If you are planning a holiday abroad, you will want to double check your passport is valid
Sophie Buchan Money and Lifestyle Writer
21:04, 27 Mar 2026
If you’re looking to save money, it’s worth knowing that it’s £12.50 cheaper to apply for a passport online than by post(Image: Getty)
If you’re planning a trip overseas soon, it’s crucial to ensure your passport is valid for travel. This means, depending on your destination, you might need to renew it earlier than anticipated.
For example, if you’re jetting off to Spain, the Foreign Office warns travellers that the country adheres to Schengen area rules. This means your passport must have a ‘date of issue’ less than 10 years before the date you arrive.
If you renewed your passport before October 1, 2018, it may have a date of issue that is more than 10 years ago. The rules also mean that you should have an ‘expiry date’ at least three months after the day you plan to leave the Schengen area – the expiry date does not need to be within 10 years of the date of issue.
In other places, like Cyprus, you need to have “at least one blank page for stamping”. So if you need to get a new passport, here’s what you need to know before you’re set to travel abroad.
How long did it take me to get my new blue UK passport?
I submitted an application for a new passport on July 13 last year and posted my old passport, as directed, on July 14. The Passport Office received my old one on July 15 – this step is necessary as you cannot possess two passports.
I received my next update on July 23, informing me that my passport application had been approved. This was followed by an email on July 24 letting me know my new passport had been printed.
The next day, I received my blue passport with a new photo I had taken myself at home. So it took me less than two weeks to get my new travel document – and I didn’t pay for fast track.
And if you need a passport urgently, you can opt for their Online Premium or 1 week Fast Track services. They warn: “Do not book travel until you have a valid passport – your new passport will not have the same number as your old one.”
How to apply for a new UK passport?
You can submit an application via the GOV.UK website. It caters for various needs, whether you need to apply for, renew, replace or update your passport, and you can also pay for it online.
How much does a UK passport cost?
If you’re looking to save money, it’s worth knowing that it’s £12.50 cheaper to apply for a passport online than by post. It’s worth noting that prices increase on April 8, 2026.
Apply Online
Adult (16 and over) standard 34-page passport – £94.50
Adult (16 and over) 54-page frequent traveller passport – £107.50
Child (under 16) standard 34-page passport – £61.50
My deepest sympathies lie with the Iranian people, whose hearts are torn in many directions. Many long for freedom and dignity, yet they remain wary of the long history of Western imperial intervention across the world, including their own country.
The Iranian people who took to the streets in recent years did not call for one form of domination to replace another. They demanded an end to oppression in all its forms, not the beginning of a new round under the Western thumb. Nor did they want change at any cost.
At every step, history teaches us – these promises of freedom offered by the West are never fulfilled.
The reason is simple. The freedom of others is simply not on the Western agenda, no matter its public rhetoric. Imperialism of this nature does not want freedom; it wants control, domination, power and profit.
On March 4, as bombs were falling around him in Tehran, Mohamad Maljoo, an Iranian dissident, was finally able to connect to the internet. He wrote on his Telegram channel: “Those who claim that one can rain fire on the body of Iran in the name of striking the Islamic Republic while imagining that the people will remain unharmed either do not understand the reality of war or deliberately choose to ignore it. Bombs do not discriminate. Destruction does not operate selectively.”
The truth of his warning echoes from Palestine to Iran: “Life does not flourish in the shadow of oppression. Nor does it grow beneath the rubble of bombs.”
As a Palestinian, I feel the pain and determination in these words. I cannot help but feel solidarity.
We, Palestinians, know the horror of war in our bodies. We understand the shudders caused by yet another explosion, the tears of orphans and the despair of sleepless nights as fires burn everywhere. From the 1948 Nakba (catastrophe) to the current Ibadah (destruction), we have felt the pain of genocide for many generations. We see the echoes of our experience in the plight of others.
The US-Israel war on Iran began with something all too familiar to us: a strike on a school.
According to UNICEF, an average of a classroom full of children was killed each day for two years in Gaza; 432 out of the Strip’s 564 schools sustained “direct hits” from the Israeli army.
The Shajareh Tayyebeh, a girls’ elementary school in the city of Minab in southern Iran, was also a “direct hit”. About 170 young girls between the ages of six and 12 and staff were killed by two high-precision US-made Tomahawk missiles on February 28.
After the initial strike, teachers rushed to protect the students. Paramedics hurried to the scene to rescue the wounded. And then, a second bomb fell.
It was a double-tap strike – a horror of modern-day warfare that people of Gaza know all too well. It is designed to kill its target and then kill again those who come to the rescue.
Like in Gaza, the attack on the girls’ school in Minab did not remain an exception. Over the past three weeks, Israel and the United States have rained death and destruction on public spaces across Iran. Schools, hospitals, sports halls, stadiums, stores, cafes, bazaars and historical sites have been attacked. More than 5,000 residential units have been hit, and over 1,900 civilians have been killed.
As in Gaza, the cumulative goal is not only physical destruction, but also the spread of fear and terror. The targeting of civilian spaces thus operates as a form of psychological warfare — an assault on the very idea of safety and normality.
Targeting civilian infrastructure is against international law. Yet the US and Israel view international legal norms through the lens of US Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, who has repeatedly expressed his disdain for the rules of engagement, calling them “stupid”.
By now, it is clear that Gaza has served as Israel’s laboratory, as a testing ground, for the vision it seeks to impose across the entire region.
Just days ago, Israel’s Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich issued a chilling warning: “Dahiyeh [in southern Beirut] will look like Khan Younis.”
The destruction of Khan Younis – my hometown – has become the new model of devastation to be repeated elsewhere. In Lebanon, in the span of 20 days, this model has resulted in the massacre of nearly 1,100 people, including 120 children – a full classroom every three days.
What we witness in Gaza travels to Lebanon, then on to Iran.
What is the ultimate goal? The consolidation of Israeli hegemony in the region. The strategy is not necessarily the complete overthrow of the Iranian regime, but rather to break the Iranian state itself and significantly curtail its capacity to project power. A weakened or broken Iran would no longer be an obstacle to Israeli regional supremacy.
All this is happening with the full support of the US. Just last month, US Ambassador to Israel Mike Huckabee voiced his approval for Israeli expansion into “Greater Israel”.
Other Western powers have also consented, supporting the illegal war on Iran, albeit refusing to commit their own troops, ships and aircraft.
In his poem “The Earth Is Closing on Us”, Mahmoud Darwish wrote:
“Where should we go after the last frontier? Where should the birds fly after the last sky? Where should the plants sleep after the last breath of air?”
Soon, this may become the reality for the entire region. Under Israel’s absolute and unrestrained dominance, we will all feel as if we have nowhere left to go. What will life under this reality look like?
If Gaza is the laboratory, then we can picture that the region will burn in flames for years to come. Whenever Israel wants to, it will “mow the lawn” to impose its will over any government and to suppress any rebellion from the people of the region.
The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Al Jazeera’s editorial stance.
Chad Bianco, the Riverside County sheriff and a leading Republican candidate for governor, has seized more than 650,000 ballots from last November’s election as part of an investigation that he called a “fact-finding mission” to determine if they were fraudulently counted.
Atty. Gen. Rob Bonta, the state’s top law enforcement official, has sharply criticized the probe, which he called “unprecedented in both scope and scale.”
In a March 4 letter to the sheriff, Bonta said the seizure of the ballots “sets a dangerous precedent and will only sow distrust in our elections.” He threatened to seek legal recourse if Bianco does not halt his investigation.
Bianco said Friday that his investigators are looking into allegations by a local citizens group that “did their own audit” and found that the county’s tally was falsely inflated by more than 45,000 votes — a claim that local election officials have emphatically rejected.
Here is what we know.
Why were ballots taken?
According to Bonta’s office, Bianco’s department on Feb. 26 took about 1,000 boxes of ballot materials in Riverside County related to the November election for Proposition 50, which temporarily redrew the state’s congressional districts to favor Democrats in response to partisan redistricting in Republican states, including Texas.
Bianco said that it’s his “constitutional duty” to investigate a potential crime and that he is not trying to change the election results.
The investigation includes all of the ballots cast in the county, where Proposition 50 passed with 56% of the vote, a margin of more than 82,000 ballots. Statewide, it passed with 64% of the vote, a margin of more than 3.3 million ballots.
Bianco said he had been contacted by “a group of citizen volunteers” that said it performed an audit finding that 45,896 more ballots were counted than were cast. He did not name the group, but the allegations match those made by a group called the Riverside Election Integrity Team.
In a February presentation to the Riverside County Board of Supervisors, Registrar of Voters Art Tinoco disputed the group’s allegations and said they were based on a misunderstanding of raw data that had not been fully processed.
The actual discrepancy, Tinoco said, was 103 votes — a variance of 0.016%.
How did the sheriff get the ballots?
Bianco said his department served the registrar with a warrant “approved and signed by a judge” on Feb. 9.
According to Bonta’s office, an additional warrant was issued on Feb. 23. Bianco said the warrants are now sealed.
In the March 4 letter to Bianco, the attorney general said he had “serious concerns” about whether the sheriff had probable cause to seize the election materials.
Bonta questioned whether Bianco had concealed information from the magistrate judge who approved the warrants, including details from the registrar’s analysis of the citizen group’s allegations.
An official from Bonta’s office told The Times that the attorney general “found out in the middle of the week that [Bianco] was going to execute the warrants on a Friday.” Bonta’s office asked the sheriff to slow down and share information about the investigation, but “instead of waiting, he actually moved it up” and seized the ballots sooner than planned, said the official, who would only speak on background.
Bianco said a Riverside County Superior Court judge ordered the appointment of a special master to oversee the ballot count. His investigators had already begun counting, but the tally would start over under the court’s guidance, Bianco said.
The ballots would have soon been destroyed
California law requires county officials to keep election materials — including ballots and voter identification envelopes — for 22 months for elections involving a federal office and for six months for all other contests.
The materials must be sealed and then destroyed at the end of the retention period.
The Proposition 50 election took place on Nov. 4, so the ballots are scheduled to be destroyed in May.
Why investigate now?
Political observers say that Bianco — a leading gubernatorial candidate — appears to be vying for attention from President Trump and his supporters.
Kim Nalder, a political science professor and director of the Project for an Informed Electorate at Sacramento State, said the investigation appears to be “an electoral ploy.”
“At this stage in the election, most voters haven’t really tuned into the gubernatorial race, and there are a ton of candidates,” she said. “People who don’t know his background will know now. This is clear signaling.”
Trump has repeatedly called on the federal government to “nationalize” state-run elections. He remains fixated on his 2020 election loss and has falsely claimed widespread fraud.
In January, the FBI raided the elections office in Fulton County, Ga., seizing 2020 presidential election records. And this month, the Republican leader of Arizona’s state Senate said he had handed over 2020 election records to the FBI, complying with a federal grand jury subpoena for records related to a controversial audit of the election in Maricopa County.
Bianco is an outspoken Trump supporter.
A poll released last week by UC Berkeley’s Institute of Governmental Studies and co-sponsored by The Times showed Bianco and conservative commentator Steve Hilton leading the crowded field of gubernatorial candidates by slim margins, with the Democratic vote split among multiple candidates in a left-leaning state.
The top two vote getters, regardless of party, will advance to the November election.
Bianco said the investigation was “not a recount” for Proposition 50 and had nothing to do with his campaign for governor.
Animated Australian sensation “Bluey” has arrived in Disneyland, and the titular anthropomorphic pastel-coated canine has come ready to play. And dance. And to race some “barky boats.”
The Walt Disney Co. first teased that the Blue Heeler puppy and her younger sister Bingo would be coming to the Anaheim theme park in 2024. Bluey is now the star of a performance-focused takeover of the park’s Fantasyland Theatre, which officially opened Sunday.
Two shows, games and spontaneous dance parties are hallmarks of the experience, as Disneyland’s live entertainment team sought to translate the show’s particular broadcast-based appeal to the real world.
“Bluey” works because it’s charmed children and grown-ups alike, emphasizing imaginative parenting skills as much as it does Bluey’s playful spirit. Though only about seven minutes, each core “Bluey” episode unfolds patiently, often centered on make-believe, wonder and childlike ingenuity. Subtle life lessons, such as cooperation, understanding one’s self-worth, overcoming a fear of the unknown and much more, dot seemingly simple scenarios.
In many episodes, Bluey’s mom (Chilli) and dad (Bandit) indulge in their daughters’ penchant to play pretend, so much so that a friend of mine with a young girl joked that she needed to watch the show to learn how to be a better mom.
I arrived at “Bluey’s Best Day Ever!” as a childless columnist, and yet I came away enchanted by what Disneyland’s live entertainment team, led by Susana Tubert, had concocted. It’s a little silly and corny, yes, but manages to vary the tempo and can even tug at one’s heartstrings by showing the bond between siblings.
Theme park fare, especially when aimed at a preschool set, tends to fall back on high-energy, photo-op-based treatments, and while there’s plenty of amped-up goofiness here, “Bluey’s Best Day Ever!” understands that’s not why the series was the most-streamed program in 2025, according to data from research firm Nielsen.
Two core shows are featured in the experience, and some “Bluey” regulars make an appearance. The overbearing, bratty hand-puppet Unicorse, for instance, plays key roles in launching each performance. Set to play continuously throughout the day, with breaks for Bluey and Bingo to appear on stage and dance or play with youngsters, each has a slightly different tone and feel.
One emphasizes an adventure story, its themes encouraging Bluey to flash some bravery and dispel stereotypes. The other takes a lighter touch, with some of the softer, almost ballad-like songs from the show, such as “Rain (Boldly in the Pretend),” highlighted, seeking to emphasize the bond between Bluey and Bingo. Here, I thought of Bluey’s more tender moments — those, for instance, that emphasize becoming comfortable with growing older and letting go.
“Bluey’s Best Day Ever!” features live music, puppets and dance breakouts.
(Mark Potts / Los Angeles Times)
“We try to hit the humor, the play — shared play — and some of the more profound experiences that these characters go through,” Tubert says. “At the end of the second show, you’ll see a moment that is really quite beautiful. It’s a tribute to sisterhood, and how these two characters of Bluey and Bingo connect with one another.”
While one can certainly sit in the Fantasyland Theatre’s stands and simply take in the two shows, there are plenty of moments geared at getting audiences moving. Dances, for instance, may mimic animal behaviors, or reference popular moments from the series, such as getting grannies to floss.
A nod to the attention-seeking fairies — here, less Tinker Bell and more a metaphor for being noticed — inspires a “Riverdance”-like breakout. The five-piece, brass-heavy band gets a workout when Bluey’s impossible-to-control toy Chattermax has a cameo. The squawking plaything can test even Bluey’s patience.
Throughout, performers walk a line between teaching the maneuvers to the crowd and getting lost in the moment themselves. The challenge for Disney choreographer Taylor Worden was to create dance moves that also doubled as audience encouragement.
Spin, for instance, like a flower in the wind, or lightly snap your fingers to recall the sound of rain. Bounce with your hands in front of you as if you’re driving a car down a rocky street, or put your hand above your head and try for an elegant, ballerina-inspired twirl.
“It actually was letting go of all of those technical things that I’ve learned and letting that inner child come out,” Worden says. “As imaginative as Bluey and Bingo are, I wanted to hone in on that. I want everybody to enjoy, have fun and play. Play is at the forefront of everything. It’s so easy to get set in our ways, and even as an adult, it’s so hard to actually play nowadays. This has been such an experience to get to a childlike state.”
“Bluey’s Best Day Ever!” references many show moments from the series, including one with nods to the fairies.
(Mark Potts / Los Angeles Times)
There’s more, however, to “Bluey’s Best Day Ever!” than the two performances. The Fantasyland Theatre has been outfitted with pop-up installations. Some are purely photo ops, such as an opportunity for little ones to take a class photo with Bluey and her pals, while others aim to inspire exploration, such as a mini gnome village or fairy garden.
Taken as a whole, the feel is something of a fair, like hanging out with Bluey and Bingo at a backyard barbecue. The theater’s walk-up food window is serving pizza-inspired baked potatoes, a colored chocolate pretzel meant to mimic an asparagus pretzel wand, and more.
There’s also a place to race some “barky boats.” In the show, barky boats is a game that takes place on a tiny stream with tree bark, but there’s no water here. Instead, look for a track in a nook above the seating area, where one can race wooden blocks affixed with wheels — think Pinewood Derby — down a track painted to mimic a waterway. Throughout the theater, the colors are springlike and muted, pastels that are lightly bright and storybook-inspired. Even the dance costumes adopt this soft, crayon-like color palette.
“Bluey’s Best Day Ever!” at the Disneyland Resort invites audience participation.
(Mark Potts / Los Angeles Times)
“The color palette works perfectly with the set,” says Trevor Rush, a manager with costume design and development. “Lots of pastel colors. ‘Bluey,’ that world, focuses very much in that primary world. You won’t see a lot of black represented.”
“Bluey’s Best Day Ever!” does not currently have an end date, but is expected to be a Disneyland staple throughout the spring and summer seasons, with showtimes currently set for the late morning and early afternoons. For Tubert, who has an extensive background in theater, “Bluey’s Best Day Ever!” is meant to highlight the theme park as a place of play, where one can be a bit silly, and maybe even a little vulnerable.
“There’s a nonjudgmental safe space that we’ve created in ‘Bluey’s Best Day Ever!’ that invites everyone to feel uninhibited and the joy of playfulness,” Tubert says.
As Ramadan, the Islamic holy month of fasting, prayer, and reflection, entered its second week, specifically on March 5, terrorists from the Islamic State West Africa Province (ISWAP) attacked multiple military positions in Borno State, northeastern Nigeria, in a single night.
The attacks killed at least 16 soldiers and officers. The following day, a suicide car bomb detonated near Njimya village inside Sambisa Forest, forcing Nigerian troops to retreat.
That same week, Nigeria’s Minister of Defence, General Christopher Musa, convened a closed-door security meeting with President Bola Tinubu at the Presidential Villa in Abuja. When he came out, his explanation for the rise in attacks was unusually direct.
“As usual with the terrorists during the Ramadan period,” he told journalists, “they feel when they die, they are going to heaven, so they are ready to commit any offence or get killed because they believe there is a reward.”
He assured Nigerians that security forces had adjusted their strategies. “You can see in the past few days we’ve taken over those locations. We’ve killed their commanders and taken over their assets. We’ll continue to do more,” he said.
The assurance arrived against a backdrop of twelve confirmed attacks on Nigerian military bases since January 2025 — eleven of them in Borno State alone.
However, the violence did not stop.
On March 17, three suspected suicide bombings rocked Maiduguri, killing at least 23 people and wounding more than 100 others. The military said the attacks were carried out by “suspected Boko Haram terrorists”. Earlier, on March 6, terrorists from Jama’atu Ahlussunnah Liddaawati Wal Jihad (JAS), also known as Boko Haram, attacked Ngoshe in Borno’s Gwoza Local Government Area (LGA), abducting over 300 people and killing more than a hundred.
The real question is whether Ramadan genuinely drives this violence, or whether it merely overlaps with a war that was already escalating. HumAngle’s analysis of Armed Conflict Location and Event Data (ACLED)’s five-year data shows the answer is both.
But only one part of that answer is getting worse.
Sacred month recast as a season of war
Just as it encourages insurgents to migrate to Africa, the Islamic State, ISWAP’s parent organisation, has long designated Ramadan as what its propaganda formally frames as a “season of jihad and harvest”.
The ideological foundation reaches back to events central to Muslim memory.
Prophet Muhammad waged his first major battle, the Battle of Badr, in 624 CE, during Ramadan. The conquest of Mecca in 630 CE also fell within the month.
For ordinary Muslims, these are historical moments shaped by circumstances. For jihadist organisations, they are annual instructions.
While mainstream Islam understands Ramadan as a month of fasting, prayer, and restraint, jihadist ideology inverts this completely. In their reading, violence is not a departure from religion — it is its highest expression. For them, history is more than a context; it is a whole calendar.
JAS was the first Nigerian jihadi organisation to work from this theology, though inconsistently. Its former leader, Abubakar Shekau, was unpredictable. During his time, attacks came when opportunity appeared, not when doctrine demanded.
ISWAP, which split from JAS in 2016, partly over Shekau’s methods, brought a different discipline. Trained by Islamic State commanders who operate on fixed ideological cycles, ISWAP insurgents do not treat Ramadan as one month among twelve. They treat it as a deadline. For them, the 2026 attacks were deliverables.
What the data shows and what it doesn’t
Between 2021 and early 2026, Nigeria recorded 20,317 violent incidents involving armed groups: battles, explosions, and attacks on civilians, according to ACLED. Of these, 1,774 occurred during the months of Ramadan. That is roughly one in every twelve incidents nationally occurring in a month that lasts one in twelve months. On the surface, there is no obvious spike.
The total number of annual attacks also climbed sharply, from 3,269 in 2021 to 5,242 in 2025, a 60 per cent rise in four years. Ramadan months tracked that general rise without breaking dramatically above it. When you count incidents per day rather than per month — which is fairer, since Ramadan is only 30 days — the Ramadan daily rate of 9.5 attacks only sits slightly below the non-Ramadan daily rate of 10.2. If anything, the country as a whole is marginally quieter during Ramadan than outside it.
Illustration: Akila Jibrin/HumAngle.
But that national picture hides a more important local one.
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Borno State alone accounts for 277 of Nigeria’s 1,774 Ramadan incidents — more than Zamfara and Kaduna combined, two states notorious for non-jihadi terrorism. Most of Borno’s violence traces to either ISWAP or JAS. And ISWAP’s Ramadan record tells a completely different story from the national trend.
In 2021, ISWAP recorded zero Ramadan attacks in the data. By 2022, that number rose to 7; by 2023, 16; by 2024, 12; and by 2025, 19. In the first three weeks of Ramadan in 2026, the figure had already reached 31, ISWAP’s highest Ramadan count on record as of the time of filing this report.
Every other major actor in the data, including communal militias from Kaduna, Zamfara, and Katsina, unidentified armed groups, and even the Nigerian military, shows a flat or inconsistent Ramadan pattern. ISWAP alone shows a line pointing upward, year after year, specifically during the holy month.
What does this mean at the national scale? ISWAP accounts for just 85 incidents across all Ramadan periods in the dataset — 4.8 per cent of all Ramadan violence in Nigeria. The majority of other attacks during Ramadan are carried out by non-jihadi terrorists, communal fighters, and unidentified groups with no relationship to the Islamic calendar whatsoever.
From the data, we can deduce that Nigeria’s broad Ramadan violence problem is a governance crisis. But ISWAP’s Ramadan violence problem is an ideological one — and it is the only one that is systematically growing.
The tactical evolution
What distinguishes ISWAP’s Ramadan 2026 campaign from previous years is not its scale, but its method.
The group has launched at least twelve coordinated attacks on military bases and infrastructure across Borno State since January 2025 alone — a pace comparable only to its 2018-2019 operational tempo, the period when it briefly seized Baga, the Lake Chad headquarters of the Multinational Joint Task Force.
The March 5 night assault hit multiple locations simultaneously.
In April 2025, fighters detonated IEDs on bridges along the Biu-Damboa road, cutting off military reinforcements to a surrounded town. This is a deliberate encirclement strategy designed to isolate and starve bases of supply.
The weapons have changed, too. ISWAP insurgents have used armed drones, rocket-propelled grenades capable of destroying armoured vehicles, and suicide car bombs. These are not the weapons of an organisation improvising from local materials; they suggest sustained external supply chains.
Reports indicate that foreign insurgents have also entered and compounded the situation. At least ten have been killed in the past two years during engagements with regional security forces, including a Senegalese national previously resident in Sweden. Cameroonian forces also killed additional foreign insurgents in February 2026 near the border.
The internationalisation of ISWAP’s fighter pool reflects the Islamic State’s central documented effort to reinforce its West African province ahead of what its propaganda calls the Ramadan offensive season.
State-backed regional cooperation, meanwhile, has deteriorated. Niger’s withdrawal from the Multinational Joint Task Force in March 2025 disrupted intelligence-sharing arrangements and opened corridors along the Nigeria-Niger border, which ISWAP has since exploited.
The geography of an insurgency
The ACLED data draws a line across Nigeria. To the North East of it, in Borno and Yobe, jihadist Ramadan operations follow a doctrinal tempo. But in the northwestern region – in Zamfara, Kaduna, and Katsina – and in the North Central, Ramadan-period violence is driven by land disputes, ethnic militia competition, and criminal enterprise. These conflicts share a calendar window, not a cause.
The distinction matters. Strategies built to counter ISWAP’s religious framing will not reduce militia attacks or cult violence in other states. Operations designed for terror suppression in Zamfara are poorly suited to ISWAP’s organised, doctrinally motivated attacks in Borno. Nigeria is not fighting one war during Ramadan. It is fighting several actors with different motives.
The northern Muslim-majority states make this clearest. Kano recorded 18 Ramadan incidents across five years. Jigawa recorded five. Gombe, three. These are some of Nigeria’s largest Muslim populations.
However, the infrastructure that turns a holy month into an operational order – the preachers, the propaganda, the pipeline from grievance to detonation – is not spread across Muslim Nigeria. It is concentrated, almost entirely, around Lake Chad.
Overall, Nigeria’s conflict is worsening across all months, actors, and regions. A 60 per cent rise in four years is a trend that contains every other story, and Ramadan does not create that trajectory. But for one group, in one geography, with one ideology, it sharpens it. And that group is growing faster, fighting harder, and planning more carefully than it was this time last year.
Seattle Storm forward Nneka Ogwumike (3), president of the WNBA players’ union, said for the first time, player salaries will be tied to a meaningful share of league revenue.
(Lindsey Wasson / Associated Press)
The league and players association have not made the terms public yet, but the salary cap will start at $7 million, up from $1.5 million in 2025, and the supermax will start at $1.4 million, up from $249,244 in 2025, a person with knowledge of negotiations not authorized to discuss them publicly told The Times. ESPN was the first to report the figures.
The total salary cap will jump by around 4.64 times the previous amount. The super maximum salary will be elevated by 5.61 times the previous amount. It means the top players will be eligible for larger raises than the league’s middle class.
The average salary will be $600,000, a bump from the previous average of $120,000, and the minimum salary will be more than $300,000, up from $66,079.
“For the first time, player salaries are tied to a truly meaningful share of league revenue, driving exponential growth in the salary cap, increasing average compensation beyond half a million dollars and raising the standard across facilities, staffing and support,” union president Nneka Ogwumike told reporters.
The main sticking point during negotiations was revenue sharing, and that number will be around 20% for the entirety of the multi-year deal. The league had previously offered 15.5%, a source told The Times, and players went down from their 40% ask to around 26% at the end of February, and then reached the agreement around 20% on Wednesday morning. The Athletic first reported the shift in revenue sharing figures.
Players had been negotiating for a percentage of overall revenue without factoring in expenses while the WNBA was seeking sharing tied to net revenue, mirroring the NBA’s structure that deducts expenses before sharing 50% of profits. The players secured a gross revenue deal, which gives them a cut of WNBA revenue without factoring in expenses, a person with knowledge of the deal not authorized to discuss it publicly told The Times.
“This deal is going to be transformational, and you’ll see all the details hopefully soon,” WNBPA vice president Breanna Stewart told reporters on Wednesday. “But it’s gonna build and help create a system where everybody is getting exactly what they deserve and more from on the court and off the court aspects.”
It’s a political gambit that President Trump seems to think will pay off: Let the federal government grind to a halt.
“Our country needs a good ‘shutdown’ in September to fix mess,” he tweeted last week.
The unconventional proclamation from the unconventional president raised concern from both sides of the aisle.
His comments came as lawmakers agreed to a $1-trillion bipartisan budget bill that funds the federal government through September, which means another battle and potential government shutdown looms this fall.
Under a shutdown, thousands of federal employees would go without pay and national parks would close, among other things. In short: It will upset a lot of people.
Here’s a look at the key players and fallout from recent government shutdowns.
October 2013
How it happened
It’s simple — the battle over healthcare closed the government.
That year, House Republicans, angered by President Obama’s Affordable Care Act, repeatedly offered resolutions during budget negotiations that would have defunded the healthcare law. These resolutions were rejected by the Democratic-controlled Senate, which led to a budget impasse.
The government shut down for more than two weeks after Congress was unable to agree on a budget for the new fiscal year, leaving nearly 800,000 federal employees out of work without pay.
On the political front, the ramifications went both ways.
Members of the bipartisan budget conference Sen. Jeff Sessions (R-Ala.), Rep. Paul D. Ryan (R-Wis.), Sen. Patty Murray (D-Wash.) and Rep. Chris Van Hollen (D-Md.) speak to the media the day after Congress voted to ending a 16-day government shutdown. (Win McNamee / Getty Images)
(Win McNamee / Getty Images)
Winners
Sen. Harry Reid (D-Nev.)
(Alex Wong / Getty Images)
The then-Senate majority leader was a vocal Democratic critic of Republican-led efforts to defund President Obama’s healthcare bill. He relentlessly castigated Republicans for their tactics to defund Obamacare, which ultimately led to the shutdown.
“You know with a bully you cannot let them slap you around, because they slap you around today, they slap you five or six times tomorrow. We are not going to be bullied,” Reid told reporters.
In the end, Reid came out of the shutdown with a bolstered reputation as a fighter of Democratic causes and earned plaudits from Obama.
Obamacare
(Gary Friedman/Los Angeles Times)
At the time, the botched rollout of the healthcare law drew daily headlines. Web sites for healthcare exchanges didn’t work and the administration had few answers. Still, the healthcare law was able to remain intact and public scorn focused on Republicans as the government remained shuttered for 16 days and federal employees nationwide stayed home. Republicans thought their efforts would prove fruitful.
Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.)
(T.J. Kirkpatrick / Getty Images)
In the months and weeks leading to the shutdown, McCain served as a voice of reason for the Republicans. He insisted that it would be unwise for the party to allow a shutdown over Obamacare.
“I campaigned in 2012 all over this country for months: ‘Repeal and replace Obamacare.’ That was not the mandate of the voters. If they wanted to repeal Obamacare, the 2012 election would have been probably significantly different,” he said at the time.
Ultimately, his efforts faltered as Republicans charged ahead with efforts to defund Obamacare and the government shutdown.
Losers
House Speaker John A. Boehner (R-Ohio)
(Alex Wong / Getty Images)
He failed to rein in the most conservative grassroots wing of his party. Boehner was the middle man of sorts in negotiations between Democrats, moderate Republicans and conservative activists. Two years later, he resigned because of the strong opposition he faced from the Republican caucus.
Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas)
(Andrew Burton / Getty Images)
While Cruz raised his national profile as a staunch critic of Obamacare, he also made a lot of enemies. Weeks before the shutdown he delivered a 21-hour talkathon on the Senate floor, assailing the health care law — a move that drew scorn from Democrats and Republicans alike. Cruz’s vocal opposition to the law helped establish him as a force within the GOP grassroots and set him up for a presidential run in 2016.
Debbie Wasserman Schultz (D-Fla.)
(Carolyn Kaster / Associated Press)
(Carolyn Kaster / AP)
Public opinion polls consistently showed that Republicans were blamed for the government shutdown. Even so, the former Democratic National Committee chairwoman was unable to turn that into victory in the 2014 midterm. Many Democrats fault her leadership as a factor in the party’s sweeping losses in the midterm election.
November/ December 1995 and January 1996
How it happened
This battle over funding Medicare, public education and environmental initiatives pitted President Clinton against Republican House Speaker Newt Gingrich. It turned into the longest government shutdown in the country’s history. The shutdown came in two phases, with government services being shuttered from Nov. 14-19, 1995; then from Dec. 16 until Jan. 6, 1996. In total, the government closed for 27 days.
President Clinton and bipartisan leaders meet at the White House on Dec. 30, 1995, for talks on the federal budget. (Greg Gibson / Associated Press)
(GREG GIBSON / AP)
Winner
President Clinton
(Marcy Nighswander / Associated Press)
(Marcy Nighswander / AP)
He stood firm in his battle with the Republican-controlled Congress. Clinton wanted a budget that increased expenditures on, among other things, Medicare and public education, but Republicans wanted to slow government spending. This led to months of negotiations — the government closing, opening, then closing again — and through it all, Clinton’s public approval ratings dipped only slightly. He easily won reelection in November 1996.
Loser
House Speaker Newt Gingrich (R-Ga.)
(J. Scott Applewhite / Associated Press)
(J.SCOTT APPLEWHITE / AP)
After sweeping gains in the 1994 midterm election, Republicans were emboldened and ready for a showdown.
“He can run the parts of the government that are left, or he can run no government,” Gingrich told reporters weeks before the first shutdown. “Which of the two of us do you think worries more about the government not showing up?”
News reports at the time also noted that Gingrich was open to a shutdown after Clinton made him exit the rear of Air Force One after the two attended the funeral of slain Israeli leader Yitzhak Rabin. The comments made the Republican leader appear petty. In the end, after weeks of a shutdown, Republicans ultimately conceded to Clinton and Democrats.
May 2017
What’s happening now
Last week Congress passed a $1-trillion budget that funds the federal government through September. However, the budget bill does not allocate funds for Trump’s much-promised border wall. It’s the first bipartisan piece of legislation of the Trump presidency and funding for his signature proposal is nowhere to be found. The bill, however, does have funding for border security and increases to defense spending — both of which were touted as wins by the Trump administration.
Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.), flanked by Sen. Cory Gardner (R-Colo.), Sen. John Barrasso (R-Wyo.) and Sen. John Thune (R-S.D.), speaks to the media about the recent spending bill that averted a government shutdown. (Aaron P. Bernstein / Getty Images)
(Aaron P. Bernstein / Getty Images)
Key players
President Trump
It’s clear Trump does not like to lose and does not like bad headlines. By all accounts, Trump and his policies did not come out on top in the budget deal.
Trump blamed the Senate rules, which require 60 votes to pass most legislation, for the exclusion of key priorities from the spending bill.
This has in turn led some conservatives to push for Trump to support a government shutdown if Congress does not heed his policies this fall. Trump has always trusted his gut instinct in politics — so far it’s seemed to benefit him — and his comments will be closely watched this fall.
House Speaker Paul D. Ryan (R-Wis.)
(J. Scott Applewhite / Associated Press)
He’s often had to stake out a position when Trump tweets. Indeed, this time was no different. Ryan alluded to Trump’s qualms with Senate rules.
“Look, we’ve got a long ways to go between now and September, but I share the president’s frustration,” Ryan told reporters. “What a lot of people in America don’t realize is appropriations bills, they take 60 votes to pass. They can be filibustered. So, all appropriations bills therefore have to be bipartisan because Democrats can always filibuster an appropriations bill. Having said all that, I feel very good about the wins that we got with the administration in this bill.”
Senate Minority Leader Charles E. Schumer (D-N.Y.)
(J. Scott Applewhite / Associated Press)
He’s Trump’s chief critic in Congress and warned the president that a government shutdown is not wise.
“The president’s threat to shut down the government in September is just a very, very bad idea because it would hurt so many average folks,” Schumer said recently. “I strongly urge my colleagues, and they have already … said they have no desire to shut down the government. That is not the way to govern. That is not the way to come up with bipartisan compromise.”
Voters
Public opinion is not on Trump’s side when it comes to talk about a government shutdown.
In a Politico/Morning Consult poll released in April, 65% of voters said that Congress should “take all necessary steps to avoid a government shutdown.”
Other polls show similar disapproval among voters toward a government shutdown.
The list of candidates running for Los Angeles city and school board offices is set, with a number of incumbents facing what could be competitive primary elections on June 2.
Fourteen Angelenos have qualified to run for mayor, including incumbent Karen Bass, City Councilmember Nithya Raman and former reality TV star Spencer Pratt.
Seven City Council incumbents face at least one challenger, while Councilmember Monica Rodriguez is running unopposed to represent her northeast San Fernando Valley district.
City Atty. Hydee Feldstein Soto is running against three opponents — deputy attorney general Marissa Roy, human rights attorney Aida Ashouri and Deputy Dist. Atty. John McKinney.
In the race for city controller, incumbent Kenneth Mejia will battle it out against Zach Sokoloff, who is on sabbatical from his job as senior vice president of asset management at Hackman Capital Partners.
For the last week and a half, workers at the City Clerk’s Office have been verifying the legitimacy of voter signatures submitted by the candidates, finishing the last batch on Friday.
Gathering the required 500 signatures is relatively easy in citywide races but harder in council and school board districts. Some candidates who submitted petitions by the March 4 deadline failed to qualify because some of their signatures were deemed invalid.
In each race, if no candidate gets more than 50% of the vote in June, the top two finishers will compete in a November runoff.
The field of 14 for mayor narrowed significantly from the roughly 40 who filed initial paperwork on Feb. 7. The qualifiers include a game streamer, a singer-songwriter and a tech entrepreneur, as well as government veterans like Asaad Alnajjar, a longtime engineer for the city. Rae Huang, a pastor and housing advocate, will also appear on the ballot.
Raman, a former Bass ally, shook up the race with her surprise entry, hours before the filing deadline.
A recent poll found that about 51% of Los Angeles voters are undecided on who they want for mayor. Bass led at 20%, followed by Pratt at just over 10% and Raman at slightly more than 9%, according to the Emerson College Polling/Inside California Politics poll.
Tech entrepreneur Adam Miller was supported by just over 4% of those polled, with Huang at about 3%.
In District 1, which stretches from Glassell Park and Highland Park to Chinatown and Pico Union, four challengers are looking to unseat City Councilmember Eunisses Hernandez. They are Maria Lou Calanche, a former Los Angeles Police Commissioner and founder of the nonprofit Legacy LA; Nelson Grande, an executive consultant and former president of Avenida Entertainment Group; Raul Claros, founder of CD1 Coalition, which organizes cleanup days; and Sylvia Robledo, a small-business owner and former council aide.
Councilmember Bob Blumenfield is terming out in District 3, leaving the race to represent the southwestern San Fernando Valley open to a newcomer. The three candidates are Timothy K. Gaspar, who founded a private insurance company; Barri Worth Girvan, a director of community affairs for an L.A. County supervisor; and Christopher Robert “C.R.” Celona, a tech entrepreneur.
In District 5, which includes Bel-Air, Westwood, Hancock Park and other West L.A. communities, Councilmember Katy Yaroslavsky faces two challengers: tenants rights attorney Henry Mantel and accountant Morgan Oyler.
With Councilmember Curren Price terming out in District 9, six candidates are vying to represent parts of downtown and South L.A. They are Jose Ugarte, who was formerly Price’s deputy chief of staff; Estuardo Mazariegos, a lead organizer at the Alliance of Californians for Community Empowerment; nonprofit director Elmer Roldan; entrepreneur Jorge Nuño; professor and therapist Martha Sánchez; and educator Jorge Hernandez Rosas.
Councilmember Traci Park, who represents the Westside communities of District 11, including Brentwood, Pacific Palisades and Venice, will face off against civil rights attorney Faizah Malik.
In District 13, which includes Hollywood and East Hollywood as well as parts of Silver Lake, Echo Park and Westlake, Councilmember Hugo Soto-Martínez is defending his seat against three challengers. They are Colter Carlisle, vice president of the East Hollywood Neighborhood Council; Dylan Kendall, an entrepreneur and founder of Grow Hollywood; and Rich Sarian, vice president of strategic initiatives for the Social District.
And in District 15, which includes San Pedro and other harbor-area communities as well as Watts, Councilmember Tim McOsker is running against community organizer Jordan Rivers, who is continuing his campaign after reports that he stabbed a neighbor when he was 12. Rivers said it was an “accident” that happened a decade ago.
Three seats are open on the Los Angeles Unified School District board.
In District 2, incumbent Rocío Rivas is being challenged by Raquel Zamora, an LAUSD teacher and attendance counselor.
In District 4, incumbent Nick Melvoin is facing off against Ankur Patel, director of outreach at the Hindu University of America.
District 5 school board member Kelly Gonez is running unopposed for her third term.
Zoe Markos, who appeared on Neighbours as an extra before landing a speaking role, has revealed what it’s really like working on the soap opera and let slip some backstage secrets
Dan Laurie Deputy Editor of Screen Time
09:00, 14 Mar 2026
Zoe Markos played Louisa Palamountain in Neighbours in 2025
An actress who previously on a huge soap opera has opened up on what it’s really like on set.
Neighbours first aired in 1985 and initially ended in 2022, however, the show was later revived by Amazon before its final cancellation in 2025.
Over its long history, the Australian serial drama launched the careers of global stars like Margot Robbie, Kylie Minogue, Russell Crowe, and Liam Hemsworth but what is it actually like to be on the set of Erinsborough?
Zoe Markos first joined Neighbours in 2012 as an extra before eventually landing a speaking role in 2025 as Louisa Palamountain and she’s now shared some behind-the-scenes secrets that viewers might not know.
Speaking to JoeFortune, Zoe explained: “The studio is literally Erinsborough, built to feel like a real town. Walking around, you genuinely feel like you’re in an actual town because of how well it’s been designed. The sets are much smaller than they look on TV.
“For example, when you’re pretending to make juice or cook something, none of the utensils actually work but it doesn’t matter because the illusion is perfect.
“What really blows me away is how much history is packed into those sets. Especially when I was involved on the production side, I got to see props, furniture, and chairs dating back to the 1980s, all carefully preserved.
“They even have old VHS tapes of episodes that haven’t been digitised yet. It’s incredible. I think most people don’t realise just how much history was made in that studio and on that show. It’s truly remarkable.”
Zoe went on to share some bizarre rules she had to follow on set, revealing: “You can’t actually talk, so you have to mime.
“For example, if you’re opposite someone or asked to have a conversation on set, you just can’t speak. It’s probably common on all shows, but in party scenes, for instance, they don’t play the music, so you have to dance without it. It can feel a bit awkward.
“Another thing is that you really have to be very quiet and not make any noise, which is kind of funny when you think about it. Those would probably be some of the little secrets about being on set that people don’t usually notice.”
Moving on to clothing, Zoe added: “As an extra, it depends on your role. If you are part of the main background, like a work guard or a specific set role, they usually provide your costume. If you are just a regular member of the community in a scene, they might give you clothes or accessories.
“If not, they will send a brief to your manager or directly to you if you do not have one, explaining what you can and cannot wear.
“Generally, they avoid patterns like polka dots or anything too busy. They prefer plain clothing with no logos, and you definitely cannot wear anything that could be copyrighted.”
For the latest showbiz, TV, movie and streaming news, go to the new **Everything Gossip** website
HomeNewsOil Underinvestment Could Hinder US’ Iran-Crisis Response: Here’s Why
No matter how the Iran war gets resolved, the US and other countries will be forced to reckon with a global oil market in complete disarray.
Underinvestment in the oil industry makes the current supply shock much riskier worldwide, industry experts say, forcing the US, the EU, and various Gulf countries into a scramble over where and how to extract.
Prior to the US’ attack on Iran on February 28, the situation had already been precarious. Iran basically controls the Strait of Hormuz, the world’s busiest oil shipping channel. Transportation through this channel is currently closed, despite President Donald Trump’s promise to keep it open. Regardless of how this situation resolves, the broader implications of structural underinvestment across the oil and gas value chain have exposed just how unstable the global energy infrastructure is.
“This is not your father’s energy sector anymore,” Adam Turnquist, Chief Technical Strategist for LPL Financial, says.
Essentially, there was a shift from “drill drill drill” to returning cash to shareholders through dividends and free cash flow, he explained. This change led to better stock performance and improved financial metrics, such as credit spreads and default swaps. But, Turnquist adds, “there’s evidence of under-investment.”
‘A Multi-Million-Barrel Disruption’
Recall the 2011‑2014 time frame when oil prices were above $100 per barrel. Major oil companies like ExxonMobil, Chevron Corp, BP plc, Shell plc and TotalEnergies SE enjoyed strong cash flows, allowing them to generate substantial profits and reward shareholders.
When oil prices collapsed between 2014 and 2016, institutional shareholders pushed hard for capital discipline instead of growth. Corporations, rather than drilling aggressively, returned troves of cash to investors via buybacks and dividends.
In 2023, alone, Exxon, Chevron, Shell, TotalEnergies, and BP returned a record $114 billion to shareholders — 76% higher than their average payouts.
“That translated into lower reinvestment rates, fewer long‑cycle megaproject sanctions, and a bias toward short‑cycle barrels, even as global demand continued to grow,” Benny Wong, Senior Energy Analyst at PitchBook, told Global Finance.
There was also an energy transition, and companies prioritized ESG (environmental, social, and governance) over long-term oil projects, leading major funds to reduce fossil fuel investments.
“The result is a thinner spare capacity buffer and a smaller pipeline of readily deployable projects, which limits the industry’s ability to backfill a sudden, multi‑million‑barrel disruption like the one arising from the Iran conflict,” Wong added.
Oil Prices Spike
So far, the shock is reverberating across the globe. Brent crude, the international benchmark, entered 2026 oversupplied, with forward prices in the $50s, according to Chas Johnston, CreditSights senior analyst.
On Monday, the price of Brent crude spiked to $119.50 per barrel—the highest it has been since the summer of 2022, when Russia invaded Ukraine.
“It’s nearly the same cadence,” Turnquist says, citing Bloomberg data. See the chart below.
West Texas Intermediate (WTI), the U.S. benchmark, also saw similar price spikes, briefly reaching $119.48 per barrel. By late Monday, prices fell back below $90 per barrel, following mixed signals from US leadership, including contradictory statements from Trump and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth about the conflict’s timeline.
And it could get worse, according to Wood Mackenzie, a consultancy firm for the energy sector. On Tuesday, the firm determined that $200 per barrel “is not outside the realms of possibility in 2026.”
To quell the panic, extreme measures are under consideration. The 32 member countries of the International Energy Agency (IEA) agreed on Wednesday to make 400 million barrels of oil from their emergency reserves available to the market to address the current disruption. That’s double the amount the IEA put into the market in 2022.
Over the weekend, Energy Secretary Chris Wright said the US could potentially release oil from its 400 million barrels of reserve to lower gas prices.
Trump subsequently confirmed that he would ease sanctions on certain countries to help reduce oil prices. This followed a recent 30-day waiver announced by US Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent on sanctions for Russian oil sales to India, due to global supply pressures.
Can Any Country Fill The Gap?
Further complicating matters, oil-producing countries like Bahrain and Kuwait declared “force majeure,” stopping production as storage nears capacity and exports falter. With Iran, Israel, and the U.S. each targeting energy infrastructure and the narrow Strait of Hormuz under threat, it remains unclear which alternative transport routes or supply sources could fill the gap.
Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates remain two key options because they hold most of OPEC’s effective spare capacity. However, analysts still question how much cushion truly exists and how long they can sustain it. Reports already suggest Saudi Arabia and the UAE have begun reducing output by several million barrels per day.
“In other words,” Wong says, “the buffer is meaningful but not unlimited, particularly if the disruption is prolonged or widens regionally.”
West African and Guyanese deepwater projects won’t quickly replace lost supply, either. However, they could strengthen global production over the medium to long term, Wong says. Guyana’s rapidly developing offshore sector, for example, could add more output in the coming years, though expansion will still take time.
Then there’s Namibia, which has had significant offshore discoveries in recent years. BP, Shell and TotalEnergies are among the companies that have set up shop there, but as Wong puts it: “Commercial production is still a few years away.”
US Shale Is Another Issue
As for the US, a rapid ramp now requires more than just a strong price signal.
“Producers are operating with much tighter capital discipline, and scaling quickly requires having available rigs, completion crews, frac sand and pipeline takeaway capacity, all of which can act as bottlenecks,” Wong says.
CreditSights’ Johnston agrees.
“The ability for US producers to respond is also quite limited, because it still takes six to nine months to bring new production online, even from the short-cycle shale industry,” he says.
Until then, the stakes remain high. Wood Mackenzie projects roughly 15 million barrels per day (mbpd) of Gulf oil exports could be lost if the Strait of Hormuz remains disrupted. They note that alternatives like US shale and uncompleted wells might only add a few hundred thousand barrels per day over months — not even close to filling the 15 million‑barrel gap.
The circumstances are enough to give analysts pause, given the cavalier attitude coming from the US.
Turnquist echoed a point his firm’s chief macro strategist made during a recent call: “You can’t shake the hornet’s nest and then put it back away.” Once geopolitical issues ignite, they rarely resolve quickly, he said, pointing to wars in Iraq, Afghanistan and Russia-Ukraine as examples.
“There’s really no concrete signs that it’s going to end anytime soon,” he added.
I’m standing at 3,330 metres on a tall metal platform with a heavy harness strapped to my back, gazing in awe at the snow-covered Matterhorn, Mont Blanc and the Dents du Midi ridge. It’s a gorgeous distraction while I wait to be clipped in and launched down the valley at 120 kilometres an hour. This is the Mont Fort zip line, the highest in the world. I sit with my legs dangling over the precipice, then with a stomach-churning clunk the mechanism releases and I speed through the air over tiny figures skiing below. It’s exhilarating and over too soon. I’m grinning ear to ear, my lungs full of high mountain air.
I’m in Verbier, one of Switzerland’s most famous ski resorts. With access to 410km of pristine piste, excellent alpine food and a legendary après-ski culture, what’s not to like? Well, for many, the price. Verbier has long been favoured by A-listers and royalty, with eye-watering prices to match. Happily, there is a way to enjoy the same slopes, with much less of a financial hit. Stay in the village of La Tzoumaz (pronounced La Tsoo-mah), where accommodation can be half the price of Verbier, and you’re one chairlift away from the entire Four Valleys ski area. And as I discover, this “back door” resort has plenty of its own charms too.
Ailsa Sheldon in La Tzoumaz. Photograph: Ailsa Sheldon
La Tzoumaz has a year-round population of little more than 300 and, despite the influx of skiers, retains a charming village feel. Its name comes from the word “tzoumer” in Valaisan dialect, meaning “the place where you rest”, and it’s a good fit. I’m staying at Le Papill’on, a boutique hotel run by Ana and Pico. The 12 cosy, wood-panelled bedrooms are above the restaurant, some with views of the mountains, and the welcome is warm and genuine. Breakfast is generous, with Ana’s pastel de nata alongside eggs, cheese and meats, plus yoghurt, granola, fruit and cakes. Perfect fuel for a day on the slopes. Ski hire and the gondola are just two minutes’ walk away.
While Verbier access is the bonus, there’s also wonderful skiing at La Tzoumaz. A combination of north- and south-facing slopes gives excellent snow coverage over miles of blue, red and black runs. There are four chairlifts, including the swish new “télémixte” lift (both gondolas and chairlifts), which opened its second phase last December, improving the connection between Verbier and La Tzoumaz. A permanent “funslope” has ramps, jumps and tunnels, some of which play music – definitely not just for kids. There are two top ski schools: I spend a day with instructors from Ecole Suisse de Ski and another with Tzoum’Evasion and find all the guides unfailingly positive and professional. A beginner in our group progresses from grappling with bindings to snowplough turns in two days. The dedicated “Babylift” area is ideal for new skiers.
I’m here to ski, but it would be remiss to skip the other activities on offer. While the zip line was a definite highlight, I also try La Tzoumaz’s popular luge attraction. At 10km, it’s one of Europe’s longest sledging tracks, with a vertical descent of 711m. I crash into the sides (definitely wear a helmet), career off the edge into a snowdrift, and take a wrong turn requiring a long walk back, pulling my sledge. Speed demons will love it: I’m glad I tried it (but also, never again).
Ice-skating in La Tzoumaz is more my style, and the free ice rink makes this an easy evening activity. In peak season there’s a bar beside the rink, and you can rent skates from the sports shop over the road. We have a go ateisstock,a game similar to boules but played on ice. Best attempted with a mulled wine to warm the hands. At the base of the ski station there’s a little swimming pool, free to use with your lift pass. At Riddes, the village at the bottom of the slopes, I pop in to the Maye winery to taste some Swiss wines.
La Tzoumaz also has ice rinks and a luge track. Photograph: David Noton/Alamy
Food on the mountains is hearty skiing fuel. L’Inkontro is a smart new restaurant on Les Attelas slope, with incredible views over the valley from its large, sunny terrace. It merges Valaisan cuisine with Italian classics; the baked tortellini gratin powers my afternoon nicely. Chez Simon is a cosy alpine hut, easy to spend a few hours in. Croûtes are popular here, an alpine version of cheese on toast that’s so generous it’s served in a bowl to catch all the melted cheese. For serious mountain hunger, the croûte royalehas added ham, egg and pickles. Stop for coffee at Croix-de-Cœur to drink in panoramic views over the Rhône valley, La Tzoumaz and Verbier.
Although it’s an easy ski between Verbier and La Tzoumaz, by road it’s a little more challenging. Currently you have to go down the mountain to Riddes and back up, and the buses don’t run all night, so it’s better to enjoy après-ski back in La Tzoumaz to avoid risking an expensive taxi. Evenings in La Tzoumaz are more relaxed than Verbier, but a lot of fun. For après-ski, Bar Des Etablons towards the end of the slopes is a lively and unpretentious meeting point with upbeat tunes. The sledging route ends here, and the free ski bus picks up outside.
Down in the village, near the ski lifts, Le Central bar is the best spot to wind down, with comfy leather sofas and beautiful big windows overlooking the valley. It opened last December, run by pro-snowboarder Xavier de Le Rue and friends. There are pizzas to share, local beers and a good wine list. For restaurants head to Le Papill’on for garlic snails or raclette, L’Auberge La Tzoumaz for fondue or local fish, and at L’Trappeur the house speciality, la potence de bœuf – beef served “on the gallows”, skewered on a metal structure then flame-grilled at the table. A well-stocked supermarket makes self-catering easy too.
While skiing in Switzerland may never be cheap, La Tzoumaz makes its most famous ski area feel far more attainable. With affordable accommodation, seamless access to the Four Valleys, and a friendly village atmosphere, it’s proof you don’t need to stay in the spotlight to enjoy the very best of the Alps.
The trip was provided by Verbier 4Vallées. Travel to Riddes by train from Geneva (with a change in Martigny) then catch a bus to La Tzoumaz. Hôtel Le Papill’onhas rooms from 97 Swiss francs (£89) B&B a person, based on two sharing. Adult ski hire at T-Shopstarts at £167for six days. An adult one-day ski pass for theVerbier 4Vallées sector isaround £85, adult six-day pass£380.More information at verbier.ch
It’s a Wednesday afternoon in West Hollywood, one day after the city was blanketed in a light coating of rain. The midday sun has only just begun to peek through the overcast sky.
Its beams are slightly more vivid through the large windows of the Edition, which sit at the edge of a secluded area of the hotel. Jamie Hewlett sits at a wooden table stirring a cappucino with a black straw.
“I mean, who drinks out of a straw when you get past the age of 10, right?” he says, jokingly. After 25 years of bouncing around the globe with Gorillaz, he’s still longing for a jet lag cure. Coffee can only do so much.
Leaning back in his chair, in a suave, all-beige outfit, he starts to grin while recounting his day in Los Angeles.
“We’ve been walking around the streets having a very rare morning off together. We bought some weed, which is always one of the most wonderful things about this state,” he recalls.
He also finds humor in L.A.’s obsession with driver-less food delivery.
“Every time we saw a post-bot driving down the road, we stopped and doffed our caps. … In the future, when robots take over and destroy us all, they’ll remember me for being nice to the post-bot!”
It’s been a long few weeks for Hewlett and bandmate Damon Albarn as they roll out the group’s latest endeavor, “The Mountain,” out Friday. Just one day prior, “House of Kong” opened at Rolling Greens in downtown L.A. The exhibition, initially intended as a Gorillaz 25th anniversary event, has landed on the West Coast.
“I think with this album, we were both quite happy with what we’ve done … and feeling like it was an honest, genuine adventure that was taken, and what we’ve given is something that we’re proud of,” Hewlett says.
He and Albarn are also artists at heart and in nature. It’s why Gorillaz continues to look and sound the way it does, and why the group is consistently pushing the agenda of how a nonexistent band can still resonate with a group of fans who are very much alive.
“The process, the research, the putting it together, the making of it is really fun, and the delivery of it is kind of like a mini death syndrome,” he says. “What you’re required to do is get straight on to the next thing, and you won’t have any time to waste thinking about the fact that the completion of that left you feeling numb, because then you’re excited about the next project.”
He adds that Albarn, similarly, is like a “kid in a sweet shop” when he’s making music: “The moment it’s finished, there’s no interest in discussing it.”
Even so, the album is undeniably their most intimate in recent history.
Perhaps it’s something to do with the experience of grief that the two lived through, losing their fathers only 10 days apart and just before a trip to India. Or maybe it’s a testament to the process behind “The Mountain,” which saw Hewlett and Albarn travel the country, spending more time together there than during previous album productions.
“It’s weird, because I’m born 10 days after Damon… the idea presented itself, and at that point we were going down that road, and there was no avoiding it… It wasn’t even necessarily going to be a Gorillaz project; ‘Let’s go together and see what happens.’ ”
“I completely fell in love with the place and got into their whole concept of death,” Hewlett says of India.
(Blair Brown)
Hewlett says the album was also inspired by his late mother-in-law, Amo, who was diagnosed with cancer in 2010 and opted for Eastern medicine instead of chemo.
“She said, ‘No, I’m going to India.’ … She was into Ayurveda medicine and knew this doctor, and she spent three months in India [being treated]. When she came back, her cancer had gone. In France, they call her in for a checkup, and they give her a scan. They say, ‘Where’s your cancer gone?’ She said, ‘I’ve been in India,’ and they say, ‘We don’t believe in that.’ ”
It wouldn’t be until 2022 when Jamie visited India himself, under unfortunate circumstances. He was in Belgrade with Albarn shooting the second video from “Cracker Island” when he received a call from his brother-in-law, who said that Amo had just had a stroke.
“They said they saved her, but she went into a coma. I was on a plane to India as quickly as I could get a visa, which wasn’t easy at the Indian Embassy in London,” he said. “I spent eight weeks with my wife, Emma, in Jaipur, dealing with that, in a public hospital during a pneumonia epidemic… having that experience that was traumatic; it should have been a reason for me to never go back to India ever again.”
But during his time there, it became clear that being in the country had the opposite effect on him.
“I completely fell in love with the place and got into their whole concept of death. … We met a lot of families who became friends of ours because we were at the hospital every day,” he continued.
“A loved one who was dying, who was in tears because they knew they were going to die, but also there was a celebration about the fact that they were coming back,” he said. “Their understanding of the cycle of life is a lot more appealing to me.”
Shortly after, Hewlett returned to Europe and went straight to Albarn with an idea: “I said, ‘We have to go to India, it’s so amazing,’ and of all the places he’d been around the world, that was the place he still hadn’t been. So we decided to go.”
Albarn first visited India in May 2024 alongside Hewlett.
(Blair Brown)
“The Mountain” is, as expected, heavily doused with notions on the concept of death. Inevitably, the question arose: “How can we make an album about death that would leave the listener feeling optimistic?”
But Gorillaz has always been a group entwined with different, equally heavy topics. On “Plastic Beach,” they tackle the climate crisis and human extinction. The enchanting and rhythmic “Dirty Harry” also examines war and soldiers, with its single cover even giving a nod to Stanley Kubrick’s “Full Metal Jacket.”
The tone Gorillaz achieved on “The Mountain” is an extension of that.
“The Happy Dictator,” released as the lead single in September, parodies megalomaniac Saparmurat Niyazov’s approach to governing in Turkmenistan. As Sparks produce stunning vocals, singing “I am the one to give you life again,” Gorillaz fictional frontman 2-D (voiced by Albarn) breaks in to pronounce, “No more bad news!”
Equally as enjoyable is “The God of Lying,” the third single released, featuring Idles. Joe Talbot hauntingly asks, “Do you love your blessed father? / Anoint by fear of death / Do you feel the lies creep on by? / As soft as baby’s breath.” It’s a bouncy song that could have been pulled straight out of the band’s self-titled debut, all the way back from 2001.
Even so, it feels criminal to compare it with the band’s earlier catalog, given that Hewlett and Albarn are artists in “perpetual motion.” This has resulted in some of their most sonically and visually impressive work — with styles and genres consistently shifting — but also asks the listener to be willing to evolve with them.
“I think art has to be an evolution,” Hewlett explains. “I know what David Hockney does at 88 years old, still smoking and drinking his red wine. He wakes up every day … and he does something new, and then the next day he does something new, and that promotes longevity. He’s never bored.”
Gorillaz’s exhibition in “House of Kong” seems to be contradictory in its existence, more or less serving as a retrospective from a band that not only doesn’t like to look in the rearview, but likely has it taped over altogether.
But it’s also an organic experience, teeming with originality, despite its familiar marketing as an “immersive experience.” It’s more comparable to something out of a Disney or Universal theme park than another gallery that merely projects video onto a wall.
“Down here at Kong, we are creating something that … only really existed in Jamie’s drawings and animations and in the minds of the fans of Gorillaz,” says Stephen Gallagher of Block9. He served as creative director on the project but has worked with the band since 2018 and previously collaborated with Banksy for his “The Walled Off Hotel” and “Dismaland.”
“I’d had this idea already: ‘What about if we built a film studio, and then you could do a backstage tour, and you’re seeing behind the scenes of the making of all of these music videos?’ ” he continued. “Then that evolved, and it became the ‘House of Kong.’ ”
As for why the exhibition landed in L.A. for its second showing, Hewlett compares the city to Shanghai when it was “still free and decadent and swinging.”
“I love L.A. … I love it. I’ve been coming here since I was 19 years old. … L.A. might be the last one [showing], to be honest,” he says. “All that stuff in the exhibition belongs to me; this is part of my lifelong collection of weird s—!”
“I’d love to get it back at some point,” he jokes.
On Monday, Flav offered “a real celebration” for the women’s team.
“If the USA Women’s Hockey team wants a real celebration and invite ,,, I’ll host them in Las Vegas,” Flav wrote on social media. “Do some nice dinners and shows and good times. I’m sure I can get a hotel and airline to help me out here and celebrate these women for real for real.”
He added: “But I gots to invite my Bobsled + Skeleton team too.”
The idea has only grown bigger.
“Letz go even bigger and better,” Flav wrote Tuesday. “ALL Female US Olympians and Paralympian medalists are invited out to celebrate in Viva Las Vegas for the SHE GOT GAME Weekend ,,, Hit a guy up and LETZ GOOO.”
On Thursday, Flav announced the event would be held July 16 to 19 in partnership with MGM Resorts and the Gist sports media brand.
“I wanna give a special shout out to MGM Resorts,” Flav wrote. “many people offered to help the hockey team,,, but when I said I wanted to include ALL women who earned medals from the winter games + USABS,,, they didn’t hesitate and stepped up to be REAL partners with 100+ rooms.”
He added: “They also offered food and hospitality, spa, ground, event space, after parties, and to host the parade and party for the PUBLIC to celebrate our women for FREE.”
MGM Resorts confirmed Friday that it is hosting the event.
“Planning is underway and details will be shared soon as we get ready to celebrate our incredible USA athletes in a way only MGM Resorts knows how: world-class hospitality, high-energy fun, and memorable experiences,” the company said in a statement emailed to The Times.
