history

Before her death in 1993, Mabel McKay — one of the last living dreamers of the Pomo Indian people — shared a prophecy while driving through the Sonoma hills. One day, this paradise would burn.

“Everything is going to go dry. Everything will burn. That’s my latest vision,” she said, gesturing to the idyllic landscape.

Startled, writer Greg Sarris asked what could be done to stop it.

“You live the best way you know how,” McKay replied.

Since her passing, Sonoma County experienced the most destructive wildfires in California history in 2017, only for another, more destructive fire to surpass it a year later. “She always used to say, ‘Whether you believe it or not, it’s true,’” Sarris recalls.

McKay and her visions are the inspiration behind Sarris’ latest work. His first novel in 28 years, “The Last Human Bear,” is loosely based on the spiritual leader McKay, whose wisdom and companionship served as a refuge to Sarris during a tumultuous childhood in Sonoma County.

A reluctant casino mogul

On a Monday morning in California, Sarris sits in his sleek office at the Federated Indians of Graton Rancheria in Rohnert Park. Sarris, 74, has served as chairman of the Federated Indians of Graton Rancheria for more than 30 years. In his office, diplomas and academic certificates crowd the walls. A framed poster for the 2023 film “Joan Baez: I Am a Noise” hangs nearby — she’s a close friend. Behind him, an American flag ripples in the distance outside the window, blurred by the summer heat.

Just up the road sits a multibillion-dollar tribe-owned casino, Graton Resort & Casino — a project the writer oversees. “I had never been in a casino. I have a PhD in modern thought and literature from Stanford,” says Sarris.

How does an accomplished author find himself at the helm of a multibillion-dollar casino enterprise? It’s a question that still puzzles Sarris. “I told them if we can raise our people and become a platform for social justice and environmental stewardship to benefit Indian and non-Indian alike, I’ll do it.”

Before his stint as a reluctant casino mogul, Sarris was a prolific author and university professor at UCLA and Sonoma State. In 2023, he was appointed a regent of the University of California by Gavin Newsom. Over the course of his career, he published six books, and his novel “Grand Avenue” became an HBO original film in 1996.

California’s Native history: revisited

From early in his career, Sarris wanted to depict Indians as he knew them, rather than as Hollywood depicted them. “We’ve been erased by Hollywood, because the idea of Indians has always been Plains Indians or Southwest,” Sarris explains. “It’s easier for Americans to access Buffalo Bill.”

Greg Sarris’ new novel “The Last Human Bear.”

(Josh Edelson / For The Times)

“California Indians have always been left out of the picture,” says Sarris.

“The Last Human Bear” is Sarris’ latest attempt to revive the legacy of California’s Native history. The novel follows Mary Hatcher, a Pomo Indian in Sonoma County, from Prohibition through the 21st century. It’s told in the first person through Hatcher’s compelling voice as she narrates the horror and heartbreak of her lifetime over the course of a century, echoing William Faulkner’s literary style, which influenced Sarris.

“I’m curious why you want to know about me,” reads the first line. The novel unfolds like an oral storytelling tradition, driven by a voice that Sarris painstakingly crafted, evoking his conversation with McKay. “The voice comes. I have to call it, almost like a spirit,” says Sarris. “I wanted it to feel like an oral story.”

Hatcher — a Pomo shape-shifter who dodges prejudice by passing as Mexican in the novel — is a thorny protagonist, often cunning, scheming and unforgiving. “An American Indian woman is as richly complicated as anybody else. I wanted to show this rich and complicated character who’s negotiated a history that she’s showing you,” says Sarris.

Acclaimed Northern California writer and activist Rebecca Solnit, who has authored 17 books and is a friend of Sarris’, says that she was fascinated by his ability to evoke so many aspects of female life in “The Last Human Bear.” Solnit was especially moved by Sarris’ rendering of California’s tragic history. “It’s shocking, given how rich California’s Indigenous cultures were — 99 different language groups, mythologies, belief systems and linguistic traditions. Every North American Indigenous language family is represented in California. It’s weird how this history has been erased, and how horrific what happened was.”

Climate change and ongoing ecological disasters have made Indigenous perspectives more vital than ever, the author argues. “I think Indigenous people have been hugely influential in giving us a point of view in which we were never separate from nature,” she says. According to Solnit, Sarris’ novels are part of a broader resurgence of interest in Native culture.

In the early chapters of the “The Last Human Bear,” the protagonist gets a job on a ranch by posing as Mexican, since Indians were forbidden from working as housekeepers. What follows is a tale of tension, deception and a forbidden love that sours, reminiscent of Brontë novels.

Sarris hopes that the novel illuminates an uncomfortable history of Sonoma County that remains largely invisible, looming beneath the soil of wine country. The novel offers “a history of this county that a lot of people haven’t seen,” says Sarris.

“There were more Indian people right where we’re sitting per capita than anywhere else in the entire New World outside Mexico City, which was the Aztec capital,” says Sarris. “The genocide was so horrendous.”

Identity, revenge and a search for home are themes that arise throughout the novel — subjects Sarris knows well in his own life.

Greg Sarris feeds chickens at an organic farm across the street from Graton Resort & Casino, which he heads, in Rhonert Park.

(Josh Edelson / For The Times)

Uncovering a hidden Native heritage

In 1952, Sarris’ teenage mother gave him up for adoption, her family hoping to evade the embarrassment of their Jewish daughter becoming pregnant by a Native American Filipino man. Sarris grew up in a white family in Santa Rosa alongside three siblings. His adopted father, George Sarris, became abusive, causing Greg to flee the house with his adopted mother’s blessing. “God bless her. She let me go out and live on ranches and run with other people to get away from him.”

It was in these formative years that Greg became acquainted with Native American people in Santa Rosa, always feeling a mysterious pull toward them. It was these years that also shaped his sensibility as a writer. “I was a lost kid on the streets, so I was always paying attention to everyone, listening, and people would tell me stories.”

Native Americans lived on the fringe of town, often practicing healing ceremonies that were frowned upon by white Catholic families in the suburbs Sarris explains. “When I was 15, I met Mabel McKay, who I wrote the book about. I knew she did some of those strange things that I heard about, but I liked her,” he says. “I had no idea that I was related to these people. I thought I was a mixed-blood Mexican or Spanish.”

At age 30, Sarris uncovered the identities of his birth parents and learned of his Native heritage. He learned his birth mother was buried in a pauper’s grave at the Calvary Catholic Cemetery in Santa Rosa, with “nothing to mark her grave but an upside-down horseshoe that has her name in it.” In the opening pages of the novel, a dedication to her: Bunny Hartman.

Excitedly, Sarris presented proof of his Indian heritage to McKay, his trusted confidant. “I thought it was a big deal that I had Indian blood,” says Sarris. He showed McKay a photo of his father, which she met with indifference. Naturally, Sarris was disappointed. “She told me something later: ‘You’re never any more Indian than your experience.’”

A lifelong outsider

Questions surrounding the legitimacy of Sarris’ heritage haunted him for decades and ultimately informed the novel. Being adopted by a white family, only to be shunned by the Native community, perpetuated his lifelong feeling of being an outsider. “I keep thinking maybe I just got in with this group of people and my Indian relatives so that I would feel rejected again,” he says. “We gravitate towards what we know as home emotionally.”

“I didn’t grow up on a reservation. I’m fair-skinned,” he says. “Being adopted, it feeds into that feeling of not being good enough,” he says, adding: “Illegitimacy is a medicine in the end.”

In the Native American literary community, Sarris has often felt excluded from discourse. When in doubt, he reminds himself of his involvement with the tribe. “Who among them have done this much for their people?” he asks. “Who among them has given this much time and sacrificed a writing career for their people?”

Jane Fonda, the two-time Academy Award-winning actress and activist, struck up a friendship with Sarris through a shared cause. “We met during the campaign to secure health and safety setbacks that would finally prevent oil wells from being drilled within 3,200 feet of a community. Greg and the federated tribes helped us win that fight against Big Oil,” Fonda explained in an email.

“I can tell from his books and my time with him that he embodies indigenous wisdom and beliefs,” Fonda says. “I see Greg Sarris as a man who embodies the best of two worlds — the mercantile culture of Western civilization and the indigenous world that knows we are part of nature and interdependent with it. It’s a rare and valuable combination.”

Greg Sarris, who holds a PhD in literature from Stanford, inside the casino he works for to help fund his tribe’s future.

(Josh Edelson / For The Times)

Inside the polarizing casino kingdom

The Graton Resort & Casino, launched by Sarris over 12 years ago, now plays a vital role in supporting the Pomo Indian community. “I promised early on: roof over everyone’s head, an insurance policy in every pocket and a college degree paid for,” he says. “We give $2.5 million a year in perpetuity to the University of California, so that all California Indians can go to the University of California tuition-free.” The casino has funded theater programs, youth writing intensives and revenue sharing with neighboring tribes.

On the car ride to the casino, Sarris is riffing on his friendship with Grateful Dead member Mickey Hart, who bought Sarris a quarter horse as a gift. In the casino, Sarris eagerly greets his employees with a friendliness that betrays his repeated insistence that he’s a reclusive writer. He points out blown-glass flower sculptures, an embellishment he once saw at the Four Seasons in Paris. He walks past the baccarat room, where he hosts high rollers from Beijing, whom he boasts, “play $100,000 in a hand.”

Early on, news of the casino’s construction caused waves of controversy across Sonoma County — some of which resulted in death threats against Sarris’ life. Concerns that a casino would invite debauchery into the county circulated, which Sarris points out is ironic for a community predicated on wine: “Beyond whether gambling is right or wrong, what is implicit is their privilege and elitism,” says Sarris. “People were getting scared because these brown people, who were the poorest in Sonoma County, are suddenly going to have power.”

Admittedly, Sarris says their newfound wealth has not been without repercussions in the tribe. “People who have been traumatized with generational poverty are the most vulnerable to the lure of materialism,” he says.

When time catches up

In the final chapters of “The Human Bear,” the protagonist, at the end of her life, recalls: “Human Bears often like to even the score before they die.” Revenge is futile, she concludes. “If I was going to avenge our people, I would have to poison nearabout all of history.”

Sarris recalls a similar epiphany he had speaking with McKay. He explains Pomo Indians believed that each action had a consequence. “Ethnographers always said we’re a culture predicated on black magic and fear. No, we were cultures predicated on profound respect for the complexity of all life,” says Sarris.

Then, white men came and seemingly bent the laws of natural order. “The Kashaya Pomo word for white people was ‘miracles’, because they came in and killed everything and did all these things. Nothing could come back to them,” says Sarris.

He explained to McKay that he thought of the white man’s fate differently. “Look, there’s no water. There’s no air. Everything’s poison,” he says, gesturing around him to this vast, broken world. “It’s all come back. It just took time.”

Connors is a culture journalist from Sonoma County. She covers books, food, entertainment and offbeat Los Angeles. She’s currently at work on a book of essays about tourism in all its forms.

Linda Cohn, an ESPN veteran who has anchored more episodes of “SportsCenter” than anyone in history, announced her retirement Monday.

A Los Angeles resident since 2018, Cohn, 66, will make her final ESPN appearance Friday.

After starting her career in radio and local TV, Cohn joined ESPN’s “SportsCenter” in 1992 when female hosts on sports programming were still a rarity. In a statement, she acknowledged her trailblazer status.

“What I’m most proud of is that my career lasted long enough for me to see little girls grow up watching ‘SportsCenter,’ enter this business, and succeed in it,” she said. “If my journey helped make that path a little easier for them, then that’s the achievement I’ll cherish most.”

Cohn moved to Los Angeles in 2018. She regularly anchored the late-night edition of “SportsCenter,” which originated from the city until last year.

She hit a milestone of anchoring 5,000 “SportsCenter” episodes in February 2016 and appeared on at least 650 more over the 10 years that followed.

Cohn, who played collegiate hockey at Oswego Stage University and competed on the boys team in high school, regularly contributed to ESPN’s NHL coverage. She once did a live “SportsCenter” segment where she tried out for the job of emergency goalie for the Florida Panthers.

Cohn will return to ESPN’s Bristol, Conn., studios on Friday and appear on four editions of “SportsCenter” throughout the day. She will also reconnect with longtime co-host John Buccigross during coverage of the NHL Draft.

“Linda Cohn is a legend and a major part of the history of ESPN,” said Burke Magnus, ESPN president, content. “She has brought enthusiasm, personality and her love of sports to our audience for more than 30 years and her contributions to ESPN both in front of and behind the camera would make a very long list.”

Serena Williams’ evolution back toward tennis continued Sunday with the announcement that the sport has been eagerly anticipating.

“Just finished a mean game of duck duck goose,” the 23-time Grand Slam singles champion and mother of two wrote on X hours after Wimbledon announced that Williams will be playing as a wild card entry in women’s singles at this year’s event, which begins June 29 at The All England Club in London.

An eighth Wimbledon singles victory for the 44-year-old tennis legend would seem unlikely. Williams’ lengthy hiatus has left her unranked in singles, which could mean early matches against such players as defending champion Iga Swiatek or world No. 1 Aryna Sabalenka.

Still, Williams has the opportunity to tie Margaret Court for the most women’s singles Grand Slam titles. Court won 13 of her 24 Grand Slams before the Open Era began in 1968; before that, only amateurs were allowed to compete in Grand Slam tournaments. Williams is already considered the record-holder for the Open Era.

Also, Williams could move into a tie with Helen Wills Moody for second-most titles at the tournament. Martina Navratilova holds the record with nine Wimbledon championships.

Williams famously avoided the word “retirement” when she announced she was “evolving away from tennis” in August 2022. The following month, after losing to Australian Ajla Tomljanovic in the third round of the U.S. Open, Williams registered as retired with the International Tennis Integrity Agency.

After nearly four years away from competitive tennis, Williams’ comeback is now in full swing. First came a doubles pairing with Canadian Victoria Mboko at the HSBC Queen’s Club Championships in London earlier this month.

The pair won their opening match against Nicole Melichar-Martinez of the United States and Erin Routliffe of New Zealand 7-6 (2), 6-2 on June 9 but had to forfeit the next round after Mboko injured her left knee in a fall during a singles match.

Last week, Williams partnered with Czech tennis star Karolína Muchová at the WTA 500 Berlin Open, where they lost their opening match to Giuliana Olmos of Austria and Routliffe 6-4, 6-4.

On Tuesday, The All England Club announced that Williams and sister Venus had accepted a doubles wild card invitation for Wimbledon. The Williams sisters have won 14 Grand Slam doubles titles together, including six at Wimbledon.

At that point, one wild card entry remained open for women’s singles — a fact that a reporter mentioned to Williams last week during a news conference in Berlin and asked if she might take it. Williams played coy in her response.

“Oh my gosh, there’s some left?” Williams said. “We better get to practice.”

The reporter pressed with his question.

“That’s the question of the hour, right?” Williams said. “I don’t know. I don’t know. I wonder why there’s — I don’t know.”

Williams remained low-key about her singles return on Sunday, with her only acknowledgment being a repost of Wimbledon’s announcement on her Instagram Story.

SACRAMENTO — The man who brought California the top-two open primary now thinks it needs a drastic overhaul. In fact, he says the “top-two” part should be trashed.

Former state Sen. Abel Maldonado advocates returning to a “top-one” system where the winning vote-getter in each recognized political party — major or minor — qualifies for the November general election.

But he’d keep the “open” part that allows citizens to vote for any candidate on the state ballot, regardless of party.

Maldonado says he crafted the current system 16 years ago believing it would produce “pragmatic and commonsense” officeholders. But that has failed, he acknowledges.

The ex-politician, a Republican centrist who runs a Santa Maria farm operation, is one of several people from both major parties who contend the top-two system should be significantly altered or eliminated.

The movement gained momentum during the recent California primary. And I’ve got some other suggestions for reform that sprang from that election experience:

• We shouldn’t allow 61 people to “run” for governor. That many people, the vast majority of them on a laughable lark, clog the ballot and create a nuisance for voters. Just so they can tell a grandkid or a guy on the next barstool, “I once was a candidate for California governor.” Each got roughly 0% of the vote.

A solution: Quadruple both the current $4,900 candidate filing fee and the alternative collection of 6,000 voter signatures. That might dissuade frivolous “candidacies.”

• Hate language should be banned from the state’s Official Voter Information Guide. One so-called gubernatorial contender got a blatantly antisemitic “candidate statement” inserted into the information guide that was mailed to all voter households.

“It was disgusting. Horrible,” said Assemblymember Gail Pellerin (D-Santa Cruz), chairwoman of the Assembly Elections Committee and a member of the Legislative Jewish Caucus. She’s pushing legislation to prohibit such language in the guide.

You’d think that the secretary of state’s office would have burned the crud without needing a new law, but somebody dropped the ball.

• This has nothing to do with the primary, but the office of lieutenant governor should be abolished. It’s a non-job. The only real purpose is to wait for the governor to vacate the office by resignation or death. The last time that happened was 73 years ago when Gov. Earl Warren left to become a Supreme Court chief justice.

If another governor did ever depart — many fantasize about being elected president — the job could be assumed by, perhaps, the attorney general.

• Two other elective state offices should also be scratched: superintendent of public instruction and insurance commissioner. Those posts should be appointed by the governor, who is the logical person to be held accountable for education and insurance policies.
• And the state board of equalization. Junk that too. Hardly anyone knows what it does. Not much, after the scandal-plagued board was stripped of most of its tax duties a decade ago. They were shifted to two entities that report directly to the governor, rendering the board essentially superfluous.

But don’t expect any elective office ever to be eliminated by politicians. They desperately protect them as potential landing spots.

Back to the top-two open primary.

Maldonado jockeyed California’s oft-called jungle primary system onto the 2010 ballot as part of a late-night budget and tax deal. The senator agreed to vote for a gridlocked state budget and a hefty tax hike in exchange for legislative approval of the ballot measure.

Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger pushed hard for the proposition and voters passed it.

Voters, regardless of party affiliation, can vote for any candidate. And the top two vote-getters, regardless of their party, advance to the general election.

The idea was that candidates would be forced to appeal to centrist voters — not just party idealogues — and more moderates would be elected.

“Can you seriously say that the top-two system has led to more moderation? No, that’s asinine,” asserts Republican Assemblymember Carl DeMaio of San Diego, who strongly supports returning to party nominations.

A few additional moderates have been elected to the Legislature, and some districts have become more competitive. But that’s mainly because of independent, nonpartisan redistricting, according to Eric McGhee, an elections expert at the Public Policy Institute of California.

Actually, the electorate has become so polarized in recent years — particularly during the Trump era — that very few centrist voters seem to be left.

The move toward abolishing or severely reshaping the primary system is nonpartisan.

Democrat Lorena Gonzalez, president of the California Federation of Labor Unions, favors dumping the top-two.

For one thing, she says, there was too much focus this spring on whether any Democratic gubernatorial candidate would qualify for the November ballot. Fear spread that so many Democrats were running that they’d splinter the party vote and two Republicans would finish first and second.

She wanted to hear less talk about the horse race and more debate over substantive issues.

“People were obsessing about a Democratic shutout,” Gonzalez said. “And people were waiting until the last minute to fill out their ballot because they wanted to vote for the candidate who was ahead to make sure someone made the top two. We didn’t have a policy discussion.”

A top-two problem from the beginning has been that one party, usually the GOP, always gets locked out of some legislative or congressional elections.

In November, there’ll be eight congressional races with only Democrats running and one contest with just Republican candidates. And no general election write-ins are allowed.

That’s unfair to voters. They deserve a clear ideological choice.

Democratic consultant Steve Maviglio is pushing a proposed ballot initiative to wipe out the top-two. “It hasn’t delivered what it promised,” he argues.

Agreed. We gave it a try and it didn’t work out. Time to try something new–like Maldonado’s hybrid idea.

What else you should be reading

The must-read: Behested payments aren’t illegal, but they are a problem. Especially for Newsom
Money for nothing: Billionaire tax proposal faces hurdles as it moves closer to November ballot
The L.A. Times Special: People are betting on elections in prediction markets. Congress is watching

Until next week,
George Skelton

—
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Salah may have been a superstar at Liverpool. He is on an even higher plane in Egypt.

With every touch comes loud cheers from his country’s fans, with huge pressure on his shoulders on every appearance.

Sunday’s goal was his 68th for his country in 118 appearances, leaving him just one shy of manager Hassan’s all-time goal scoring record, and some will say it’s his most important yet as Egypt finally ended a 92-year wait for a World Cup win.

No player has been involved in more shots during a game at this World Cup than Salah was against New Zealand – having five shots himself and creating five more for others.

Former Tottenham manager Ange Postecoglou, told ITV: “If there was any doubt about Mo’s impact on this team, you can still see it.

“It will give them enormous belief. They had to deal with adversity and their big player stood up and that will give them big confidence. You need your big players to perform to progress.”

Former Jamaica winger Jobi McAnuff added: “Just when he was needed, Mo Salah stood up for his country.”

Salah has played for the senior national team for 14 years and his importance to Egypt is such that high-ranking government officials have been known to get involved when he has been injured.

“I even had calls from Egypt’s Minister of Health,” recalls Dr Mohamed Aboud, the national team’s medic, about the time Salah sustained a serious shoulder injury in Liverpool’s defeat by Real Madrid in the 2018 Champions League final, leading to speculation he could miss the World Cup in Russia a few weeks later.

But, despite helping Liverpool to the Premier League title in 2019-20 and 2024-25, the player has yet to lift a trophy for his country.

The generation before Salah won three Africa Cup of Nations titles in a row between 2006 and 2010. Since then, there have been two defeats in finals, against Cameroon in 2017 and Senegal in the 2021 edition, which took place in early 2022.

This World Cup win at least banishes one of Egypt’s ghosts.

Voicemails for Isabelle’s Zoey Deutch is dating a fellow comedy star – here’s what we know about their secretive relationship

Zoey Deutch is captivating audiences once more, this time starring opposite Nick Robinson in Netflix’s unmissable romantic comedy Voicemails for Isabelle.

The heartfelt rom-com follows Deutch’s driven young baker Jill, who relocates to San Francisco for an opportunity to work under renowned but tyrannical Chef Bastien (portrayed by Nick Offerman), who transforms her professional life into a waking nightmare.

Meanwhile, her sister Isabelle (Ciara Bravo) has battled cancer throughout most of her existence. Following her sudden death, Jill processes the devastating bereavement by continuously calling her phone number and recording voicemails.

Yet these recordings are actually reaching real estate agent Wes (Robinson) after he acquires a new mobile, and he starts developing feelings for the enigmatic woman on the other end.

With Voicemails for Isabelle poised to become another enormous Netflix success this weekend, here’s what we’ve discovered about Deutch’s romantic life beyond the camera, reports Wales Online.

Who is Zoey Deutch dating?

The 31 year old Deutch is well-versed in romantic comedies, having secured her breakthrough performance alongside Glen Powell in 2018’s Set It Up.

She’s also Hollywood royalty as the daughter of Pretty in Pink director Howard Deutch and Back to the Future actress Lea Thompson.

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Deutch has been romantically involved with actor and comedian Jimmy Tatro, 34, since 2021.

Following his breakthrough performance in Netflix’s mockumentary series American Vandal, viewers may spot him from recent productions Theater Camp, You’re Cordially Invited and Scream 7.

In September 2025, the couple revealed they had been secretly engaged for three months through a joint Instagram post.

Posting a charming photograph from the proposal, which took place during a sunny beach getaway, they captioned it: “three months engaged to the love of my life”.

Their engagement appears to remain intact, as Deutch featured images of them together in a carousel posted to her account in April this year, with the caption “one less lonely girl”.

Prior to her romance with Tatro, Deutch was in a five-year relationship with actor Avan Jogia, whom she met at the 2012 Kids’ Choice Awards.

Although they parted ways in 2017, the former couple went on to appear alongside each other in The Year of Spectacular Men and Zombieland: Double Tap, indicating they maintained an amicable split.

Following her separation from Jogia, Deutch had a brief romance with Dylan Hayes, also an actor.

Details about their relationship remain scarce, although they were photographed attending several public events as a couple.

Voicemails for Isabelle is available to stream on Netflix.

As Ecuador forward Enner Valencia raced through on Curacao’s goal inside the opening three minutes, the outcome seemed inevitable.

About 10 yards out and with just the keeper to beat, he looked certain to score. It would give Curacao a mountain to climb – and, as it did in the 7-1 defeat by Germany in their World Cup opener, could well set the tone for what was to come.

But goalkeeper Eloy Room anticipated where Valencia’s shot was headed, stooped low to his left and clawed the ball around the post. It was an improbable, barely believable save.

And the tone was, indeed, set.

By full-time, BBC Sport pundit and former Arsenal defender Martin Keown was joking a calculator might be needed to tot up the number of times Room had bailed his team out.

Yet it was Ecuador who were left counting the cost of their missed chances as World Cup debutants Curacao celebrated their first-ever point in the tournament.

Room, the 37-year-old Miami FC keeper, produced a remarkable and record-equalling performance, making 15 saves to keep his country level and eventually secure a goalless draw which will live long in the memory of the island nation.

Since records began in 1966, no goalkeeper has made more stops in 90 minutes of World Cup action, according to Opta.

Only Tim Howard has made as many in a single game but, unlike Room, he failed to keep a clean sheet after conceding twice in extra-time for the USA against Belgium in 2014.

Room joked after the 0-0 draw that Howard would have been “sweating at home” watching the game and his performance means he “needs a statue in Curacao”.

“Take a bow, Room,” added Keown on BBC One. “Absolutely magnificent.

“The number of saves, you were almost getting a calculator out at the end of the game to count them up.

“It just became a shopping list of saves. His reactions were first class. He seemed destined to keep a clean sheet all night.”

It was a performance that inspired Room’s country to their biggest-ever result.

The move comes after Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy was stripped of Poland’s top honour.

Top Ukrainian officials have said they are returning Polish awards after President Volodymyr Zelenskyy was stripped of Warsaw’s top honour in a dispute between the allies over World War II massacres.

Zelenskyy’s chief of staff, Kyrylo Budanov; Ukraine’s ambassador to Warsaw, Vasyl Bodnar; and Foreign Minister Andrii Sybiha said on Saturday they would relinquish awards bestowed by Poland.

“Our nations have long-standing relations and ⁠different pages of history – both ⁠heroic and tragic,” Budanov posted on social media. “However, this should be an occasion for deep reflection, not crude political speculation.”

Zelenskyy angered many in Poland over his naming of a military unit after a Ukrainian paramilitary organisation accused of massacring Poles during World War II.

In a decree on May 26, Zelenskyy named a military unit the Ukrainian Insurgent Army (UPA) – the name of a group that operated in the 1940s and 1950s.

On Friday, Polish President Karol Nawrocki announced he would strip Zelenskyy of the Order of the White Eagle, which was bestowed on him by Former Polish President Andrzej Duda in 2023 for services to security, resilience and the defence of human rights.

For most in Poland, “the Ukrainian Insurgent Army remains above all a formation responsible for cruel crimes against the citizens of the Polish Republic during World War II,” Nawrocki said on social media, adding that the decision would not end Poland’s support for Ukraine against Russia.

Ukrainian officials criticised the decision as one that played into Russia’s hands. Budanov, the Ukrainian Presidential Office chief, wrote on Telegram that it was “an unfriendly act toward our people” and “a gift to the Moscow aggressor, which will certainly use it against both of our countries”.

Foreign Minister Sybiha called it a “strategic mistake” while Bodnar said it was “especially painful” as Ukraine fends off Russian attacks.

Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk, a political rival of President Nawrocki, urged both sides to “calm tensions” in a post on X on Friday.

Conflict between Poland and Ukraine “delights Putin and shocks our allies”, he said.

The UPA fought against both Nazi German and Soviet forces, but is also accused of mass killings of Poles in Nazi-occupied areas. Ukrainians say UPA and Polish underground forces launched large-scale attacks and reprisals against each other that led to deaths among Ukrainian and Polish civilians.

Nick Robinson currently stars in Netflix’s hit rom-com Voicemails for Isabelle, but who is he dating right now?

He has been in a relationship since 2019.

Voicemails for Isabelle is a brand new rom-com that dropped on Netflix yesterday (Friday, 29th June) and is already shaping up to be another huge hit for the streaming giant.

Zoey Deutch plays Jill, an ambitious pastry chef whose talents are suppressed by the insufferably pretentious San Francisco chef Bastien (played by Nick Offerman).

When her sister Isabelle (Ciara Bravo), who has battled cancer for the majority of her life, tragically dies, Jill attempts to process her grief by leaving voicemails on Isabelle’s old number.

What she doesn’t realise, however, is that the number has since been reassigned to Austin-based estate agent Wes (Nick Robinson), reports Wales Online.

Robinson, 31, is one of the most recognisable faces of his generation, yet he guards his private life closely. Here’s what we know about his romantic life.

Who is Nick Robinson dating?

The Hollywood star has reportedly been in a relationship with Samantha Urbani, 39, since 2019.

Urbani is a singer, model and DJ who co-founded the band Friends in Brooklyn in 2010, before they went their separate ways in 2013.

Since then, she has launched her own record label, URU, worked alongside fellow artists and put out a single and EP as a solo performer, while also securing modelling and DJ work.

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The pair are thought to still be together, although they rarely appear in public as a couple and haven’t shared any joint social media posts since 2024. Their most recent post together was a photo shared on Urbani’s Instagram in March 2024, showing the pair attending the premiere of Robinson’s previous Netflix project, the fantasy-action film Damsel, starring Millie Bobby Brown.

In addition, a post shared the month before saw Urbani give fans a heartfelt glimpse into how they first met, marking their fifth anniversary together.

“Hello fyi exactly 5 years ago on this very day yes the day of valentines I played spin the bottle with some friends and then a very special one of them- who I’d met a couple years before in berlin- asked me if I wanted to go to SNL…” she wrote.

“Which became adventure all night > which turned into lighting tiny fireworks stolen from afterparty, outside the Plaza, in chilly NYC sunrise > and perfectly magically became morning borscht at veselka… aka top tier heart thawing revitalizing joyful times / ultimate nyc dream date / a # 1 best memory ever.”

Robinson’s past romantic history has largely remained out of the public eye, though he has previously been linked to two of his co-stars.

Rumours circulated in 2016 that he was in a relationship with his The 5th Wave co-star Chloë Grace Moretz following their appearance in the sci-fi thriller together, though this was never confirmed.

Fan speculation also connected Robinson to his Melissa and Joey co-star Taylor Spreitler, however this too was never substantiated.

Voicemails for Isabelle is available to stream on Netflix.

WASHINGTON — Secretary of State Marco Rubio stood silent and stone-faced behind Donald Trump on Wednesday as the president joked of passing the buck if his deal with Iran, under increasingly withering criticism and scrutiny, ultimately falls apart.

The blame, Trump said, would likely fall on his vice president, JD Vance, who led the negotiations toward a memorandum of understanding with Iran and will sign the agreement this week in Switzerland — a ceremony that will generate indelible images for a politician openly considering a run for the White House.

The controversial diplomatic breakthrough poses a quandary for Vance, whose aides see Rubio as his most viable challenger for the Republican presidential nomination should the secretary choose to run.

“If it works out, I’m going to take the credit,” Trump said of the Iran deal, with Rubio by his side.

“If it doesn’t work out, I’m blaming JD,” he joked. “You better be careful, JD!”

Silent secretary

Rubio, who also serves as the president’s national security advisor, has remained effectively mum since news of a preliminary peace deal was announced by the administration on Sunday.

His absence has drawn notice across foreign policy circles — not only because Rubio has served as chief architect of the administration’s global strategy thus far, but also because he has become one of the president’s most effective communicators, both at home and abroad.

By contrast, Vance, on a scheduled press tour promoting his new book, has emerged as the face of an agreement that appears to be fracturing a Republican Party already divided over America’s role in the world.

The administration’s internal divide over Iran extends beyond the war to broader U.S. support for its historic allies, including Israel in the Middle East, Canada and Mexico in this hemisphere, and Ukraine and Europe against a revanchist Russia.

“Rubio has always been a hawk on Iran, and Vance has always been an appeaser,” said Danielle Pletka, a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, describing the vice president as positioning himself “as Trump without the flaws.”

“Rubio has a harder job because he’s more of a traditional Republican,” she said, adding that a competitive presidential run by the secretary might require him to pitch “a return to normalcy.”

No guarantee of success

Behind closed doors, Rubio advocated against the deal in its current form, citing intelligence reports that found it highly unlikely Tehran would give up its nuclear ambitions, according to two sources familiar with the matter. Rubio’s internal skepticism was first reported by Axios.

The deal kicks down the road highly technical discussions over the mechanics of unwinding Iran’s nuclear program — with no guarantee of success — while granting Tehran immediate relief, lifting a U.S. naval blockade of Iranian ports that will allow Iranian imports and exports to resume.

In exchange, Iran has only agreed in principle not to pursue nuclear weapons — a vow it has made multiple times before — and to do its “best” to return commercial shipping traffic through the Strait of Hormuz back to prewar levels. It commits in the deal to refrain from implementing a toll system in the strait, according to U.S. officials, for a mere 60-day period.

“This agreement is a road map for Iran to become a rising, stronger power in the [Persian] Gulf — stronger than it is even today,” said Robert Pape, a political science professor at the University of Chicago.

“That is going to be an issue for the balance of power with Israel, which before the Iran war was the rising power. Now it’s lost that paradigm,” Pape said. “And this is going to be an issue with the future disposition of American forces in the region, because the [memorandum of understanding] states quite clearly that Iran is expecting those forces to withdraw.”

Positioning by the vice president

Despite mounting skepticism, Vance has embraced his role in ending a war that a powerful faction of Trump’s base aggressively opposed from the start.

“I think there are some people who just want the bombing to continue, regardless of whether it accomplishes anything for Americans,” Vance told CBS News on Wednesday.

“I do think there are people,” he added, “who sometimes confuse the ends with the means.”

Because the preliminary Iran deal leaves key details unresolved, further negotiations virtually ensure the agreement remains in flux through the election season — potentially thrusting the talks into the center of the presidential primary campaign.

“Given the distance between the parties on the core nuclear issues, as well as the Trump administration’s poor track record with coercive diplomacy, I fully expect the 60-day window for talks to be extended, as the [memorandum of understanding] text permits, taking this issue to the heart of the midterms and beyond,” said Reid Pauly, a professor of nuclear security and policy at Brown University.

“There will be a lot of incentive in the administration,” Pauly added, “to distance oneself from this fiasco.”

As a guest on Megyn Kelly’s podcast this week, Vance acknowledged the political realities of Trump’s base splintering over the Iran war, noting that a coalition of isolationists — as well as those advocating what he called a more “aggressive” foreign policy — had together swept Trump back into office.

The war may be breaking that coalition apart, he said.

“We have a constituency right now that is saying, we’re going to send boots on the ground — they want Donald Trump to send hundreds of thousands of ground troops into Iran,” Vance told the former Fox News host.

“Those are Republicans,” Kelly said.

“We need people to be pushing back from inside the tent,” Vance replied.

What else you should be reading

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The L.A. Times Special: L.A. defies the skeptics for a World Cup marked by unity, mutual respect, fearlessness

More to come,
Michael Wilner
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Stephanie Shih, “梅國 (Still life with chamoy and Dirty T Tamarindo),” 2025/2026. Archival pigment print on wood panel, varnish, glue, acrylic, frame. 38.25×48.25×3.75.

(From the artist)

Much has been written about the experience of aimlessness in the new David Geffen Galleries at LACMA, but it is another thing to experience it firsthand. The meandering floor plan, with its rooms of various sizes and orientations alongside their resulting passageways and corners, demands that you wander, not map, your perusal of the galleries. As a result, a visitor can easily feel disoriented, or in my case, a touch deconstructed. A little depersonalized, if you will.

Fortuitously, I was there to meet with multidisciplinary artist Stephanie Shih, whose photo-based compositions have the opposite effect, grounding the viewer in their personhood and experience. Her still lifes are made both beautiful and meaningful through their intentional arrangement of specific food, florals and ephemera, touching on diasporic understandings of self, Western and European appropriations of the “exotic” and the juxtaposition of the natural with the fabricated. In other words, to view a Shih piece is to collaborate with the artist on reconstructing or, in some cases, reclaiming an understanding of place and self.

We were talking about, and in front of, Shih’s new piece, “梅國 (Still life with chamoy and Dirty T Tamarindo),” which was not only commissioned by LACMA, but created in a temporary studio Shih constructed within the gallery itself over the course of two weeks late last year. The image features two ceramic vessels, one slightly in front of the other, within a traditional still life scene. The background jar stands alone, while the piece in the foreground overflows with a rainbow of plants, flowers, fruit, chamoy candies, gummies and a single real butterfly. To get to the small but sunny corridor that houses the work, one might make a few indirect turns and cross the gallery containing Andreas Gursky’s “Ocean” series. Flanked by four wall-size photographs of vast, overhead perspectives of the deep blue Indian Ocean, it’s easy to feel small among the giant panels. Luckily, when I met Shih at LACMA, she intercepted me outside and led us confidently up the Geffen’s dramatic exterior staircase and to “The Global Appeal of Blue-and-White Ceramics” installation — no crossing of oceans necessary.

After our conversation, I stayed to wander the galleries for a few more hours. I am a completist and I wanted, no, needed to see everything. Without the prescribed navigation I was accustomed to in a museum, this became a fool’s errand. I got physically lost and a bit lost to myself. Had I already seen that statue or did it just look like another visage also rendered in marble a few galleries back? I was pretty sure I had already taken these two rights and then a left before, but what if I hadn’t and would then miss a whole other room? The 360-degree curved glass walls encasing the galleries offered many glimpses of a face that belonged to me but somehow wasn’t mine. Who was I? I felt like I would never see everything on display, but also maybe never again exist beyond the funhouse of the Geffen Galleries. In my confusion, I passed by “梅國 (Still life with chamoy and Dirty T Tamarindo)” more than once and was reminded of Shih’s ability to articulate complex reconstructions of self through her exquisite, serene compositions. It was enough to reassure me that I could find myself again, if only I slowed down and considered my context with curiosity instead of fear.

This curiosity led me to “Shaping Dutch Identity: The Mr. and Mrs. Edward Carter Collection.” It was a serendipitous encounter for two reasons: One, the visual and symbolic correlation between Shih’s painterly use of shadow in her food- and floral-centered compositions, and the still life masterpieces of the 17th century Dutch. And two, because much like her work itself, our interview included layered discussion of constructing and shaping identities. Take the new Peter Zumthor-designed building in which we found (and in my case, lost) ourselves, which builds upon the existing galleries of LACMA while redefining the museum’s identity. Or Shih’s in-situ studio, which was created for creation’s sake, then taken down with only a photo of its contents remaining — contents which were constructed by the artist, too.

There was also the progression across cultures and continents of blue-and-white ceramics, which mirrors the evolution of chamoy, a pickled fruit condiment in Mexican cuisine that, along with a blue-and-white Talavera jar, is at the center of Shih’s piece. Both the ceramic and the chamoy traditions symbolize layers of culture as shaped by globalism and localism.

At one point in our conversation, I was momentarily embarrassed when I couldn’t recall the Filipino term for dried sour plums (kiamoy), a precursor to Mexico’s chamoy. It was an aspect of my identity as a third-generation Filipina that was also irretrievable to me that day. Shih was understanding and gracious in her response: “One of the really fun parts of the work I get to do is learning a lot of these histories that get hidden from us.” Given Shih’s academic background — she holds a PhD from Stanford University in linguistics — it makes sense that she brings deep research to her practice. Her art is rich with symbolism and history. But Shih’s work is also playful and, much like her response to me, generous in the invitation it extends to viewers to bring their own identities to her pieces in order to construct meaning for themselves. I may have felt unmoored among the Geffen’s myriad corners and paths, but never when I was standing in front of Shih’s piece.

Installation view of the inaugural presentation in the David Geffen Galleries, April 2026, featuring (top) Stephanie Shih’s 梅國 (Still life with chamoy and Dirty T Tamarindo) (2025- 26) and (bottom) Jar (c. 1700-50).

(Museum Associates / LACMA)

Claire Salinda: Your composition captures flowers, chamoy and other candies and fruit sumptuously arranged in and around a ceramic jar from LACMA’s permanent collection. How did you decide on chamoy as a subject? And how is it contextualized within the new David Geffen Galleries?

Stephanie Shih: “梅國 (Still life with chamoy and Dirty T Tamarindo)” is on display in “The Global Appeal of Blue-and-White Ceramics.” The gallery presents a condensed history of blue-and-white ceramics globally in dishes, starting in the Middle East with a 9th century Iraqi piece. From the Middle East we really got the use of cobalt in designs, and that married with the introduction of porcelain from China. We also have the Iznik kilns in Turkey, which are still operating today, and influences into Southeast Asia, and so on. Later on, the influence spread farther afield into Japan and France, where they started adding even more to it. The blue-and-white tradition has really spread globally, so this gallery is a nice microcosmic story of the effects of globalism before modern globalism.

For a long time I’ve been wanting to make a piece about chamoy and was just waiting for the opportunity to do so. The story of chamoy really parallels this journey of blue-and-white ceramics, which got to Mexico because of Spanish colonialism and then was adopted by local artisans. They really made it their own in the Talavera tradition. Chamoy similarly comes from Asia through pickled plums, particularly China via the Philippines. Filipino laborers came to Mexico via colonialism, and adapted and adopted champoy with spices and chilies from Mexico to become chamoy.

The curator, Susie Ferrell, gave me a whole list of blue-and-white surveys that they were looking at. We went to storage and to the conservation labs to look at all the pieces and we ended up choosing two pieces to work with. The one in “梅國 (Still life with chamoy and Dirty T Tamarindo)” is a Mexican Talavera jar from the 1700s. It’s the first non-Asian origin institutional ceramic I’ve gotten to work with in my career, which is the reason that I gravitated toward it.

Chamoy has been used by a lot of modern day food makers and chefs with American nostalgic candies, like peach rings and gummy worms, and my personal favorite, Gushers. One of these food makers, Alana Solis, who’s based in Tucson, runs Dirty T Tamarindo, a chamoy candy business she started during the pandemic. It was from her that I learned the history of chamoy, and so I wanted to do a piece with her candies for a long time. And this is just a really perfect opportunity with the Talavera jar.

I had pitched to Susie that it might be nice to have a second ceramic in the piece, a companion that demonstrates the origins and precursors of the blue-and-white ceramics in Mexico, a Chinese piece or something. She actually picked the one pictured here, which is also from the LACMA collection. It’s a 12th century Qingbai ware prunus vase, a meiping jar. When Susie pitched it to me, I didn’t even realize how perfect it was: A prunus vase is usually what they put plum blossoms in, and meiping means beautiful plum vase. It just ended up being a really, really good pick from her.

CS: You built a studio space within the gallery to create the piece. I’m curious about the constraints and what was surprising for you.

Artist Stephanie Shih’s makeshift set in the Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA) David Geffen Galleries for her two-week commission project residency; Light test detail.

(Stephanie Shih)

SS: I was here for two weeks. I had a friend build a wall, we painted it downstairs and then brought it in and had it in the gallery with the light coming in through the windows. They gave me a refrigerator to store all the food, because I wasn’t supposed to have it out in the gallery space. We built out work tables too … it’s hard to kind of imagine with all the other stuff here now.

It was in December, and so the building was in several stages of installation with the art. There were just stacks of crates and boxes, which is amazing — it was very cool to just see statues half unpacked.

And actually, seeing everything get installed affected my thinking about the frame. Originally I wasn’t going to do a framed piece, it was just going to be on a panel. But then as I saw everything else go up, there was a weightiness to the way everything was framed and thought about. A lot of the frames are gold gilded, which are incredibly beautiful and historical. I wanted something that played off of that tradition, but using a red frame made it really obvious that it’s not 100% within tradition.

CS: How does this commission fit into your practice?

SS: My work started out really thinking about the artistic references we get as people working in food and still life. So many of the references are of this very Eurocentric art historical tradition. But if you look at that tradition, many things are taken from other cultures and used to symbolize the access and wealth and value that was assigned to these objects from the perspective of European imperialists, to put it nicely. It wasn’t until very recently that people were even thinking, “Well, where are these things from? What other artistic traditions does that mean that we’ve sort of borrowed from?” And so a lot of my work thinks about responding to that, but also taking back some of that tradition to tell stories of diaspora communities today here in the U.S.

From there, I’ve really started thinking a lot about the construction of identity and how we get to the things that symbolize who we are, and how we use symbols as we move through the world. As a cognitive scientist and linguist, a lot of my research training is about symbols and about the construction of identity in that way.

CS: Do you think that this piece could have been made anywhere else?

SS: No, I don’t think so. There’s something so special about the mission with the new building, how it’s so much more fluidly built and how LACMA is trying to think curatorially outside of the silos that have been set up by traditional art history. Thinking about that really, really influenced my approach to these pieces in terms of trying to collapse in each piece the timescales of historical influences and contemporary identity, but also the locality.

There’s stuff in “梅國 (Still life with chamoy and Dirty T Tamarindo)” that’s very global and far away, but also hyper local and here in L.A. For instance, the butterfly was found by my friend just a couple miles north in WeHo while I was working at LACMA. It’s native to California.

Do you know who Rachel Ruysch is? She was one of the big Dutch still life painters and in some of her later work, she was able to access flowers and plants from the American West, which was really rare at that time. She has a piece with prickly pear cactus as well as datura in it, which is crazy. We see those plants right here, but not in England and the Netherlands, where she was working at the time. Seeing that piece was part of the influence as well. In my piece, we have candy stripe ranunculus, which I was able to find for the candy. The cactus is from my backyard. There’s marigold and chamomile for their significance in Mexican culture, and the hibiscus flower, which has a long history across the Pacific Rim, tracing a lot of the places that ended up with chamoy and sour plums. I wanted a little nod to Hawaii with the pineapple because that’s where we also get salted plum culture.

Artist Stephanie Shih poses on set.

(From the artist)

CS: As we stand and chat in front of “梅國 (Still life with chamoy and Dirty T Tamarindo),” I can’t help but notice folks stopping to take it in. How is it being here and seeing people interact with the work?

SS: Oh, really fun!

CS: Do you ever want to interrupt them to answer a question you overhear?

SS: No. I think my favorite part of watching people interact with the pieces is what they bring to it. Some people see the chamoy immediately and they recognize their experiences in it, which is really lovely to see. Like, I can see someone’s been pointing at it, there’s a nice fingerprint mark. That’s funny. Some people recognize the candy in it. Kids often ask me, “How did the gummy butterflies fly?” and that’s really fun to answer. I appreciate that everyone brings their own experiences to it, and that sort of completes the piece for me.

The ⁠number of confirmed cases in ⁠the country has ​increased to 837, including 196 deaths.

The current Ebola outbreak in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) could become deadlier than the worst outbreak on record, which killed more than 11,000 people, says the head of Africa’s Centres for Disease Control and Prevention (Africa CDC).

⁠The ⁠number of confirmed cases in ⁠the country has increased to 837, including 196 deaths, ‌government data showed on Tuesday.

“If we don’t stop the outbreak very soon, it will be worse than what we had in West Africa and eastern DRC,” Africa CDC Director-General Jean Kaseya said during a virtual meeting of African leaders and international donors in Burundi on Tuesday.

Speaking to Al Jazeera, Kaseya said tens of thousands of people who may have been exposed to Ebola had not yet been traced or contacted.

“The contact tracing is a major indicator and a major issue. We are missing more than 26,000 people, and we don’t know where they are, and we don’t know if they are contaminating other people.”

A ⁠Red Cross official said that the epidemic had not yet peaked in the country.

“We ⁠are afraid that this could last one year to end this disease,” Bruno Michon, operations manager for the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies, said.

The response has been hampered by a lack of treatment centres and by community resistance to stringent hygiene measures. Health officials said that, more than a month since ⁠the outbreak was declared, the true scale was still unknown.

The bodies of ⁠Ebola victims are highly infectious after death, and unsafe traditional burials – in which family members handle ⁠the body without proper protective equipment – are a leading driver of transmission.

So far, the continent has raised less than a fifth of the $518 million it is seeking to bolster measures to contain the outbreak, according to Burundi’s President Evariste Ndayishimiye, who also chairs the African Union.

The shortfall has raised concern among authorities, who fear the consequences could be devastating if the virus is not brought under control quickly.

There is no approved treatment or vaccine for this strain of Ebola. The World Health Organization (WHO) says it could take up to nine months for a vaccine to be ready.

Neighbouring Uganda has recorded 19 cases, 14 of them among people who had travelled from the DRC. The country has also reported two deaths.