherlands, Fox, Telemundo
7 p.m., Paraguay vs. Australia, FS1, Universo
7 p.m., Turkiye vs. U.S., Fox, Telemundo
Group A
Country, W-D-L, Goal Differential, Points
x-Mexico, 3-0-0, +6, 9
x-South Africa, 1-1-1, -1, 4
South Korea, 1-0-2, -1, 3
y-Czechia, 0-1-2, -4, 1
Group B
x-Switzerland, 2-1-0, +4, 7
x-Canada, 1-1-1, +5, 4
Bosnia-Herzegovina, 1-1-1, -1, 4
y-Qatar, 0-1-2, -8, 1
Group C
x-Brazil, 2-1-0, +6, 7
x-Morocco, 2-1-0, +3, 7
Scotland, 1-0-2, -3, 3
y-Haiti, 0-0-3, -6, 0
Group D
x-United States, 2-0-0, +5, 6
Australia, 1-0-1, 0, 3
Paraguay, 1-0-1, -2, 3
y-Turkiye, 0-0-2, -3, 0
Group E
x-Germany, 2-0-0, +7, 6
Ivory Coast, 1-0-1, 0, 3
Ecuador, 0-1-1, -1, 1
Curacao, 0-1-1, -6, 1
Group F
Netherlands, 1-1-0, +4, 4
Japan, 1-1-0, +4, 4
Sweden, 1-0-1, 0, 3
y-Tunisia, 0-0-2, -8, 0
Group G
Egypt, 1-1-0, +2, 4
Iran, 0-2-0, 0, 2
Belgium, 0-2-0, 0, 2
New Zealand, 0-1-1, -2, 1
Group H
Spain, 1-1-0, +4, 4
Uruguay, 0-2-0, 0, 2
Cape Verde, 0-2-0, 0, 2
Saudi Arabia, 0-1-1, -4, 1
Group I
x-France, 2-0-0, +5, 6
x-Norway, 2-0-0, +4, 6
Senegal, 0-0-2, -3, 0
Iraq, 0-0-2, -6, 0
Group J
x-Argentina, 2-0-0, +5, 6
Austria, 1-0-1, 0, 3
Algeria, 1-0-1, -2, 3
y-Jordan, 0-0-2, -3, 0
Group K
x-Colombia, 2-0-0, +3, 6
Portugal, 1-1-0, +5, 4
Congo DR, 0-1-1, -1, 1
Uzbekistan, 0-0-2, -7, 0
Group L
England, 1-0-1, +2, 4
Ghana, 1-0-1, +1, 4
Croatia, 1-0-1, -1, 3
y-Panama, 0-0-2, -2, 0
x-clinched round of 32; y-eliminated
The top two teams in each group plus the next eight best third-place teams advance to the next round.
Note: The U.S. is locked into a July 1 knockout stage game against the third-place team from either Group B, E, F, I or J at Levi’s Stadium in Santa Clara.
From Maddie Lee: Shohei Ohtani was done trying to make the back-and-forth work.
He and catcher Dalton Rushing had struggled to get in sync for the first two innings Wednesday — from pitch-calling, to ABS challenges, to a crossup that cost the Dodgers a run. So, Ohtani took matters into his own hands.
“There’s really a couple ways of communicating,” Ohtani said through interpreter Will Ireton after the Dodgers’ 4-3 win against the Minnesota Twins. “One is by words, but the other way to be able to communicate is by example, and just taking the charge and showing Rush what kind of pitching style I’m capable of.”
After a three-run (two earned) second inning, Ohtani supplied his own run support with an RBI single that spurred the Dodgers’ game-winning rally, and then took over pitch-calling duties on the mound.
Ohtani didn’t allow another run, through the sixth.
“I didn’t do a great job from start to finish,” said Rushing, who returned to the lineup Wednesday after being removed from Monday’s game to rule out a concussion. “Pretty embarrassing. Thankfully he’s as good as he is and he can take control of the game.”
Dodgers fulfill $1-million pledge in response to ICE raids, owners divest from prison group
Nolan Schanuel reached third on an error and Logan O’Hoppe drove him in on a check-swing tapper in the 10th inning as the Angels rallied to defeat the Baltimore Orioles 7-6 on Wednesday.
It was the 12th come-from-behind victory for the Angels (34-48) and sixth walk-off win.
Pinch-hitter Vaughn Grissom started the rally with an RBI single in the eighth, and Wade Meckler tied the game with a two-run single.
From Bill Plaschke: He’s no longer a cute little kid.
He’s a $185-million man.
He’s no longer a quintessential underdog routinely pardoned for his bad defense, his questionable durability and his tendency to tighten up in the playoffs.
He’s a big dog who needs to own it.
Austin Reaves, the most beloved Laker, became the most scrutinized Laker on Wednesday with the news that he agreed to a maximum four-year, $185-million contract to remain with the team.
Kudos to him for becoming the highest-paid undrafted player in league history.
Congrats to the Lakers for turning a homegrown talent into a budding superstar.
His everyman story resonates with the masses.
Except that story is finished. That book has been closed. A new volume has begun.
It’s called, “Is Austin Reaves Worth It?”
Thus far, the answer has been no.
Lakers’ Austin Reaves opts out of contract, plans to re-sign for four years
From Thuc Nhi Nguyen: They started their pro careers in Spain and now two Real Madrid prospects are taking on L.A. Baba Miller doesn’t have to look far for inspiration with Luka Doncic playing in the same city.
After admiring Doncic’s path from Real Madrid to the top of the NBA, Miller, the Clippers’ latest addition, hopes to carve his own path in L.A. after the Clippers drafted the late-blooming Cincinnati forward 36th overall in the NBA draft on Wednesday.
The versatile big man was just 6-2 when he was 14. Now a mature, 6-foot-11 22-year-old, Miller called that kid “chubby.” But once he started growing rapidly, Miller slimmed down. When he struggled to hold up against more physical players, his youth coach started playing him at the wing. The positional move, along with his developing body, set the stage for his creative style of play.
As a senior at Cincinnati, 208-pound Miller averaged 13 points, 10.3 rebounds, 3.7 assists and 1.2 blocks per game. Miller was just one of three players nationally to average at least 13 points, 10 rebounds and three assists this season. He was the first Bearcat to lead the team in points, rebounds and assists since Oscar Robertson in 1959-60.
NBA draft 2026: Second-round pick-by-pick recap
‘Super blessed’: Karim López makes NBA history as first Mexican-born first-round draft pick
From Marisa Ingemi: The Sparks are going to have to get through another stretch without Kelsey Plum.
Plum, who missed three games with a right ankle sprain earlier this season, is out with a lower left leg injury and will be reevaluated in four weeks, the team announced Wednesday morning. That means she will miss at least the next 10 games, taking the Sparks to the WNBA All-Star break.
It had seemed like Plum was out of the woods after she came back from her ankle injury. Plum scored 43 points in a game against the Phoenix Mercury on June 14 and didn’t miss a beat in her return. She is second in the WNBA in scoring with 23.9 points per game and sixth in the league with 6.4 assists per contest.
From Chuck Schilken: Katelyn Ohashi has gone viral for her gymnastics routines.
She has won two ESPY Awards.
She’s a former national champion and All-American who earned 11 perfect scores of 10 during her time at UCLA.
She once took first place in the all-around at an elite national competition, with the now-legendary Simone Biles finishing as runner-up.
But Ohashi apparently has some unfinished business in the sport, as the 29-year-old athlete announced her return to elite gymnastics Tuesday on Instagram.
1921 — Jock Hutchinson is the first American to win the British Open, a nine-stroke victory over Roger Wethered in a playoff.
1926 — Bobby Jones becomes the first amateur in 29 years to win the British Open. Jones finishes with a 291 total for a two-stroke victory over Al Watrous at Royal Lytham & St Annes Golf Club in Lytham St Annes, England.
1932 — Gene Sarazen wins the U.S. Open by shooting a 286, the lowest in 20 years.
1935 — Future world heavyweight boxing champion Joe Louis moves to 20-0 with 6th round KO of former champion Primo Carnera at Yankee Stadium.
1948 — Joe Louis knocks out Jersey Joe Walcott in the 11th round in New York to defend his world heavyweight title. Louis announces his retirement after the fight.
1952 — Jim Turnesa wins the PGA Championship with a 1-up victory over Chick Harbert in the final round.
1966 — Buckpasser sets a world record in the 1-mile Arlington Classic in 1:32 3-5 and becomes the first 3-year-old to win more than $1 million.
1969 — Pancho Gonzalez, 41, wins the longest tennis match in Wimbledon history by beating Charles Pasarell in a 112-game match, 22-24, 1-6, 16-14, 6-3, 11-9. The match is played over two days and lasts 5 hours, 12 minutes.
1978 — In Buenos Aires, Argentina wins the World Cup beating Netherlands 3-1 after extra time.
1981 — Sugar Ray Leonard wins the WBA junior middleweight title with a ninth-round knockout of Ayub Kalule in Houston.
1988 — UEFA European Championship Final, Olympiastadion, Munich, Germany: Ruud Gullet & Marco van Basten score as the Netherlands beats Soviet Union, 2-0.
1991 — Nine-time champion Martina Navratilova survives a first-round scare from Elna Reinach to win her record 100th singles match at Wimbledon.
1994 — FIFA World Cup: 1,500th goal in Cup history scored by Caceres of Argentina.
1997 — NBA Draft: Wake Forest power forward Tim Duncan first pick by San Antonio Spurs.
1997 — NHL approves franchises in Nashville, Atlanta, Columbus, and Minneapolis-St Paul.
1999 — San Antonio wins its first NBA championship, defeating the New York Knicks 78-77 in Game 5 of the Finals. The Spurs, keyed by finals MVP Tim Duncan’s 31 points, becomes the first former ABA team to win the championship.
2006 — Asafa Powell matches Wallace Spearmon’s world best in the 200 meters, winning the Jamaican national championships in 19.90 seconds.
2006 — Bernard Lagat becomes the first runner in the history of the U.S. track and field championships to sweep the 1,500 and 5,000 meters, after winning the shorter race.
2008 — NBA Draft: Oklahoma power forward Blake Griffin first pick by Clippers.
2015 — NBA Draft: Kentucky center Karl-Anthony Towns first pick by Minnesota Timberwolves.
2017 — Jordan Spieth needs an extra hole and an amazing final shot to finish off a wire-to-wire victory in the Travelers Championship. The two-time major champion holes out from 60 feet for birdie from a greenside bunker on the first hole of a playoff with Daniel Berger at TPC River Highlands.
2019 — NHL Draft: Barrie Colts (OHL) defenseman Aaron Ekblad first pick by Florida Panthers.
2020 — Liverpool FC clinches first EPL soccer title in 30 years with 7 games to spare as Chelsea beats second-placed Manchester City, 2-1 at Stamford Bridge.
Compiled by the Associated Press
1934 — Pitcher John Broaca tied a major league record by striking out five consecutive times but pitched the Yankees to an 11-2 victory over the Chicago White Sox. Lou Gehrig had better luck at the plate, hitting for the cycle.
1937 — Augie Galan of Chicago became the first National League switch-hitter to homer from both sides of the plate in the Cubs’ 11-2 victory over the Brooklyn Dodgers.
1950 — Chicago’s Hank Sauer hit two home runs and two doubles to send the Cubs past the Philadelphia Phillies 11-8.
1961 — Baltimore and the Angels used a major league record 16 pitchers, eight by each side, as the Orioles edged the Angels 9-8 on Ron Hansen’s 14th-inning homer.
1968 — Bobby Bonds, in his first major league game, hit a grand slam off John Purdin to help San Francisco to a 9-0 win over the Dodgers.
1988 — Cal Ripken Jr. plays in his 1,000th consecutive game.
1998 — Sammy Sosa broke the major league record for homers in a month, hitting his 19th of June leading off the seventh inning of the Cubs’ 6-4 loss to Detroit. Sosa passed the mark set by Detroit’s Rudy York in August 1937.
1999 — Jose Jimenez, a rookie right-hander, threw St. Louis’ first no-hitter in 16 seasons, outdueling Randy Johnson in a 1-0 victory over Arizona.
2002 — Luis Pujols of the Detroit Tigers and Tony Pena of the Kansas City Royals became the first Dominican-born managers to oppose each other in a major league game.
2007 — A fan charged at Bob Howry during the Cubs’ 10-9 win over Colorado after the reliever helped blow an 8-3 lead in the ninth inning. Howry gave up back-to-back RBI singles to Garrett Atkins and Brad Hawpe and a three-run homer to Troy Tulowitzki. The fan then jumped onto the field from the roof of the Rockies’ dugout and made it a few feet from the mound before security guards tackled him. Howry earned the victory when Alfonso Soriano hit a game-ending two-run single in the bottom of the inning.
2010 — Arizona’s Edwin Jackson pitched a 1-0 no-hitter against Tampa Bay at Tropicana Field.
2010 — The Cubs suspend pitcher Carlos Zambrano indefinitely after he throws a tantrum in the dugout after giving up four runs in the first inning of a 6-0 loss to the White Sox. “Big Z” blames first baseman Derrek Lee for letting a Juan Pierre ground ball past him for a double that starts the rally, although the hard-hit ball was hardly catchable. Tom Gorzelanny replaces Zambrano who is removed from the game by manager Lou Piniella.
2011 — Cleveland’s Tony Sipp balked home the only run with the bases loaded in the seventh inning of a 1-0 loss to San Francisco. Sipp slightly flinched his left arm before throwing a pitch to Emmanuel Burriss, allowing Miguel Tejada to score and sending San Francisco to its fourth straight win. There also were two errors in the inning by second baseman Cord Phelps that spoiled a strong start by Justin Masterson.
2013 — Eric Filia drove in a career-high five runs, Nick Vander Tuig limited Mississippi State to five hits in eight innings, and UCLA won 8-0 for its first national baseball championship.
2014 — Tim Lincecum pitched his second no-hitter against the San Diego Padres in less than a year, allowing only one runner and leading the San Francisco Giants to a 4-0 win.
2015 — The San Francisco Giants hit four triples in a game for the first time in 55 years, including a pair by Brandon Belt in a 13-8 win over the San Diego Padres. Brandon Crawford and Matt Duffy also tripled for San Francisco, which had not tripled four times in a game since Sept. 15, 1960, when Willie Mays hit three and Eddie Bressoud one at Philadelphia.
2018 — The St. Louis Cardinals record the 10,000th win in team history with a 4-0 defeat of the Cleveland Indians. They are the sixth major league team to do so.
2019 — The New York Yankees set a new major league record by homering in their 28th consecutive game.
2021 — Philadelphia Phillies pitcher Aaron Nola ties Tom Seaver’s 51-Year old MLB record of ten consecutive strikeouts in a 2-1 loss to the Mew York Mets.
2022 — Three Astros pitchers combine to no-hit the Yankees, 3-0.
2023 — George Springer leads off the bottom of the 1st for the Blue Jays against the Athletics with a homer off Luis Medina. The 55th leadoff home run of his career gives him sole possession of second place on the all-time list, behind only Rickey Henderson. The Blue Jays win handily, 12-1.
Compiled by the Associated Press
That concludes today’s newsletter. If you have any feedback, ideas for improvement or things you’d like to see, email me at houston.mitchell@latimes.com. To get this newsletter in your inbox, click here.
Losing their final group game to Switzerland on Wednesday means co-hosts Canada will play no further matches in their home country at this year’s World Cup.
Had Canada avoided defeat to finish top of Group B, they would have stayed in Vancouver for their last-32 tie and potentially a last-16 fixture.
However, a 2-1 loss at BC Place meant Canada finished second behind Switzerland and so Jesse Marsch’s side will travel to Los Angeles to play South Africa on Sunday (20:00 BST).
The former Leeds boss, who has guided Canada out of the group stage at a World Cup for the first time, said: “We wanted to be here in Vancouver, but we still have a massive opportunity ahead of us to find a way to push for the next match and find a way to still electrify the nation, even though it’ll be from Los Angeles.
“We came up a little short and that’s unfortunate. But we’re in the knockout round and we’re going to make sure that we’re up for it better.”
After drawing their opening game against Bosnia-Herzegovina in Toronto, Canada thrashed Qatar 6-0 in Vancouver, where they ended the group stage with a first loss of the tournament.
Striker Jonathan David told Sports Illustrated:, external “It was nice to have a pro-Canada crowd that pushed us on every game.
“We’re a bit disappointed and it’s mixed emotions. Obviously, we wanted to stay in Vancouver, so not getting that is a blow for everyone, but we’ll talk about it and get ready for the next one.”
GUADALAJARA, México. — With first place in Group A secured after two wins in two matches, the Mexican national team heads into its final group stage match against Czechia on Wednesday at 6 p.m. on Fox and Telemundo without pressure and is preparing to play some of its reserves.
The situation is quite different for Czechia, which has just one point after losing 2-1 to South Korea and drawing 1-1 with South Africa. The European team needs a win against Mexico at Azteca Stadium in Mexico City to advance to the next round — either as the group runner-up or as one of the best third-place finishers.
“The Czechs are incredibly tough; they’re a very physically demanding team,” Mexico coach Javier Aguirre said. “We watched them in their two matches against their group opponents, and it’s not going to be easy.”
Aguirre will have to strategize with an eye toward what lies ahead in the next round, which is a single-elimination format. Mexican American midfielder Brian Gutiérrez enters this final group stage match with an accumulated yellow card, so Aguirre likely will not play him to avoid risking suspension for the round of 32 game. FIFA rules clear all cards after the group stage ends.
The match could mark the return of César Montes, who was sent off against South Africa and missed the South Korea game.Goalkeeper Guillermo “Memo” Ochoa, in his sixth World Cup, could see some playing time as a sort of tribute to his career, but Raúl Rangel had an extraordinary performance against South Korea, so it remains to be seen whether Ochoa will get playing time.
“Obviously, it would be something extraordinary; it would be really cool for Memo. He’s a legend in Mexico and on the national team. He’s always been a player willing to give his all for the national team,” Mexico forward Alexis Vega said. “In the end, I think [Aguirre] will make the decision. I believe that all 26 of us here will give it our all if given the opportunity. Whoever gets the chance will do their best.”
Erik Lira, Johan Vásquez, Jesús Gallardo and Roberto Alvarado are the Mexican players who have covered the most ground for the national team in both matches, making them candidates for rest. Gallardo has a strong replacement available in young AZ Alkmaar player Mateo Chávez.
Mexico’s Edson Álvarez clears the ball away from the goal during the first half against South Korea during a World Cup match.
(Ricardo Mazalan / Ap Photo/ricardo Mazalan)
Edson Álvarez, who had a strong performance against South Korea, is likely to start again.
Another player who could see action is Santi Giménez, the AC Milan forward, who has been recovering from an injury and played only 10 minutes against South Korea. Gilberto Mora, Mexico’s youngest World Cup player at age 17, could start the game.
“We have to treat the game against [Czechia] like a final. We know [Czechia] needs this win, but we’re preparing ourselves. Getting used to winning goes a long way,” Giménez said in an interview on Wednesday with TV Azteca.
Mexico does not yet know its opponent in the next round, which will be one of the best third-place finishers. Its opponent will not be determined until the eight best third-place teams that advance to the round of 32 are identified.
On the Czech side, coach Miroslav Koubek favors a disciplined and physical approach, with Patrik Schick and Adam Hložek leading the counterattack that will seek to capitalize on any Mexico mistakes.
“We know that Mexico is one of the best teams in our group, and it will be tough for us on their home turf. But we believe we can get a good result and finish the group stage on a high note,” said Michal Sadilek, a midfielder for the Czech team.
Since Czechia needs a win to advance, that suggests the team will attack more aggressively, which will be dangerous for the Mexico defense but will also leave more space for the home team to exploit the counterattack. Czechia has shown this World Cup it is particularly dangerous on set pieces.
Fellow Group A teams South Korea and South Africa will face off at the same time as the Mexico-Czechia match — 6 p.m. Thursday — in Monterrey. The South Koreans, with three points, are looking to secure second place and a round-of-32 game at SoFi Stadium, while South Africa needs a win to compete for a spot as the second-place finisher or a berth among the best third-place teams. A South Korean loss combined with a Czech victory over Mexico would knock LAFC’s Son Heung-min and his South Korea teammates out of the tournament.