James

Of all the reams of words publicly spilled at Lakers media day Monday, only one really mattered.

When LeBron James was wrapping up his interview with the folks at Spectrum Sportsnet, host Chris McGee asked, “By the way, see you at next year’s media day?”

James’ laughing answer set the template for a season.

“Maybe.”

So the Lakers should treat the next eight months emptying their assets and foregoing their future and playing with the desperation of a team trying to earn one last piece of jewelry for arguably the greatest player ever?

Maybe.

So should the fans here and around the league show up in droves and line up around the block for their last live look at a living legend?

Maybe.

Or, if everything goes wrong and things get ugly, should the Lakers and James willingly part ways through a midseason buyout?

Maybe.

No matter what happens, the fact that James didn’t reveal his intentions in his first public appearance since last spring means that this Laker season has the chance to be a murky maybe mess.

Everybody knows where the Lakers stand, as Rob Pelinka said last week. He wants James to finish his career here.

“We would love if LeBron’s story would be he retire a Laker,” Pelinka said. “That would be a positive story.”

But still nobody knows where James stands, and it’s not obvious, because, while he’s 40 and entering his NBA-record 23rd season, he looks young, and acts energetic, and Monday at the Lakers facility he was at his charming best.

“Just excited about the journey and whatever this year has in store for me,” he said.

He’s probably not saying because he truly does not know. Next spring is a lifetime away. He doesn’t know how he’s going to feel. He doesn’t know how his basketball future could look.

But because he’s not saying, this season could seemingly go one of three ways.

It could go the Kershaw Way. James could once again be one of the top players in the league but get worn down by the strain on his body and in the last weeks of the season he could call it quits. The Crypto.com crowd gets a chance to say goodbye and his Lakers teammates can use his retirement as inspiration for a deep postseason run.

Or, it could go the Kobe Way. James could decide in the middle of the season that he’s had enough and embark on a league-wide farewell tour, the sort that once brought the tough Kobe Bryant to tears.

Or, given the organization’s recent sketchy history, it is entirely possible it could go the Typical Lakers Implosion Way.

LeBron James jokes with reporters as he arrives for interviews at Lakers media day on Monday.

(Robert Gauthier / Los Angeles Times)

James could spend the year making the Lakers dangle on that “maybe,” subtly fighting against the loss of his team leadership to Luka Doncic, passively aggressively chiding Pelinka to improve the roster at the trade deadline, even occasionally threatening to quit on the spot.

Because it’s too tough to trade him and the Lakers don’t want to spend the bucks to buy him out, they spend the rest of the season dodging his barbs, then, simply let James’ contract expire and watch him flee to home Cleveland for his swan song.

Three scenarios, but only two happy endings, and to make matters even more complicated, much depends not on James, but on the roster around him.

Are the Lakers going to be any good? Are you ready for it?

Maybe.

The Lakers only played 23 games with both James and the recently acquired Doncic last season, and they were 15-8 and grabbed a third seed and were acting like the best team in the NBA at one point before they disintegrated against Minnesota in the playoffs.

They added Deandre Ayton for length, Jake LaRavia for defense, Marcus Smart for toughness, and a new body for Doncic, a formerly pudgy and breathless kid who has acknowledged his very adult transformation.

“I’m in a better place for sure,” he said Monday.

Is that good enough to lead a team to a better place in the competitive West? Who knows?

Will it be good enough to convince James to ask for a new contract and stick around for yet another year? That doesn’t seem likely but then again, The Oldest Living Baller currently exists in the unlikely.

The only certainty is that James is going to make this decision on his own time, in his own voice, through his own podcast or social media or heck, maybe another 30-minute TV special called, “The Last Decision?”

How ever this plays out, he’s not saying anything now, which was obvious when he answered the first question at his media day news conference with dodgy utterances.

“I mean, I don’t know,” he said. “I mean, I’m excited about today, I’m excited about an opportunity to be able to play a game that I love for another season. And whatever the journey, however the journey lays out this year, I’m just super invested, because … I don’t know when the end is, but I know it’s a lot sooner than later.”

He provided his most telling hint that he’s leaning into retirement when he talked about appreciating his final tours around the league.

“Knowing that the end is soon, not taking for granted, you know, a Tuesday night in a city that maybe I don’t want to be in that night … let’s lock in because you don’t know how many times you get the opportunity to play the game or to be able to compete,” he said. “So there’s times where you wake up and you just feel like you just don’t have it. So those will be the days where I know I can lock back in real fast, like, OK, well, you won’t have many days like this, so let’s lock in and enjoy the moment, enjoy the rest of the ride.”

Bronny and LeBron James pose for photos at Lakers media day as Rui Hachimura takes a selfie in front of them.

(Robert Gauthier / Los Angeles Times)

He was asked if, now that he’s played with son Bronny, would he stick around to play with his Arizona-freshman son Bryce? His answer was LeBron at his fatherly best.

“No, I’m not waiting on Bryce,’ he said. “No. I don’t know what his timeline is. He’s his own young man now, like he’s down in Tucson. We’ll see what happens this year, next year, you know, but he has his own timeline. I got my timeline, and I don’t know if they quite match up.”

He was asked if his decision would be influenced by a chance to play with Doncic. His answer was LeBron at his jabbing best.

“Ah, nah. As far as how long I go in my career? Nah. Zero,” he said. “The motivation to be able to play alongside him every night, that’s super motivating. That’s what I’m going to train my body for. Every night I go out there and try to be the best player I can for him, and we’re going to bounce that off one another. But as far as me weighing in on him and some other teammates of how far I go in my career, nah.”

It may be Luka Doncic’s team, but it’s still LeBron James’ world, and he’s going to control his narrative down to the last syllables of the last sentences of his final goodbye.

And that don’t mean maybe.

LeBron James chuckled at the question he knew was coming as a a smile crossed his face when he was asked about the word “retirement.”

James stammered as he tried to answer the question during his session at the Lakers’ media day on Monday.

He never provided a definitive answer about his future. He’s about to enter his 23rd season in the NBA, which will mean James will have played more seasons in the league than anyone in history. He turns 41 on Dec. 30, but if last season was any indication, James hasn’t slowed down.

When James was asked about his approach to this season, knowing that retirement is near, he seemed unsure how to answer.

“I mean, I don’t know,” he said. “I mean, I’m excited about today, I’m excited about an opportunity to be able to play a game that I love for another season. And whatever the journey, however the journey lays out this year, I’m just super invested, because like you just said, I don’t know when the end is, but I know it’s a lot sooner than later.

“So just being super appreciative of the fact that I could come up here, do another media day and talk to you guys and do all this stuff around here, so just excited about the journey and whatever this year has in store for me.”

James exercised his player option for $52.6 milllion this summer to play with the Laker, the final year of his deal. He did not sign an extension with the Lakers, meaning that James will be a free agent after the 2025-26 season if he does not retire.

James already is the NBA’s all-time leading scorer during the regular season with 42,184 points. He has played the second-most regular-season games in history at 1,562, just 50 behind the leader, Robert Parish.

James averaged 24.4 points,7.8 rebounds and 8.2 assists last season

It was clear that he still was on top of his game.

“The things that still pushes me is the fact that the love of the game is still high,” James said. “The love of the process is even higher. So that’s what continues to push me to play this game. I mean, it’s really that simple. Me training and working on my body and trying to get my body as close to 100% as possible every year, it’s something that’s like —- it’s a beautiful thing for me. Just continue to challenge to see how well I can push myself to play the game at a high level, recover at a high level, be able to sleep better, mentally prepare, try to stay sharp throughout the course of a long season. And just the roller coaster of an NBA season, that’s all like, gratifying to me, no matter the good, the bad, the ugly. I love that process. So it’s a bigger. … So much that goes into it, more than just picking up a basketball and shooting at the rim.”

James is teaming up with another superstar in Luka Doncic, who signed a three-year extension for $165-million.

Doncic, 26, is considered one of the top players in the league, giving James a top-notch running partner.

James was asked how much having a player like Doncic beside him will weigh in his decision to retire.

“Nah, nah. As far as how long I go in my career? Nah. Zero,” James said. “The motivation to be able to play alongside him every night, that’s super motivating. That’s what I’m going to train my body for. Every night I go out there and try to be the best player I can for him, and we’re going to bounce that off one another. But as far as me weighing in on him and some other teammates of how far I go in my career, nah. It would be, literally my decision, along with my wife and — two of my boys [Bronny and Bryce] already gone. … So it’ll be a decision between me, my wife [Savannah] and my daughter [Zhuri]. It won’t be, ‘Hey, having a meeting with my teammates.’ It won’t be that.”

James and Austin Reaves have been teammates for four years now, and Reaves has seen no decline in his famous teammate.

Reaves, who declined a four-year, $89.2-million contract offer from the Lakers over the summer, hasn’t talked to James about retirement but doesn’t see it happening any time soon.

“Every time you see him, he’s got a big smile on his face, he’s the biggest kid in the room, has a great time and you got to appreciate that for somebody who has been going at it for so long, 23 years,” Reaves said. “At some point you feel like the joy might not be there. But every time you see him, it reinsures that he’s here for one thing and one thing only and that’s to win. But I don’t know about retirement. He might play for another 10 years.”

James returns to a Lakers team that was 50-32 last season and finished third in the Western Conference. The Lakers then lost in the first round of the playoffs to the Minnnesota Timberwolves.

But the Lakers have retooled, adding center Deandre Ayton, guard Marcus Smart and wing Jake LaRavia.

James has won four NBA championships, and yearns for another.

“I don’t know, just to know how many miles I got as far as this game in my 22 years, now starting 23 years, and to still be able to play at a high level, to still to be able to go out there and can make plays and be respectful on the floor,” James said.

“It’s just super humbling and gratifying for me, personally. I love to play the game, and I love to play at a high level. And for me, age is kind of just a number, but it is reality too, though. I mean, you look at the history of the game, it’s not been many guys at my age, or especially going into Year 23 that’s been able to play at a level like that. And I’ve just tried to not take it for granted and just try to give the game as much as I can, inspire whoever I can: the younger generation, my generation, the generation after me, the generation to come. I think you are of the age what you, I guess, tell your mind you are.”

Britain’s James DeGale earned victory by unanimous decision against Matt Floyd on his bare-knuckle boxing debut in Manchester.

DeGale, an Olympic gold medallist and former two-time IBF super-middleweight champion, came out on top of a scrappy affair with the judges scoring it 48-43, 48-43 and 47-44 in his favour.

Australian Floyd was deducted three points during the fight for headbutting DeGale and putting him in a headlock, with the 39-year-old Briton doing some of his best work via his jab.

“The holding and punching, it’s crazy stuff. But I’m 1-0 and that’s all that matters,” said DeGale.

“He was tough but in a boxing fight he wouldn’t last two rounds.”

The bout was DeGale’s first since a punishing loss to Chris Eubank Jr six years ago that ended his career.

DeGale made history as Britain’s first boxer to win both Olympic gold and a professional world title in 2015.

JAMES DeGale is set to make his bare-knuckle fighting debut on TONIGHT!

DeGale returns to combat sports against Matt Floyd in Manchester for the first time since he left boxing.

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The former world champion has been out of the ring since 2019, with his last fight being a defeat to Chris Eubank Jr.

He will main event a mega Bare Knuckle Fighting Championship card in Manchester with the hotly anticipated clash between Aaron Chalmers and Love Island star Jack Fincham.

SunSport can reveal the EXACT time the fight will get going!

What time is James DeGale vs Matt Floyd?

• DeGale vs Floyd will take place on Saturday, September 27.
• Ringwalks for the HUGE clash are expected at approximately 10:30pm BST.
• The card is set to get going at 6pm BST.
• Manchester’s AO Arena will host.

What TV channel is James DeGale vs Matt Floyd on and can it be live streamed?

• DeGale vs Floyd will be broadcast live on DAZN, which is available in over 200 countries with a subscription.
• If you are not currently a DAZN member, monthly and annual subscriptions are available.
• An Annual Super Saver subscription is a one-off payment of £119.99 for 12 months access (£14.99 per month if paying in monthly instalments). 
• And a Monthly Flexible pass, which can be cancelled at any time, is £24.99 per month.
• Alternatively, you can follow the action as it happens via SunSport‘s LIVE blog.

Sept. 26 (UPI) — After the indictment of former FBI Director James Comey, President Donald Trump said that more indictments are coming.

As he left the White House to head to the Ryder Cup in New York, he was asked by reporters who would be next on his list.

“It’s not a list, but I think there will be others. They’re corrupt. These were corrupt, radical-left Democrats,” The Hill reported Trump said.

“They weaponized the Justice Department like nobody in history. What they’ve done is terrible. And so I hope — frankly, I hope there are others. Because you can’t let this happen to a country.”

Trump added that the Comey indictment wasn’t about revenge.

“It’s about justice. … It’s also about the fact that you can’t let this go on. They are sick, radical-left people, and they can’t get away with it,” Trump said. “And Comey was one of the people. He wasn’t the biggest. But he was a dirty cop.”

A U.S. District Court of Eastern Virginia grand jury indicted Comey on Thursday with one count each of making a false statement and obstruction. The indictment was based on oral testimony before the U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee in September 2020.

The indictment did not elaborate, but the charges seem to stem from when Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, asked Comey if he had allowed his deputy to speak with a reporter about an investigation into Trump.

Comey told Cruz that he didn’t.

Comey, a Republican, said after the indictment that he understood there was a price for standing up to Trump.

“We will not live on our knees,” he said. “And you shouldn’t either.”

Besides Comey, some people Trump has mentioned who should be prosecuted are New York Attorney General Letitia James, U.S. Sen. Adam Schiff and former President Barack Obama.

File Photo by Mike Theiler/UPI | License Photo

Sept. 25 (UPI) — Former FBI Director James Comey will be tried for allegedly lying to Congress and obstructing justice amid a 2020 investigation into Russian collusion claims.

The U.S. District Court of Eastern Virginia grand jury indicted Comey on two of three counts on Thursday, ABC News reported.

Interim U.S. Attorney for Eastern Virginia Lindsey Halligan secured the grand jury indictments against Comey after federal prosecutors earlier said they had no probable cause for charging the former FBI director.

Attorney General Pam Bondi lauded the indictments in a social media post on Thursday.

“Today’s indictment reflects this Department of Justice’s commitment to holding those who abuse positions of power accountable for misleading the American people,” Bondi said, as reported by Axios.

“We will follow the facts in this case,” Bondi added.

The indictment comes less than a week before the statute of limitations would have expired in the matter and made it impossible to prosecute Comey for allegedly lying to the Senate Judiciary Committee on Sept. 30, 2020.

The committee was investigating the FBI’s Crossfire Hurricane investigation into alleged collusion between Russian officials with President Donald Trump‘s successful presidential campaign during the 2016 election.

The president accused former U.S. Attorney Erik Siebert of intentionally delaying action on the matter to allow the statute of limitations to expire in the matter and fired him.

The indictment means Comey will have to appear in court for an arraignment hearing that is yet to be scheduled, where he will have to enter a plea and possibly post a bond.

He could be imprisoned for up to five years and fined if found guilty of lying to Congress and another five years and potential fines if convicted of obstruction of justice.

Sept. 24 (UPI) — Former FBI Director James Comey is likely to be indicted soon on criminal charges in the U.S. District Court for Eastern Virginia, several media outlets reported on Wednesday.

Three unnamed sources said Comey will be indicted in the coming days on to-be-determined charges for allegedly lying to Congress in 2020, according to MSNBC, The Independent and CNBC.

Evidence suggests Comey lied to Congress while testifying before the Senate Judiciary Committee on Sept. 30, 2020, regarding the FBI’s Crossfire Hurricane investigation into alleged Russian collusion with President Donald Trump‘s successful election campaign in 2016, MSNBC reported.

Federal law has a five-year statute of limitations on charges for lying to Congress while under oath, which would require charges to be filed against Comey no later than Tuesday.

The president urged Attorney General Pam Bondi to accelerate charges against Comey, Sen. Adam Schiff, D-Calif., and New York Attorney General Letitia James in a social media post on Saturday.

“They’re all guilty as hell, but nothing is going to be done,” Trump said on Truth Social.

He accused two unnamed Democratic Party senators of pushing a “woke RINO” to become the district’s federal prosecutor for Eastern Virginia so that he could stonewall the investigation until the statute of limitations expires.

RINO is an acronym for Republican in name only.

Interim U.S. Attorney for Eastern Virginia Lindsey Halligan is expected to lead the pending prosecution, but U.S. attorneys from other districts also might participate.

If charged and convicted for allegedly lying to Congress while under oath, Comey could be sentenced to up to five years in prison and fined.

Former President Barack Obama nominated Comey as FBI director, a role that he held from Sept. 4, 2013, until Trump fired him on May 9, 2017.

JAMES DeGALE will make his bare-knuckle fighting debut on Saturday night.

The former boxing world champion and Olympic gold medalist returns to combat sports against Australian Matt Floyd in Manchester.

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DeGale has been out of action since he retired from boxing in 2019 following defeat to Chris Eubank Jr.

The Londoner, who became the first British boxer to win both an Olympic gold medal and a professional world title, will be looking to get back to fighting for silverware.

DeGale tops a huge Bare Knuckle Fighting Championship card with the highly anticipated bout between reality TV stars Aaron Chalmers and Jack Fincham also on the bill.

SunSport brings you all the details you need ahead of Saturday’s huge BKFC 81 event.

When is James DeGale vs Matt Floyd?

• DeGale vs Floyd will take place on Saturday, September 27.
• The show will begin at 6pm BST.
• The main event will likely begin at approximately 10.30pm BST.
• Manchester’s AO Arena will host.

What TV channel is James DeGale vs Matt Floyd on and can it be live streamed?

• DeGale vs Floyd will be broadcast live on DAZN, which is available in over 200 countries with a subscription.
• If you are not currently a DAZN member, monthly and annual subscriptions are available.
• An Annual Super Saver subscription is a one-off payment of £119.99 for 12 months access (£14.99 per month if paying in monthly instalments). 
• And a Monthly Flexible pass, which can be cancelled at any time, is £24.99 per month.
• Alternatively, you can follow the action as it happens via SunSport‘s LIVE blog.

Who else is on the BKFC 81 card?

• James DeGale vs Matt Floyd; Light heavyweight
• Aaron Chalmers vs Jack Fincham; Light heavyweight
• Jonny Graham vs Navid Mansouri; Lightweight
• Jack Cullen vs Stanislav Grosu; Middleweight
• Jonno Chipchase vs Lewis Garside; Featherweight
• Dec Spelman vs Dawid Chylinski; Light heavyweight
• David Oskar vs Travis Dickinson; Cruiserweight
• Bartlomiej Krol vs Jon Telfer; Lightweight
• Joe Lister vs Sean Weir; Light heavyweight
• Keiron Sewell vs Patryk Pietrasik; Bantamweight
• Andy Thornton vs Matty Hil; Heavyweight
• Gaz Corran vs Danny Moir; Middleweight
• Benjamin Lowe vs Mikey Henderson; Middleweight

Singer-songwriter Brett James, who penned country music hits for stars including Carrie Underwood, Kenny Chesney and Jason Aldean, was one of three people who died Thursday in a plane crash in North Carolina. He was 57.

The Federal Aviation Administration announced in its preliminary report that three people were on board in a Cirrus SR22T that “crashed in a field” Thursday at around 3 p.m. local time in Franklin, N.C. There were no survivors, the North Carolina State Highway patrol confirmed in a statement.

According to additional information from the FAA, the songwriter was on the plane, which was registered to him under his legal name, Brett James Cornelius. It’s unclear whether he was piloting the plane during its crash, which the FAA said occurred “under unknown circumstances.” The state patrol confirmed the musician’s death, adding that his wife, Melody Carole, and Carole’s daughter Meryl Maxwell Wilson were the other two people on the plane. Wilson celebrated her birthday this week, according to a post on Carole’s Instagram page.

The aircraft had taken off from John C. Tune Airport in Nashville. The FAA and National Transportation Safety Board said they are investigating the crash.

The Nashville Songwriters Hall of Fame shared the news of James’ death Thursday in a social media post. “We mourn the untimely loss of Hall of Fame member Brett James (‘Jesus Take The Wheel’ / ‘When the Sun Goes Down’), a 2020 inductee who was killed in a small-engine airplane crash on Sept. 18,” the post said.

James, born June 5, 1968, is best known for co-writing the 2005 Underwood hit “Jesus, Take the Wheel.” The ballad, also co-written by Hillary Lindsey and Gordie Sampson, helped propel the careers of “American Idol” winner Underwood and James: It won the country song prize at the 2007 Grammy Awards and was dubbed ASCAP’s country song of the year in 2006.

The Missouri-born musician began his music career in the early 1990s after leaving medical school behind. He signed as a solo to Career Records, a subsidiary of Arista Nashville, but found his calling writing for Chesney, Billy Ray Cyrus, Martina McBride, Faith Hill, Rascal Flatts, Tim McGraw and other country music acts.

“A brilliant songwriter and amazing man. He was the pen behind ‘Summer Nights,’ ‘Love You Out Loud’ and countless songs we’ve all sang along too,” Rascal Flatts said Friday in an Instagram tribute. “He will be greatly missed.”

Aldean also remembered James during his show in Lincoln, Neb., performing their song “The Truth.” The singer said he had “nothing but love and respect for that guy and he helped change my life” in a social media post of that performance.

James also penned Cheney and Uncle Kracker’s “When the Sun Goes Down,” Underwood’s “Cowboy Casanova” and Rodney Atkins’ “It’s America.” As a solo artist, James released several singles, a self-titled album in 1995 and the 2020 EP “I Am Now.” ASCAP named James its country songwriter of the year twice, first in 2006 then in 2010.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.

James May joined Christine Lampard on Lorraine on Friday morning as he ‘hit back’ at being banned from former co-star Jeremy Clarkson’s pub, The Farmer’s Dog

There’s only two people banned from Jeremy Clarkson’s pub, Prime Minister Keir Starmer and his former Top Gear co host, James May.

The ban was announced at the pub’s opening, with May stating it was “like being banned from the golf club”. May himself has his own pub, The Royal Oak pub, which is around the corner from his home in Wiltshire.

Speaking to Christine Lampard on Lorraine, May made it clear he has no problems with being banned, as he issued a savage response back to his former co-star, who he spent 25 years working alongside.

READ MORE: Clarkson’s Farm star Kaleb Cooper’s surprising new career move away from showREAD MORE: Clarkson’s Farm fans think season five could be last after spotting ‘clue’

“Apparently, and I’ve said before it’s a bit like being banned from a golf club, I wasn’t going to go anyway. I’ve got my own pub which is just around the corner, I’m not going to go 75 miles to his. Especially as mine’s better,” he said as Christine burst into laughter.

The petrolheads have always had a friendly rivalry, and it doesn’t seem to have disappeared after the trio went their separate ways.

However, Clarkson shut down any rumours of a serious feud, previously stating: “We’ve spent more time in each other’s company than our families’ over the last 25 years so I don’t think it would have lasted as long as it did if we’d hated each other as much as James likes to think.”

It’s been a year since the trio went their separate ways, with their final episode of The Grand Tour landing on Amazon Prime.

Reflecting on his time with the two, which began on BBC’s Top Gear, May told Christine: “It did occupy 25 years of my life. I worked at that job longer than I’ve worked at any other.

“That’s almost half of my life, over half of my working life doing that. It is quite remarkable, but it’s gone now and I’m just old!”

With no plans to reunite at the moment, the stars are each taking part in their separate endeavours. James May is currently on his solo tour, Explorers, which comes to the UK next week.

Elsewhere, Jeremy Clarkson is having huge success on the farm, and with his Prime Video show, Clarkson’s Farm.

The show is hugely successful, and just last week Clarkson and the gang picked up an NTA for Factual Entertainment show.

However, he seemed to suffer an awkward wardrobe malfunction when heading up on stage, as his trousers appeared to fall down.

While adjusting his trousers, Clarkson explained: “I should explain I am on mounjaro [antidiabetic medication Tirzepatide] and my trousers are falling down.”

Like this story? For more of the latest showbiz news and gossip, follow Mirror Celebs on TikTok, Snapchat, Instagram, Twitter, Facebook, YouTube and Threads.

The Chargers embracing an opposite approach in play-calling — moving away from a run-heavy philosophy — left many bemused during their season-opening win over the Kansas City Chiefs in Brazil.

Justin Herbert was given free rein to showcase his arm, firing pass after pass against the defending AFC champions. This approach hinged on trust; not necessarily in Herbert’s ability, but in his receivers’ capabilities.

“It’s all about having a clear mind and trust,” Quentin Johnston said. “Trusting the play call, and then trusting yourself to get open. Trusting Justin that the ball will be in the right place when you get open.”

A byproduct of learning a new system last year, with young receivers thrust into pivotal roles, Herbert and his wideouts looked out of sync at times, whether from a lack of trust, chemistry or rhythm.

With Week 1 as a litmus test, the dynamic looked much improved, thanks to another year of bonding with Johnston and Ladd McConkey and the added reliability of a returning Keenan Allen.

“We were all really close last year and bonded well, so this is just a continuation,” McConkey said. “We know the offense. We have a year under our belt with it, and now we can play more freely, be ourselves.”

A group of “regular guys,” as McConkey puts it, the bond has only grown stronger as the connection off the field has grown through beach volleyball sets, casual board game sessions and rounds of golf.

“Everybody comes in with a positive attitude,” Johnston said. “Never a dull moment with us. Always in the meeting room, just bouncing ideas off each other. I’m having fun on the field, between plays, cracking jokes.”

Chargers wide receiver Keenan Allen, right, celebrates with Ladd McConkey, center, and Quentin Johnston after making a touchdown catch against the Chiefs on Sept. 5.

(Buda Mendes / Getty Images)

That camaraderie has been most vivid in times of adversity.

As a rookie in 2023, Johnston was a lightning rod for ridicule on social media for his inconsistent performances — particularly drops — with many expecting more from a former first-round pick.

But after making two touchdown catches in the best prime-time performance of his three-year career in Brazil, Johnston was showered with positivity.

Herbert called Johnston a “special player” and would continue to “find ways to get him the ball, because good things happen.” McConkey added that “there’s nobody better” when Johnston is playing with confidence.

“First thing that jumps into my mind is, ‘In your face,’” said coach Jim Harbaugh, referring to Johnston’s critics. “If I were Quentin, that’s what I’d be saying, so allow me to say it for him.”

Chargers wide receiver Quentin Johnston (1) celebrates with Ladd McConkey (15) and Omarion Hampton after scoring a touchdown against the Chiefs on Sept. 5.

(Buda Mendes / Getty Images)

For Johnston, support from Harbaugh and his teammates means everything to him.

“These are the guys I come to work with, and go to war with every day. So to have the main dude on the team just be there, always uplift me, it feels good.”

With Johnston, McConkey and Allen, Herbert has a formidable arsenal. The trio were targeted on 26 of his 34 pass attempts and they combined for 221 yards and three touchdowns on 20 receptions.

“Those guys, especially on third down, they came in clutch,” Herbert said. “To have Q, Ladd, Keenan, those guys make plays on third down. It’s only going to help our offense.”

When the Chargers needed an opening-drive score, Johnston hauled in a pass in the back of the end zone. With the offense looking to extend the lead before the half, McConkey made an acrobatic first-down catch. And when they needed to sustain a crucial fourth-quarter drive, Allen picked up just enough yardage to keep it alive after just scoring one of his own.

All on third down.

For Allen, clutch execution has become expected, even at 33. All-Pro safety Derwin James Jr. coined the phrase “Third and Keenan,” a standout soundbite from James’ mic’d-up audio during the game.

“I was trying to express to them [the young guys] what it means having a guy like that,” James said.

From what James saw during the opener, the phrase could extend beyond Allen: “It can be ‘Third and Ladd too.’ You want to double Keenan, Ladd’s gonna do the same thing.”

With a decade more experience than the next-longest-tenured wideout, Allen has been a well of knowledge.

“He’s made a big difference,” Johnston said. “He’s a Chargers legend. So, having a guy like that to look up to and bounce ideas off is always good.”

As the group continues to feed off each other, Allen gave high praise to what could be his final receiving corps.

“I’ve been in some solid receiver rooms — this one’s right up there,” Allen said.

NEWCASTLE UNITED’s proposed plans for a new stadium to replace St James’ Park have seemingly stalled as the club plans to address other business concerns first.

The Saudi-led ownership group have discussed the prospect of building a new stadium in the city since taking over in 2021.

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Plans for a new 65,000-seat ground on the site of nearby Leazes Park were set to be revealed earlier this year before being delayed.

Now it seems these plans have been pushed back until the club is on more stable ground in other areas.

According to reports from the Daily Mail, the owners had prioritised other issues, namely the appointment of a new chief executive, a new sporting director and the production of a new training ground.

Headway has already been made on the list, with the club announcing David Hopkinson as their new CEO last week.

The executive has spent time working with football giants such as Real Madrid, and most recently held a role as a President and COO overseeing the business of the New York Knicks and the New York Rangers in the US.

Reports suggest Nottingham Forest sporting director Ross Wilson is in line to make the change to the North East to address the second point.

This follows the departure of incumbent sporting director Paul Mitchell, who chose to leave the club in June ahead of the summer window.

The holdup, it seems, remains on the final point, with Newcastle still unable as yet to find a suitable site for the development, having made one initial offer before negotiations fell apart.

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Ground has reportedly been broken on designs for the training ground in collaboration with Populous, the architects behind Tottenham Hotspur Stadium.

The hope is to make further progress on the training centre in Autumn, but until then, it seems plans for a new stadium will remain on the back-burner.

Calls for a new ground have grown as Newcastle look to establish themselves in the Champions League.

Their current 52,000 capacity ground will host Barcelona on Thursday as the Magpies look to get off to a flying start in the competition.

The Blaugrana are facing their own difficulties as they renovate their stadium, a saga that has been marred by extensive delays.

ARIEL, Wash. — Music thumps. Boots stomp. Smoke swirls.

It rises like a dry mist from red-glowing cigarettes. It ebbs around an elk’s skull, five-point antlers still attached, and a muzzle loader hanging on the wall.

A potbellied stove washes its warmth over strutting men, women and children. A skinned-out bobcat dangles from the ceiling. A two-man chain saw with a 12-horsepower engine roosts on a canopy over the bar. A sign says: “This Business is Supported by Timber Dollars.”

Tab tops pop. Bartenders slide Budweiser and Rainier and Miller and Coors across the varnished bar top, 3,120 cans and bottles in all. On a wall nearby, these people have tacked up $40. The money is waiting for D.B. Cooper. If he ever shows up, they would like to buy him a drink.

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All of this is in his honor. For 11 hours, a guitar and a bass and a mandolin and a sax and a dobro and an accordion and some drums do not stop, and neither does the dancing nor the singing nor the drinking nor the joking. One husky man lifts his redheaded lady high in the air, puts her feet gently back on the floor and gives her a big kiss.

Maybe that is him. Or maybe that is her. The thought stops conversation cold. If D.B. Cooper were a woman, would she be a redhead? “Nah,” shouts Bill Partee, over the pounding of the band. He is 64 and has lived here a dozen years. He has a full, white Old Testament beard, and he wears a cap that says: Ariel Store, Home of D.B. Cooper Days. “She had dark hair when she did this thing, but by now she’s a blond.”

What D.B. Cooper did was hijack a plane. It had just taken off from Portland, Ore. At Seattle, he forced airline officials to bring him four parachutes and $200,000 in $20 bills. In the air again, somewhere around here, high over the cedars and the firs and the hemlocks that cover the Cascade Mountains, he strapped on two of the parachutes, and he jumped out. He disappeared. Vanished. No ripped rigging. No bones. Nothing.

In this undated file photo, a helicopter takes off from search headquarters to scour the area where hijacker Dan Cooper might have parachuted into in Woodland, Wash.

(Associated Press)

That was 25 years ago on Thanksgiving eve. People have found only two things in the wilderness to show that this hijacking ever happened: a placard that blew off the back door of the plane when he opened it, and money–a few bundles of $20 bills with serial numbers that match the loot. These prove that he died, some say. Others say no, he simply dropped some of the dough. Too bad, they add, not unkindly.

To many, D.B. Cooper is a folk hero. Nobody else in America has ever hijacked a commercial airliner for money and never been caught. He has become a legend, a new Jesse James, Butch Cassidy, Billy the Kid. Books have been written about him, a play staged, a movie filmed. He is the inspiration for ballads and bumper stickers and T-shirts and coffee mugs. Saloons across the country adopt his name and invite people to “drop in on us sometime.”

Every year, on the weekend after Thanksgiving, his fans gather here at the Ariel Store and Tavern, in this mountain town of 50 people, 35 miles north of the Oregon state line. This year they are 500 strong, and they come from as far away as Brooklyn, N.Y., and Birmingham, Ala., and even Seward, Alaska. Their appraisals of D.B. Cooper and what he did offer a case study in how Americans create mythic figures and the ways in which they worship them.

Some stand and read the walls in the southeast corner of the bar, which are covered with newspaper accounts of D.B. Cooper’s exploit. They scrawl their names on a white parachute canopy spread across the front porch. They eat D.B. Cooper stew and D.B. Cooper sausages. They shake their heads at a photograph of a headstone someone put up in a front yard across the Lewis River. “Here Lies D.B. Cooper,” it says. “We spent your money wisely.”

The headstone, regardless of its attempt at humor, runs contrary to an article of faith: that D.B. Cooper is very much alive and enjoying a modest and well-deserved decadence. To his fans, the headstone shows an impertinence that borders on the unseemly. They are relieved to learn that the stone and an oval of smaller rocks outlining a faux grave were judged in bad taste and that the attempted humorist finally removed them.

Mostly, though, they party. For much of Saturday and often into Sunday they holler and dance and set off roaring fireworks. Each explosion sends clouds of white smoke billowing into a light rain and then up through the trees. They draw for prizes, mainly D.B. Cooper T-shirts, and they stage a D.B. Cooper look-alike contest. One year the winner was a basset hound in D.B. Cooper’s trademark disguise: sunglasses.

This year the contest is hard-fought. Dona Elliott, 59, owns this combination country store and saloon, built in 1929 of clapboard and shingles, uphill from the river and hard by a narrow woodland road. She holds one hand over a young man, then an older man, both in sunglasses; then a man with a $20 bill pasted on his forehead; then a couple wearing torn clothes and parachute rigging with fir twigs snagged in the straps.

By hooting and yelling and applauding, the crowd decides. Jim Rainbow, 48, a Susanville, Calif., mortician, tangled in the rigging and the twigs, is here with his wife for their 10th anniversary. He runs second. The older man in sunglasses, Eldon Heller, 70, a retired contractor from Washougal, Wash., wins by a hair. He thinks for a minute about D.B. Cooper’s current age and then smiles. “I’m just about right, huh?”

The crowd cheers again, and the band, called the Enlightened Rogues, swings through another verse about “good women who drink with the boys.” Dona Elliott is short, soft-spoken and has wavy brown hair, but she has been known to throw unruly drunks out the front door bodily and by herself. She pronounces the event a good one.

She knows that celebrating D.B. Cooper angers pilots, the airlines and especially Ralph Himmelsbach, 71, a retired FBI agent who spent the last eight years of his career trying to find him. He has written the most authoritative book about the hijacking, called “NORJAK: the Investigation of D.B. Cooper.”

Himmelsbach, who code-named the case NORJAK when he was still with the agency, spends D.B. Cooper Day at his home in Redmond, Ore. To him, Cooper is “a bastard,” nothing more than a “sleazy, rotten criminal who jeopardized the lives of more than 40 people for money.”

“That’s not heroic,” he declares, and he means it. “It’s selfish, dangerous and antisocial. I have no admiration for him at all. He’s not at all admirable. He’s just stupid and greedy.”

Elliott understands. She knows why people on the hijacked plane, for instance, might not appreciate what goes on here. But she wishes that Himmelsbach would come up anyway.

Himmelsbach, for his part, says: “I know I wouldn’t be welcome there.”

“Oh, sure he would!” Elliott responds. She chuckles. “He’s chicken.”

Thanksgiving Eve 1971

As people here tell and retell the tale of D.B. Cooper and his feat, they praise Himmelsbach’s book as the most thorough.

Folklore has entwined itself around the story like heavy brush. But from Himmelsbach’s account and news reports at the time, this much can be said:

Shortly before 2 p.m. on Nov. 24, 1971, a man stepped out of a blowing rain at the airport in Portland, Ore., and walked to the Northwest Orient Airlines ticket counter. He asked for a seat on the next flight to Seattle.

The man was middle-aged, pleasant. He stood nearly 6 feet tall. He had olive skin, dark brown eyes and dark hair. It was cut short, neatly trimmed. He wore a lightweight black raincoat and loafers, a dark business suit, a crisp white shirt, a narrow black tie and a pearl stick-pin.

He had no luggage to check. In his left hand, he carried an attache case.

Returning?

“No,” the man replied.

His name?

“Dan Cooper.”

The fare was $20. He placed a $20 bill on the counter.

Ticket in hand, he walked to Gate 52, unhindered at the time by X-ray machines or metal detectors. As he walked, he slipped on a pair of dark glasses.

Departure was scheduled for 2:50 p.m. He waited and smoked a cigarette, a filter-tip Raleigh. Finally a gate agent called Flight 305 for Seattle. Dan Cooper shuffled into line. He handed his ticket envelope to the agent, who took it and checked off his name on a boarding list, then handed back the envelope and his boarding pass.

Cooper stepped onto the plane. It was a jet, a Boeing 727. It had a pilot, a co-pilot and a flight engineer. It had three flight attendants, and it offered nearly 100 seats. But it was less than half full. Besides himself, there were only 36 passengers. He walked to an empty row in back and sat in seat 18C. But he did not take off his sunglasses or his raincoat.

The plane began to taxi. A flight attendant, Florence Schaffner, took a seat nearby. She asked him to put his attache case beneath the seat in front of him.

She settled in for the roll-out and climb.

He handed her a note.

It was Thanksgiving, and he was away from home, and she was attractive. She thought that he was proposing something indiscreet. So she paid no attention and put the note aside.

“Miss,” he said, “you’d better look at that note.”

He paused. “I have a bomb.”

To Jim Lissick, 69, of South St. Paul, Minn., who is here at the Ariel Store and Tavern to celebrate with a son and a daughter, such good manners are a sign that Cooper is a gentleman. “He was a caring person,” Lissick says, then catches himself. “Still is.”

Certainly, Lissick says, people such as D.B. Cooper can be tough and extremely demanding. But history, he says, is full of hard cases who were unfailingly polite to women and always kind to children. All of this, he adds, simply becomes part of the mythology that grows up around them.

Mike Holliday, 40, agrees. He has lived in this area since the days when loggers came to the Ariel Store and Tavern after work, hung up their wet clothes to dry and sat around the potbellied stove in their long johns drinking beer and telling stories.

To him, D.B. Cooper shows the unflappable cool of a modern Robin Hood. “But I doubt like hell that he is the kind of guy who gives money away.”

3 p.m.

Florence Schaffner glanced at the man’s note. It was neat, clear. She looked at the man’s face. He was not joking.

The note specified his demands. Take it up to the captain, he ordered, and then bring it back with his response. The man repeated: Return the note.

She hurried to the cockpit and gave the note to Captain William Scott and First Officer Bill Rataczak. They radioed that Flight 305 was being hijacked: A man with a bomb wants $200,000 in negotiable bills, a money sack and a pair of back-pack parachutes.

Part of the money that was paid to legendary hijacker D.B. Cooper in 1971 is shown during an F.B.I. news conference, Feb. 12, 1980, where it was announced that several thousand dollars was found 5 miles northwest of Vancouver, Wash., by Howard and Patricia Ingram and their 8-year-old son Brian on Feb. 10.

(Eric Risberg / Associated Press)

Schaffner returned to Dan Cooper with his note. He opened his attache case. She saw red cylinders, a battery and wires. She hurried back to the cockpit and described the contents to Scott and Rataczak. They radioed authorities on the ground: It looks like dynamite.

Cooperate, responded Northwest Airlines headquarters in Minneapolis, and try not to alarm the passengers. By now Flight 305 was over Seattle, but Cooper refused to let it land until the money and the parachutes were ready. Scott told the passengers that the plane had a mechanical problem requiring it to circle and burn off fuel. The flight attendants served drinks. Cooper had a bourbon and water. He paid with a $20 bill.

Tina Mucklow, another of the flight attendants, sat down next to him. She was easygoing, pretty and wore her hair long and flowing. They developed a rapport. He smoked another Raleigh. She lit it for him so he could keep both hands on his briefcase. “He wasn’t nervous,” she recalled later. “He seemed rather nice. He was never cruel or nasty. He was thoughtful and calm.”

Now Cooper wanted two more parachutes, for a total of four–two front packs and two backpacks. Four meant that he might jump with a hostage, and this signaled: Do not tamper with the gear. The Air Force offered two. But Cooper demanded civilian models. Civilian parachutes meant that he might free-fall away from the flight path before pulling the rip cord, and this signaled: A tail plane will be useless.

As Flight 305 circled over Seattle, airline officials, FBI agents and Seattle police scrambled to get the money that Dan Cooper was demanding. They rounded up $20 bills from several banks. Twenties would be easy to pass and would signal cooperation. It took time, but they found enough–10,000 of them. The bills weighed 21 pounds and filled a white cotton sack. The FBI microfilmed every one.

Cooper grew impatient. He ordered another bourbon and water. Then he demanded that a truck meet the plane and refill it with fuel when it landed in Seattle. He said he would release all passengers, but he wanted meals brought on board for the crew.

A skydiving school finally came up with four civilian parachutes. In a mistake that the rigger would not discover until later, they included a dummy chute that would not open.

At 5:39 p.m., a message went by radio up to Flight 305. “Everything is ready for your arrival.”

Captain Scott eased the jet onto runway 16R. He taxied to a corner of the airfield. “He says to get that stuff out here right now.”

A fuel truck drove over.

Dan Cooper sent Tina Mucklow out to get the money and the parachutes.

Then he let the passengers go.

It is commonly held in Ariel that all of this demonstrates beyond the silly doubt of any pinch-nosed naysayer exactly how brilliant D.B. Cooper really is.

“He pulls it all off pretty good,” says Steve Forney, 40, of Kelso, Wash., a biker who parks his 1979 Harley shovelhead in a special spot at the door that Dona Elliott reserves for motorcycles.

A friend, Jim Smith, 49, of Castle Rock, Wash., who pulls up on a 1987 Harley blockhead, wipes the rain off his leather jacket. He declares with approval:

“D.B. Cooper is one smart outlaw.”

6 p.m.

Arguably, ground crews were less smart. The first fuel truck they sent out to the plane had a vapor lock. The second ran dry. Finally a third topped off the tanks.

Inside the plane, Cooper announced that he wanted to go to Mexico City, and he wanted to fly in a certain way: with the landing gear down, the wing flaps down and the aft air-stairs down.

Flaps?

“Fifteen degrees,” Cooper said, with precision.

This meant that he knew the rear stairway on a 727 could be lowered in flight. It also meant that he knew flying with the gear and the flaps down would slow the plane, and he knew how far the flaps could be lowered to do it safely.

He gave another order: Stay below 10,000 feet.

This meant that he knew flying any higher with the aft door open would be risky. At 10,000 feet, the outside air had enough oxygen in it to make it safe to breathe. But any higher it did not.

First Officer Bill Rataczak figured that flying this way would burn a lot of fuel. By his calculation the plane would have a range of only 1,000 miles. Mexico City was 2,200 miles away.

This called for refueling stops on the way. Cooper agreed that one would be Reno, Nev.

A hijacked Northwest Airlines jetliner is seen in this Nov. 25, 1971 file photo as it sits on a runway for refueling at Seattle-Tacoma International Airport, Nov. 25, 1971, Seattle.

(Associated Press)

He freed attendants Alice Hancock and Florence Schaffner but kept Tina Mucklow seated next to him. At 7:37 p.m., Flight 305 was back in the air.

Cooper told Mucklow to go up to the cockpit and pull the first-class curtain closed behind her. She glanced back once. He was cutting cord from one of the parachutes and tying the money bag to his waist.

At 7:42 p.m. Captain Scott saw a cockpit light indicating that the aft stairs were down.

The plane leveled off at 10,000 feet and cruised at 196 mph. Outside it was dark, stormy and 7 degrees below zero. Now First Officer Rataczak’s watch showed almost 8 p.m.

“Everything OK back there?” he asked on the intercom. “Anything we can do for you?”

Finally a light showed that the stairs were fully extended.

“No!” Cooper replied.

At 8:12 p.m., the nose of the plane curtsied, and its instruments showed a small bump in cabin pressure. This meant that the tail had suddenly gotten lighter and that the stairs had bounced up and into the plane and then dropped down again.

Dan Cooper had jumped.

Around the potbellied stove in Ariel, two airline employees marvel at D.B. Cooper’s knowledge.

Phil Brooks, 34, of Speedway, Ind., an aircraft dispatcher, thinks that Cooper either was involved with an airline or did his homework very well.

“He was intelligent and gutsy,” Brooks says. “That tells me he had a good background, maybe Special Forces or intelligence. He didn’t work down at the carwash. And he was a major stud; he had the guts to jump out of an airplane at night in the winter.”

Brooks proudly shows off a Cooper Vane, a device named after D.B. Cooper, which locks aft air-stairs from the outside during flight. It was installed on all 727s after the hijacking to prevent further Cooper capers. Years later, Brooks found the hijacked jet in a Mississippi scrap yard. He recovered the Cooper Vane from the Cooper plane.

With Brooks is Dan Gradwohl, 30, a first officer on 727s for Ryan International Airlines, a charter service. “Cooper knew something about the 727,” Gradwohl says, “or he had to have talked to somebody and learned about it.

“He beat the system,” Gradwohl points out, and spectacularly so. “If D.B. Cooper would have simply robbed a bank, he wouldn’t be a legend.

“But he robbed several banks, and then he parachuted out of a plane.”

When Flight 305 landed in Reno, the FBI found two parachutes, the butts of eight filter-tip Raleighs and 66 fingerprints. None matched prints in the FBI files.

The next day in Seattle, the parachute rigger realized his mistake. Cooper had jumped with a good parachute and a backup that would not open.

At one point, a reporter for United Press International spotted FBI agents at the Portland police station and asked a clerk what they were doing.

“They’re looking for a guy named Cooper,” the clerk replied. “D.B. Cooper.”

The reporter phoned in his information. While it was a fact that agents were checking out a man named D.B. Cooper, they cleared him almost immediately.

But the initials stuck.

Dan Cooper entered history–and folklore–with the wrong name.

The only significant evidence that Ralph Himmelsbach ever processed was the $5,800, found on a Columbia River sandbar by Brian Ingram, 8, of Vancouver, Wash., while he was picnicking with his family. Himmelsbach matched the $20 bills to Cooper’s loot.

Will D.B. Cooper ever be located?

“I doubt it,” Himmelsbach says.

Officially, though, the FBI case against Dan Cooper is not closed. Ray Lauer, an agency spokesman in Seattle, says:

“We’re still trying to find the guy.”

Researchers Paul Singleton, Julia Franco and Steve Tice contributed to this story.

JAMES McAvoy was allegedly punched by a stranger at a Toronto bar while in town for the premiere of his directorial debut, California Schemin’.

The 46-year-old Scottish Hollywood star was enjoying a quiet night out with his wife, Lisa Liberati, when things reportedly turned sour at around 11.55pm on Monday.

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“James was having a casual get-together with the producers of his movie and, as he later learned when speaking with the staff, there was a man who drank too much who was getting escorted out,” a source told People.

“James’ back was to him and the man just punched him.” 

McAvoy apparently tried to defuse the tense situation.

Despite taking a blow, he stayed at the bar and even laughed off it with others, the source added.

The alleged assault happened at Toronto bar Charlotte’s Room.

It’s unclear whether the stranger knew he was punching the X-Men star – or if McAvoy was simply in the wrong place at the wrong time.

The Scotsman is believed to have escaped injury.

He had been in the Canadian capital for the premiere of California Schemin’ – his directorial debut – at the Toronto International Film Festival on Saturday.

The movie tells the wild true story of two Scots – Gavin Bain and Billy Boyd – who tricked music label bosses into singing them a record deal by posing as Eminem protégés from the US.

Performing as Silibil N’ Brains, the duo partied with Madonna, appeared on MTV and toured with rap legends.

The cast includes Séamus McLean Ross as Gavin, Samuel Bottomley as Billy, Lucy Halliday as Mary Boyd and Rebekah Murrell as their manager, Tessa.

The film is based on Bain’s memoir California Schemin’, which was later reprinted as Straight Outta Scotland.

McAvoy, who grew up in the Drumchapel area, said that coming from a council estate in Glasgow himself, he wanted to tell stories about people from similar backgrounds.

Speaking last year at Glasgow’s Barrowland Ballroom, he said: “I was interested in telling a story not just solely set in Scotland, but about people from backgrounds where they have fewer opportunities, whether that’s council estates or whatever.”

The star added that he was passionate about “telling a story that was entertaining and aspirational, and not just dwelling on the grime and dirt, which is part of that sort of lower economic background, definitely”.

McAvoy rose to global fame as Mr. Tumnus in the 2005 fantasy film The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe and as an assassin in the 2008 action blockbuster Wanted.

He won the BAFTA Rising Star Award in 2006 and went on to earn BAFTA Award nominations for the period dramas The Last King of Scotland and Atonement during that time.

In 2011, he took on the role of Charles Xavier in the superhero film X-Men: First Class, reprising it in the later X-Men films.

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Gavin & Stacey may have come to an emotional end on Christmas Day, but it seems James Corden and Ruth Jones aren’t quite done yet as they have reportedly signed a huge new deal

James Corden and Ruth Jones are reportedly set to reunite once again despite Gavin & Stacey coming to an emotional end last Christmas. The show creators and stars are said to be putting their brains together once again for a follow-up to the iconic BBC comedy.

They said they hoped to work together again after Gavin & Stacey ended, and it seems fans might not have long to wait. Just last month, Gavin actor Matthew Horne teased to the Mirror that something big is up their sleeves.

It has now been reported we can expect to see a brand new ten-part comedy drama from James and Ruth as they have reportedly signed a huge deal with AppleTV+. Their new show will be set in the UK with filming starting next year, according to reports.

READ MORE: Mathew Horne announces very unexpected career move as fans say ‘I can’t believe it’READ MORE: Gavin and Stacey’s Neil the Baby actor reveals his back up plan after failing his GCSEs

It is expected to hit screens in 2027, with AppleTV+ winning against interest from the BBC, Netflix and Amazon Prime. “Naturally there was a lot of interest around the script and a major bidding war to land this production,” a source told the Sun.

“But James already had an excellent relationship with AppleTV+. It acquired the rights to his Carpool Karaoke, and it made sense to go in this direction.”

They explained how Ruth and James stayed “loyal” to the BBC for Gavin & Stacey’s finale as they turned down Netflix. However, it seems they may have branched out for the new series that’s set to include a “new format and new characters”.

Casting for the new show is yet to begin, but those involved are said to be “incredibly excited”. It comes at a busy time for both James and Ruth, who are working on their own projects.

James is starring in New York Broadway show Art, while Ruth has been writing her novels ahead of starring in Netflix thriller Run Away. In August, the Mirror revealed how Gavin & Stacey star Matthew plans to appear in the new show.

When asked on his future plans with the show’s creators, he said: “I would love to work with James and Ruth again. In fact James and I have been discussing doing a play because we are both going back into the theatre for a while – but not in the same play.

“James and I have been talking about doing a play, maybe next year or maybe the year after that. And as for Ruth, she is writing her novels at the moment.

“And she has written a new novel (By Your Side) and it is all set on a fictional island in Scotland and my heritage is Scottish, I am actually mostly Scottish by blood. So I am hoping to get into something because a lot of her novels are going to be turned into TV stuff so I’d like to work with her on that level.”

He then teased while at a talk: “And I know they are doing something with Apple at the moment, they are writing something for Apple. So I think my working relationship with both of them will continue but it may not be imminent but I think we definitely will come back together so that will be really exciting and I would jump at the chance to do that.”

Speaking in May at the BAFTAs, Ruth also said she wanted to make more TV with her friend and co-star. Ruth said: “I love working with James Corden, I really do, and I hope that we will carry on working together.”

A source close to James previously confirmed he was working on writing new projects with Ruth but said as well as Apple, a number of TV channels and streamers were keen to screen whatever they come up with.

READ MORE: Michelle Keegan’s ‘amazing’ hair mask down to £7.49 in early Black Friday deal

Like this story? For more of the latest showbiz news and gossip, follow Mirror Celebs on TikTok, Snapchat, Instagram, Twitter, Facebook, YouTube and Threads.

Hello! I’m Mark Olsen. Welcome to another edition of your regular field guide to a world of Only Good Movies.

The Venice Film Festival is already underway and next week I will be part of The Times’ team heading to Toronto. The Telluride Film Festival starts today and our own Joshua Rothkopf, Josh Rottenberg and Glenn Whipp are there covering the action.

Many of the season’s most anticipated films will be playing over the next few days. Among world premieres at Telluride are Scott Cooper’s “Springsteen: Deliver Me From Nowhere,” starring Jeremy Allen White as the acclaimed singer-songwriter; Chloé Zhao’s “Hamnet,” with Jessie Buckley and Paul Mescal in an adaptation of Maggie O’Farrell’s popular novel; and Edward Berger’s “Ballad of a Small Player,” with Colin Farrell as a down-on-his-luck international gambler.

Laura Dern, George Clooney and Adam Sandler in the movie “Jay Kelly.”

(Peter Mountain / Netflix)

Among the titles making their North American premieres after premiering at European festivals will be Noah Baumbach’s “Jay Kelly,” Yorgos Lanthimos’ “Bugonia,” Richard Linklater’s two films “Blue Moon” and “Nouvelle Vague,” Joachim Trier’s “Sentimental Value,” Rebecca Zlotowski’s “A Private Life,” Kelly Reichardt’s “The Mastermind” and Kleber Mendonça Filho’s “The Secret Agent.” Mary Bronstein’s “If I Had Legs I’d Kick You” premiered earlier this year at Sundance.

This week, Rottenberg spoke to Telluride’s festival director, Julie Huntsinger, who said, “The devotion people have to this weekend makes me think there’s hope. They’re not coming here for anything but film-loving. To hear people say, ‘I would not miss this for the world’ makes me really proud and hopeful. After everything we’ve all been through, I think we still have reason to keep doing this crazy little picnic.”

Even with so much happening elsewhere, there are still plenty of great events happening closer to home right here in L.A. On Wednesday, the Armenian Film Festival begins in Glendale, celebrating the 10-year anniversary of the Armenian Film Society with the Los Angeles premiere of Mehdi Idir and Grand Corps Malade’s “Monsieur Aznavour,” starring Tahar Rahim as legendary French-Armenian singer Charles Aznavour.

The highlight of the festival will likely come on Sept. 7 with a conversation between “Sinners” producer Sev Ohanian and writer-director Ryan Coogler about their ongoing creative collaboration. That night will also see an awards gala honoring Ohanian along with actors Madeline Sharafian (“Elio”) and Karren Karagulian, best known for his work in Sean Baker’s films, including “Anora.”

James Brolin on ‘Night of the Juggler’

James Brolin, left, and Mandy Patinkin in the movie “Night of the Juggler.”

(Kino Lorber)

“Night of the Juggler,” directed by Robert Butler and adapted from a novel by William P. McGivern, has been little seen for years, only released on VHS and rarely seen in theaters or on TV. Shot on the streets of late-1970s New York City and released in 1980, the movie captures the grime and sweat of the city, making for a vividly authentic action thriller.

That should all change shortly, as a new 4K restoration distributed by Kino Lorber is playing at the Aero on Sept. 4 with star James Brolin in person for a Q&A. Then the film will get a limited run at the Los Feliz 3 on Sept. 18, 20 and 22.

In the film, Brolin plays Sean Boyd, a former NYC cop now working as truck driver. His adolescent daughter, Cathy, is abducted by the psychotic Gus Soltic (Cliff Gorman), who mistakes her for the daughter of a wealthy real-estate developer. This sets Boyd of on a frantic chase across the city to save Cathy before it is too late.

One dazzling early sequence begins as a chase on foot, finds both Soltic and Boyd stealing vehicles to make it a car chase and ends up with them hopping between cars on a moving subway train. There is a relentlessness to Brolin’s performance that is countered by the creepy, disturbing undertones of Gorman.

Brolin, 85, was on a Zoom call recently from the home in Point Dume he shares with his wife, Barbra Streisand. Turning his computer around to share a distinctly spectacular view of the ocean, Brolin said with a laugh, “I’m a lucky boy.”

Brolin began his career as a contract player at Fox and then Universal, winning an Emmy in 1970 for the first season of the hit TV show “Marcus Welby, M.D.” Among his film credits was 1976’s “Gable and Lombard,” which saw him playing Clark Gable opposite Jill Clayburgh as Carole Lombard for director Sidney J. Furie.

Furie was the original director on “Juggler.” A few weeks into shooting, Brolin broke his foot doing one of the chase scenes. In the time it took to heal, Furie left the project to be replaced by Butler.

James Brolin in the movie “Night of the Juggler.”

(Kino Lorber)

Besides his flowing hair, healthy beard and generously unbuttoned shirt, Brolin acknowledged “Juggler” was a different kind of role and a different kind of movie for him — a grittier project removed from the stalwart fare he was often known for.

“I felt released,” he said. “I felt this is what I’ve always wanted to do.”

Remembering a scene in which he bitterly argues with his ex-wife in the film (played by Linda Miller), Brolin added, “I’ve been married 30 years now, but it’s my third one. The first two were maybe kind of like that. So I was able to unleash on film some of my old nasty feelings.”

Besides Gorman, a Tony winner for his performance in “Lenny,” the cast also featured a young Dan Hedaya as a crooked cop holding a grudge against Brolin’s Boyd and a then little-known Mandy Patinkin as a Puerto Rican cab driver who has no reservations about racing through traffic and provides a running commentary along the way.

“He was like a puppy in those days: ‘Where are you guys going to eat? Can I go with you?’” recalls Brolin of Patinkin. “But for him to get in that car — so fun. He made whatever might have been repetitious about that sequence just full of fire. And right up until the cab crash, which was full-on.”

In his original May 1980 review of the film, Times critic Charles Champlin wrote, “Of its kind, the police-action thriller ‘Night of the Juggler’ is a superior piece of work. The action is non-stop, the dialogue is tough and authentic, the characters major and minor are vivid and credible as the form allows. The people and the New York world in which they movie and work are as real as muggings and racial tension.”

Brolin is happy to see the movie revived. “I’m so proud,” he told me. “It was such a wonderful experience.”

And in case anyone was wondering, yes, Barbra Streisand has seen “Night of the Juggler.”

“She saw it two weeks ago and she said ‘I’m in love all over again,’” said Brolin. “Which made me feel quite good. She thinks it’s a wonderful movie and she loved what I did in it. Because I’m a bore at home.”

Owen Kline on ‘Who Killed Teddy Bear’

Sal Mineo in the movie “Who Killed Teddy Bear.”

(Cinématographe)

Owen Kline was 7 years old when his grandfather, Joseph Cates, died. Though he knew of his grandfather’s career in show business, working on Broadway and in television, it was not until Kline became a teenage film fan, scouring movie guides and video stores in his native New York City that he discovered Cates had also directed a notorious cult film, “Who Killed Teddy Bear.”

“I’ve collected the receipts on this movie and tried to piece its history together since I was 14,” said Kline, whose parents are the actors Phoebe Cates and Kevin Kline, during a recent phone call from New York. “Because there’s not much out there.”

A newly struck 35mm print of the film — in a director’s cut including some five minutes of footage removed from the film’s initial 1965 release — is playing at the Los Feliz 3 on Sept. 2, 6 and 7. The film was restored and scanned by the boutique video label Cinématographe, who have released a 4K disc set loaded with extras.

“Teddy Bear’s” cult reputation has grown over the years as a startlingly lurid artifact taking place in some of the seedier corners of New York City. Sal Mineo plays a young man of ambiguous sexuality who becomes increasingly obsessed with a female bartender (played by Juliet Prowse) at the nightclub where he is a busboy. Elaine Stritch plays the club’s boss.

Elaine Stritch, center, in the movie “Who Killed Teddy Bear.”

(Cinématographe)

“Every video store in New York, in the cult section, would have a bootleg copy of this movie because for years, until recently, the copyright was just murky,” said Kline. “So that did a great service to its unseemly reputation, as if it was one of the dirty paperbacks you’d smuggle out of one of these adult bookstores in the film.”

As those video stores around New York City began closing, Kline, now 33, would buy up their copies, taking note of the different covers and cuts of the film that were circulating.

Kline noted that within the additional footage in the director’s cut is a moment where Mineo thumbs through a paperback called “Beach Stud” in an adult bookstore, adding to the ambiguity of his character’s sexuality. (And also perhaps a nod to Mineo’s own bisexuality, rumored at the time but not yet public.) There’s also a moment in the new scenes in which a killer kisses the cheek of his dead victim.

“On a film with a laundry list of taboos, suggested necrophilia is a new one,” says Kline. “It does really feel like a throwback film to the pre-Code era. It’s almost like they compiled a gigantic list of these taboos. There’s some really shocking stuff.”

The original Dec. 1965 review in The Times by Margaret Harford called the film “a grim commentary,” while also noting, “No doubt about it, there are a lot of sick people walking around.” The review concludes with the line, “The trend now is never knowing when to stop.”

In a 1996 interview with NPR’s Terry Gross, Cates downplayed the film’s more shocking elements, while admitting, “Ours was a slightly sleazy film.”

“We didn’t set out about and say to ourselves, ‘Gee, let’s connive to do these things that are tasteless in the movie,’” said Cates. “There was a story and we had to figure out a way to do it.”

Kline’s own feature film, 2022’s “Funny Pages,” will be playing on a double bill with Andrew DeYoung’s recent “Friendship” at the New Beverly on Sept. 16 and 17.

Points of interest

‘52 Pick-Up’ in 35mm

Roy Scheider, left, and John Glover in the movie “52 Pick-Up.”

(American Cinematheque)

As if to prove that NYC does not corner the market on scuzzy depictions of an urban underbelly, Cinematic Void will be screening John Frankenheimer’s L.A.-set “52 Pick-Up” in 35mm on Monday.

A 1986 portrait of the sleazy glory of our city and an adaptation of a novel by Elmore Leonard, the film follows a successful businessman (Roy Scheider) who is caught up in a blackmail scheme when he is videotaped with his mistress. Desperate to keep things quiet so as not to damage the local political aspirations of his wife (Ann-Margret), he finds things escalate quickly and he sets out for revenge. The cast also includes a terrifying Clarence Williams III, Vanity, Kelly Preston and actual members of the adult film demimonde.

Actor John Glover, who plays the deranged lead blackmailer in the film, will be at Monday’s screening for a Q&A. In his original review of the film, Patrick Goldstein noted, “‘52 Pick-Up’ features a couple of stylish performances, especially by John Glover, who brings a flaky intensity to his role as extortionist leader.”

‘Barry Lyndon’ in 4K

Ryan O’Neal, right, and James Magee in the movie “Barry Lyndon.”

(Warner Bros. Pictures)

On Saturday, the American Cinematheque at the Egyptian Theatre will host the Los Angeles premiere of a new 4K restoration of Stanley Kubrick’s 1975 “Barry Lyndon.” The film will also be shown in 35mm at the New Beverly on Sept. 5, 6 and 7.

An adaptation of the novel by William Makepeace Thackeray, the film brings the world of the late 1700s to astonishingly vivid life in telling the story of the wayward adventures of Redmond Barry (Ryan O’Neal), who eventually marries Lady Lyndon (Marisa Berenson).

The film won four Academy Awards and has over time seen its esteem only rise; now many consider it to be Kubrick’s greatest achievement. Yet, upon release, it confounded viewers, who found its pacing and picturesque imagery to be impenetrable.

Reviewing the film in Dec. 1975, The Times’ Charles Champlin said, “It is ravishingly beautiful and incredibly tedious in about equal doses.” He added, “Kubrick is at once the most zealous and monastic of present film-makers, living in reclusive independence from the larger world of movies, setting himself each time a quite different kind of challenge and then meticulously solving it.”

A January 1974 Times story by Thomas Wood as the film was in production was filled with thwarted attempts to get around the protective veil of secrecy Kubrick designed around it. One frustrated member of the Warner Bros. press team was exasperated by the lack of details about the movie that the studio had, noting, “What can you do with a man who is both a critic’s darling and a box-office winner? You let him pick his own game and make up his own rules.”

‘Sign O’ the Times’ in Imax

Prince performs his “Sign O’ the Times” concert in Paris in 1987.

(FG / Bauer-Griffin / Getty Images)

Starting Friday, Prince’s 1987 concert film “Sign O’ the Times” is getting a one-week run in Imax theaters. Directed by Prince himself, the film is a document of the stage show he created to tour the album of the same name, combining concerts filmed in Europe with footage created on his own Paisley Park soundstages in Minnesota. Seeing Prince’s mastery of performance at Imax scale may actually be too much for a brain to handle.

In Michael Wilmington’s original review he wrote, “‘Sign ‘O’ the Times’ shows him seemingly as much influenced by Martin Scorsese and ‘The Last Waltz’ — with its smokey, absolute lyricism — as was by Fellini and Dick Lester in ‘Under the Cherry Moon.’ And since the movie is predominately concert footage of his stage show, he’s in greater control here; singer-composer Prince is at the peak of his form. … So as a concert film, judge from the music, ‘Sign ‘O’ the Times is near the top. As a movie – carrying inside it the embryo of other movies – it’s not fully satisfying. But you sense it could be; however he stumbles, Prince gives you the impression he’ll always, catlike, leap back.”

When James Joyce first travelled from Dublin to Trieste in 1904, he went via Paris, Zurich and Ljubljana. Zurich, because he mistakenly believed a job to be awaiting him there, and Ljubljana because – groggy after the night train – he thought they’d pulled into Trieste. By the time he twigged, the train had departed and, without ready cash, Joyce and his partner Nora Barnacle had to spend a night on the tiles.

Preferring to travel by train, when I received the invite to be writer-in-residence at the James Joyce summer school in Trieste, I wondered if I might follow Joyce’s route. But repair work on Austria’s Tauern Tunnel prevented me from taking the exact route. Besides, today’s TGV tears through France at nearly 200mph, in comparison to the 25-60mph speeds at which Joyce would have navigated Switzerland and Austria. A night on the town in Milan is just as good for the muse.

Along the route from London to Trieste (and then by bus to Ljubljana), I considered the lineage of writers who traversed Europe in this way 100 years ago and how different their aesthetic, physical and emotional experiences must have been. And, importantly, what they would have seen. What we see from trains – and how we see it – reflects a century of profound social, economic and environmental transformation. Trains represent progress as much as they ever have, but – today – a different sort of progress.

My journey got off to an eventful start when the Eurostar announced delays due to cable theft near Lille. Around 600 metres of copper cable were stolen overnight from the high-speed line. A testament to the proficiency of France’s railway workers, we arrived roughly on time in Gare du Nord, Paris. A station where Joyce penned a letter to his brother, observing: “I hate the bustle but the station has its own strange poetry, the sound of footsteps, the distant whistle of the steam engines, and the sudden clanging of the signal bell.” For those sounds of steam whistling, coal shovelling, bells clanging, currencies exchanging and porters calling, today we have digital chimes, polylingual announcements, and beeping ticket barriers. Across the city, fake bird sounds chirp throughout Gare de Lyon, intending to induce calm, but instead making people search overhead for the poor trapped birds.

Instead of the illustrated posters of the belle epoque, emblazoning the walls of the metro from Gare du Nord today are climate change equations from Liam Gillick’s artwork The Logical Basis, commissioned for the COP21 climate conference held in Paris in 2015. Honouring the climate models of Nobel prize-winning physicist Syukuro Manabe, Gillick’s work has been criticised for not explaining the equations, and so keeping the simple, crucial facts of climate change at a remove from the general public.

It still seems to be the case that we don’t understand our own impact on the climate crisis. Electrified trains allow us to travel with a fraction of the carbon footprint of air travel. I still fly but try to find alternatives when I can. Less mental and moral gymnastics are required when travelling by land or sea – especially while temperatures break all records. So trains are simply more relaxing … except financially.

Virginia Woolf, who travelled solo from London to Turkey by train when she was 24, wrote that “a traveller, even though he is half asleep, knows, looking out of the train window, that he must look now, for he will never see that town, or that mule-cart, or that woman at work in the fields, again”. Never mind that woman, to see any person working in the fields from a train window these days is unlikely. Instead of vibrant country villages (and the explosion of cities taking place in the early 20th century), we have urban sprawl and suburbanisation that would have been unimaginable in Woolf’s time. Instead of the diverse cereal and crop production of a century ago, today’s fertilised pastures of animal agriculture and vast tracts of land used to grow animal feed dominate European landscapes. The consequences of that are everywhere, from the overall temperature (France is 1.9C warmer than it was in 1900) and weather pattern changes, to soil degradation, polluted air and waterways, and biodiversity loss. But to know how radically the landscape has changed in just a few decades is to know to what degree it can change again.

In the early 20th century, rail passengers would have witnessed the hydroelectric revolution, as water power in the Alps was being developed extensively. The construction of dams and reservoirs fundamentally altered alpine hydrology, creating the artificial lakes, dams, power lines and industrial infrastructure we’re used to today. One undoubtedly positive change in the past 100 years has been a significant effort towards reforestation. And while those forests are generally commercial – with about 80% classified as “forest available for wood supply” – natural forests and meadows are almost instantly possible with a shift towards a plant-rich diet, as just one example. And pastures might be replaced with solar or wind farms. Perhaps there’s something helpful in seeing where our energy comes from, so that we understand its impact. Writers took great courage in the hydroelectric revolution: it allowed them to reach the Alps by train. It represented progress, modernity and independence, as did the electric trains themselves.

For a period, rail became militarised, and trains were rerouted for troop movements and deportations, with civilians facing extreme delays, rationing and danger. Joyce fled his home in Trieste (then part of the Austro-Hungarian empire) during the first world war, as he was considered an enemy alien. At Feldkirch station in Austria, he narrowly escaped arrest. (His brother had already been separately arrested, in Trieste, and was detained until the end of the war.) He later told his biographer that “at Feldkirch station,” he “felt the fate of Ulysses was decided”. During the second world war, many writers and artists were among those who used Europe’s rail network to flee the Nazis.

When sniffer dogs boarded the TGV on the French-Italian border, and police demanded to see my passport and to know which bags were mine and the reason for my travel, I replied: “The James Joyce Summer School,” propping up my Books Upstairs tote bag and nodding at Ulysses on my tray table, which surely cast me as a bad spy. Before the first world war, passports and visas were rarely required within western Europe. After the war, this changed, and border stops were far longer and more frequent, to allow for paper checks.

But if Joyce carried a passport in 1904, it would have been a British one, with him being classified as a British subject. I was surprised to discover that Joyce repeatedly rejected the opportunity to obtain an Irish passport, post-independence. I knew from reading his work that he spurned narrow nationalism, embracing a cosmopolitan and diverse European modernism. But to reject an Irish passport was to limit his practical freedoms. Samuel Beckett’s Irish passport allowed him to stay in France and take part in resistance activities. Spending the vast majority of their lives on the continent, they both strongly identified as European. Europeanness is surely defined – even today – more by train travel than by anything else.

Despite Frantz Fanon brilliantly immortalising a racist incident on a train in France in his book Black Skin, White Masks, rail travel in Europe has been a sanctuary from racial prejudice for many, like Jamaican-American writer Claude McKay and poet Langston Hughes. Hughes wrote of the freedom from segregation and ostracisation on Soviet Union trains in particular: “No Jim Crow on the trains of the Soviet Union”. He travelled to south central Asia on the Moscow-Tashkent express, a journey which Russia’s war on Ukraine prevents today – largely cutting off the entire eastern world from Europeans who don’t fly.

Trains have been for many artists a mode of escape as well as a means of belonging. They are communal and sustainable, and they cannot but make us more considerate. Post-Covid, there is something consoling in the quiet companionship of trains. Well, not always quiet, but writers spend so long alone in caves (with our characters), it does us good to remember that real people exist, with all their tuna sandwiches and taking off of shoes.

Class segregation is less stark today than in the 20th century’s first-, second- and third-class carriages. Today’s first and second classes are largely differentiated by seat size, phone-charging facilities, and the occasional cufflink. In place of Edwardian plush velvet upholstery and decadent dining cars, today we enjoy scratchy, synthetic, easy-to-clean interiors, and minimalist dining cars full of Dutch teenagers. Writers – barring those with patrons or trust funds – can generally be found in the cheap seats.

The enlivening, philosophical aspects of train travel carry on into the 21st century: observing life and landscape; partaking in a sustainable infrastructure; witnessing the endless novelty, education and privilege that it affords; making one think, as Joyce put it, “of all the worlds moving simultaneously”. Air travel has undoubtedly facilitated untold progress, but progress is subjective and contextual. It always involves an untold or suppressed story. Slow travel allows us to think in the longer term. It could serve us well to better see where we have come from and where we are going.

Caoilinn Hughes’s latest novel is The Alternatives, published by Oneworld (£9.99). To support the Guardian and Observer order your copy at guardianbookshop.com. Delivery charges may apply

Former world champion James DeGale will make his bare-knuckle fighting debut on 27 September in Manchester.

DeGale, 39, retired from boxing in 2019 after a unanimous decision defeat by Chris Eubank Jr.

He will return to combat sports against Australian Matt Floyd on the Bare Knuckle Fighting Championship card at the AO Arena.

“UK I’m back. This time the gloves are off,” the Londoner wrote on Instagram.

“Everyone asking what version you’re getting… seven years out, body healed, mind sharp – it’s the best one yet. Demolition job pending.”

DeGale became the first British boxer to win both an Olympic gold medal and a professional world title.

He won middleweight gold at the 2008 Beijing Olympics and claimed the IBF super-middleweight title in May 2015 with a points win over American Andre Dirrell.

Nicknamed ‘Chunky’, he lost the belt in December 2017 to Caleb Truax but regained it in a rematch in April 2018 before vacating it later that year.

After being outpointed by fellow Briton Eubank Jr in what was his third career loss, DeGale said he was “not the fighter I once was” and announced his retirement shortly after.

Floyd, 36, has a professional boxing record of 15 wins and two losses. The Perth-born fighter and former gang member, who served time in prison, was reportedly in talks to face Briton Tommy Fury earlier this year.

COLORADO SPRINGS, Colo. — James Dobson, a child psychologist who founded the conservative ministry Focus on the Family and was a politically influential campaigner against abortion and LGBTQ+ rights, died on Thursday. He was 89.

Born in 1936 in Shreveport, La., Dobson launched a radio show counseling Christians on how to be good parents and in 1977 started Focus on the Family.

He became a force in the 1980s for pushing conservative Christian ideals in mainstream American politics alongside fundamentalist giants like Jerry Falwell and Pat Robertson. At its peak, Focus on the Family had more than 1,000 employees and gave Dobson a platform to weigh in on legislation and serve as an advisor to five presidents.

His death was confirmed by the Dr. James Dobson Family Institute. He is survived by his wife of 64 years, Shirley, as well as their two children, a daughter-in-law and two grandchildren.

‘Mount Rushmore’ of conservatives

Dobson interviewed President Reagan in the Oval Office in 1985, and Falwell called him a rising star in 1989. Decades later, he was among the evangelical leaders tapped to advise President Trump in 2016.

In 2022, he praised Trump for appointing conservative U.S. Supreme Court justices who overturned Roe v. Wade, the landmark decision that allowed states to ban abortion.

“Whether you like Donald Trump or not, whether you supported or voted for him or not, if you are supportive of this Dobbs decision that struck down Roe v. Wade, you have to mention in the same breath the man who made it possible,” he said in a ministry broadcast.

Dobson belongs on the “Mount Rushmore” of Christian conservatives, said Tony Perkins, president of the Family Research Council, another group Dobson founded. He promoted ideas from “a biblical standpoint” that pushed back against progressive parenting of the 1960s, Perkins said.

Weighing Dobson’s legacy

John Fea, an American History professor at Messiah College in Pennsylvania, has been critical of Dobson’s politics and ideas but recounts how his own father was a better parent after becoming an evangelical Christian and listening to Dobson’s radio program. Fea’s dad was a tough Marine who spanked his kids when he was mad at them. Dobson advocated spanking to enforce discipline but said it shouldn’t be done in anger.

“Even as a self-identified evangelical Christian that I am, I have no use in my own life for Dobson’s politics or his child-rearing,” he said. “But as a historian what do you do with these stories? About a dad who becomes a better dad?”

Possible presidential run

After developing a following of millions, Dobson considered running for president in the 2000 election, following in the footsteps of former television minister Pat Robertson’s surprise success in 1988.

“He had a big audience. He was not afraid to speak out,” said Ralph Reed, a Christian conservative political organizer and lobbyist who founded the Faith and Freedom Coalition. “If Jim had decided to run, he would have been a major force.”

Despite their close association later in life, Reed’s enduring memory is of Dobson’s voice as his sole companion while traveling through rural America as a younger political organizer.

“I’d be out there somewhere, and I could go to the AM dial and there was never a time, day or night when I couldn’t find that guy,” Reed said. “There will probably never be another one like him.”

A political juggernaut for decades

Dobson helped create a constellation of Family Policy Councils in around 40 states that work in tandem with his organization to push a socially conservative agenda and lobby lawmakers, said Peter Wolfgang, executive director of one such group in Connecticut.

“If there is one man above all whom I would credit with being the builder — not just the thinker — who gave us the institutions that created the space for President Trump to help us turn the tide in the culture war, it would be Dr. James Dobson,” Wolfgang wrote in a column last month.

James Bopp, a lawyer who has represented Focus on the Family, said Dobson was able to rally public support like few other social conservatives.

Records compiled by the watchdog group Open Secrets show that Focus on the Family and Family Research Council have combined to spend more than $4 million on political ads and close to $2 million lobbying Congress since the late 1990s.

Opposition to abortion and LGBTQ+ rights

Dobson left Focus on the Family in 2010 and founded the institute that bears his name. He continued with the Family Talk radio show, which is nationally syndicated and is carried by 1,500 radio outlets with more than half a million listeners weekly, according to the institute.

His radio program featured guests talking about the importance of embracing religion and rejecting homosexuality, promoting the idea that people could change their sexuality.

“The homosexual community will tell us that transformations never occur. That you cannot change,” he said in a 2021 video posted on his institute’s site that promoted “success stories” of people who “no longer struggle with homosexuality” after attending a ministry. He said there is typically a “pain and agitation” associated with homosexuality.

Conversion therapy is the scientifically discredited practice of using therapy to “convert” LGBTQ+ people to heterosexuality or traditional gender expectations.

The practice has been banned in 23 states and the District of Columbia, according to the Movement Advancement Project, an LGBTQ+ rights think tank.

The U.S. Supreme Court agreed in March to hear a Colorado case about whether state and local governments can enforce laws banning conversion therapy for LGBTQ+ children.

Ted Bundy interview

An anti-pornography crusader, Dobson recorded a video interview with serial killer Ted Bundy the day before his 1989 execution. Bundy told Dobson that exposure to pornography helped fuel his sexual urges to a point that he looked for satisfaction by mutilating, killing and raping women.

Months after the execution, Bundy’s attorney James Coleman downplayed the Dobson exchange.

“I think that was a little bit of Ted telling the minister what he wanted to hear and Ted offering an explanation that would exonerate him personally,” Coleman said in an interview with the AP. “I had heard that before and I told Ted I never accepted it.”

Catalini and Meyer write for the Associated Press. Catalini reported from Trenton, N.J., and Meyer from Nashville. AP writers Tom Beaumont in Des Moines, Iowa; Tiffany Stanley in Washington; Geoff Mulvihill in Cherry Hill, N.J.; and Susan Haigh in Hartford, Conn., contributed to this report.

A JAMES Bond favourite has taken himself out of the running after believing he’s “not the right person” for the role. 

Ever since Daniel Craig said goodbye to the role in 2021 release No Time To Die, the role of super spy 007 has been up for grabs, with speculation rife over who should take over. 

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Over time, bookies have placed their bets on a string of Hollywood A-listers to take on the role, including Aaron Taylor-Johnson, Idris Elba and Henry Cavill. 

With Amazon acquiring the 007 franchise from the Broccoli family, this was then extended to American stars including Patrick Schwarzenegger, Timothée Chalamet and Jacob Elordi. 

But one emerging favourite – Top Gun 2 and Anyone But You star Glen Powell – has shut down speculation he could take his martini shaken, not stirred. 

Speaking to The Hollywood Reporter, Glenn said simply: “I’m a Texan. My family and I joke around, I can play Jimmy Bond, but I should not be playing James Bond. 

“Get an authentic Brit for that job. That’s who belongs in that tuxedo.” 

In the 63 years James Bond has been on screen, seven actors have played the character – all of whom white men from the UK and Ireland. 

Sean Connery, George Lazenby, Roger Moore, Timothy Dalton, Pierce Brosnan, and Daniel Craig have portrayed the spy in the film series, with David Niven taking on the role in a non-official adaptation in 1967. 

Debate has since spread over whether the franchise should deviate from tradition when it comes to the character, with James Bond and 007 code names that can be taken on by anyone. 

At one stage, Gillian Anderson was being considered as the first female Bond, while Idris Elba has held firm as a favourite to become the first Black star to portray the spy. 

However, some actors have noted they don’t want to play such an iconic character, as doing so would mean that they could be defined as “Bond” for the rest of their career. 

The White Lotus star Theo James previously ruled himself out for that reason, telling The Guardian in 2024: “I do think there are better people for that job. 

“And, honestly, it would be terrifying: if you do that, there’s no going back. You’re opening Pandora’s box there.” 

The new favourite for the role is relative unknown actor James Nelson-Joyce, who played James ‘Yatesy’ Yates in BBC drama, Little Boy Blue, and Michael Kavanaugh in the gangster drama, This City is Ours.

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