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The United States has attacked Iran for a ninth consecutive night after the US military’s Central Command (CENTCOM) announced a US soldier had died in northern Iraq in a controlled detonation of unexploded ordnance from a downed Iranian drone.

Here is what happened over Sunday night and Monday morning and what officials on both sides have said:

Where was Iran attacked?

CENTCOM announced in a statement on X that it completed the ninth wave of attacks against Iran at 02:00 GMT on Monday.

It said it “targeted Iranian military command centers, air defense and coastal surveillance sites, maritime capabilities, missile and drone launch sites, and communications networks to further diminish Iran’s ability to attack commercial vessels and civilian mariners transiting the Strait of Hormuz”.

The US military did not provide details about the actual sites hit in Iran.

Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) said two oil tankers “exploded” and were halted in the southern Strait of Hormuz late on Sunday, according to a report by the semiofficial Tasnim News Agency on Monday.

The IRGC stated the vessels were trying to transit through the strategic waterway under what it described as US coercion.

“This passage is unsafe for the transport of chemical fertiliser or even a single drop of oil and gas,” the group warned, adding that the corridor would remain unsafe as long as US military operations in the region continue.

An MQ-9 drone was intercepted and shot down over Eslamabad-e Gharb in western Iran’s Kermanshah province, according to the Mehr News Agency on Monday.

Mehr said the drone was targeted by an advanced air defence system operated by the IRGC aerospace force.

Iran’s semiofficial Tasnim News Agency reported on Monday that US strikes targeted an area in the town of Khormoj in southwestern Iran. It quoted a local official.

Where did Iran strike, and where were warnings issued?

Jordan: The IRGC said on Monday that it launched ballistic missiles at US C-17 transport planes and P-8 aircraft at Aqaba airport, claiming several were heavily damaged. In a statement carried by the state-controlled IRIB broadcaster, the IRGC also said 20 hangars housing US forces in the Muwaffaq Salti Air Base in Azraq were destroyed.

Bahrain: The US embassy in Bahrain said it has information suggesting Iran may seek to target unspecified locations in central Manama. It urged Americans to remain vigilant, follow instructions from local authorities and immediately seek shelter if warning sirens sound or explosions are heard.

US soldier in Iraq: A US service member was killed in northern Iraq on Saturday during the controlled detonation of unexploded ordnance from an Iranian drone, CENTCOM said.

What happened in the Strait of Hormuz?

The United Kingdom Maritime Trade Operations (UKMTO) agency reported late on Sunday that a vessel about 8 nautical miles (15km) northwest of Kumzar, Oman, had caught fire.

It is unclear whether this happened due to an attack by Iran. The UKMTO said the cause of the fire had not been verified and advised vessels in the area to transit with caution and report any suspicious activity while authorities investigate.

What have Iranian and American leaders said?

US President Donald Trump said on Sunday that the US is hitting Iran to honour American service members who have been killed.

“We hit them very hard again tonight, and we did that in honour of the, probably three, it’s probably three great patriots,” Trump told reporters as he returned to Washington, DC, after the World Cup final in New Jersey. At least two US soldiers were killed in Jordan last week after Iranian missiles struck a US base there, and the third soldier Trump referred to was killed in Iraq during the detonation of the Iranian drone.

“We feel very badly,” he said when asked about the military fatalities, adding that those who died were fighting so “Iran cannot have a nuclear weapon.”

Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araghchi said in an interview with state media that Tehran would end the war with the US when it had “the upper hand in the field”, local news reported on Monday.

Talking with the IRNA news agency, Araghchi said the most critical decision in crisis management was identifying the precise moment to halt hostilities and begin negotiations.

“The end of the war is possible either through absolute military victory or through negotiations. The right time to negotiate is precisely when you have achieved a reliable field and strategic achievement on the military front,” Araghchi said.

“You cannot take risks with the lives of the people and the fate of the entire country. Decisions must be made based on accurate and complete calculations,” Araghchi said.

US President Donald Trump said the latest strikes on Iran, now in their ninth consecutive night, were carried out ‘in honour’ of American military personnel killed in Jordan and Iraq. The latest casualty figures bring the total number of US service members killed since the war began to 17, with more than 420 others wounded.

ECO-conscious pop superstar Ed Sheeran has installed a £20,000 root cellar in his sprawling mansion’s garden.

The singer, 35, has set up the trendy structure near his vegetable patch to keep the produce cool.

The cellar is partially dug into the earth and covered by an earth mound for insulation — making it look like a Hobbit hole from Tolkien’s fantasy tales.

It uses the earth’s natural insulating qualities to keep contents at a cool 8C to 15C without electricity and can be used to store veg, cheese and wine.

The cellars, which can hold 3,000 litres, are a growing trend among celebrities, including US actress Jennifer Garner. Hollywood star Gwyneth Paltrow also had the high-end Groundfridge on her Goop brand’s gift guide.

Ed’s model features solar­powered ventilation and lights up when opened, just like a fridge. It costs £15,500 plus installation fees.

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The Dutch firm says having a fridge in your kitchen is “too easy” and says it is “more fun” to get outside to grab produce.

Other energy-saving root cellars can also be bought from high street stores, including B&Q, which is selling one for £8,138.

It is the latest addition to Ed’s pad in Framlingham, Suffolk, which is dubbed “Sheeranville”.

The property also boasts a pub, tree house, underground music room, tunnels and a ­private chapel.

AMANDA Holden has defended her 20-year-old daughter’s modelling career and hit back at ‘nepo-baby’ accusations.

Having been signed to Storm Models Management at 18, Lexi has already taken to the stage at London Fashion Week, following in her famous mum’s footsteps with a glam career in the spotlight.

But Britain’s Got Talent judge Amanda, 55, doesn’t believe there’s any harm in helping her kids out if she’s able to.

“Being someone’s kid is not going to secure work, make a living for you and longevity in whatever career,” Amanda told the Daily Mail. “It may get a foot in the door, but then you’re on your own!”

Amanda’s comments come as Lexi features in sultry new modelling snaps, posing topless with just a banana tree leaf covering her.

Lexi wears her long blonde locks loose in the pictures, keeping her look natural with just a sweep of heavy eyeliner on her lashes and a toussled fringe.

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She completed the beachy look with leopard print bikini bottoms and a tangle of bracelets on her wrist.

Amanda also added that showbuiness is no picnic, saying: “I think it’s unfair to sort of single out showbusiness or the music industry, because they’re the worst businesses to be in!

“I just hate the term nepo baby because it’s up to them to make it on their own. And it’s often worse having a famous parent, it’s not often a good thing.’

Amanda revealed that her younger daughter Hollie, 14, asks her mum to drop her at school at the end of the road, because she “hates” having a famous mother.

Of Lexi, Amanda believes she’s “unfazed” and “has her head screwed on”, so doesn’t fret about her foray into the world of modelling.

This comes as UK TV bosses are said to be planning a loose revival of one of reality TV’s biggest ever shows – The Simple Life – featuring Lexi.

The early 2000s programme starred Paris Hilton and Nicole Richie and followed them as they got stuck in working “regular” jobs for the first time in their lives.

Now, channel chiefs are said to be bringing the format back but with a new competition element and a cast of Brit nepo-babies, seeing the least hard-working nepo baby voted off each episode.

Katie Price‘s son Junior and Jeff Brazier‘s son Freddy are also apparently on the wish list.

A source told The Sun: “Katie Price’s son Junior and Amanda Holden’s teen Lexi have been approached for the gruelling new TV show. It will see if they can survive a REAL day’s work.

“Bosses are hoping to get twelve of the country’s favourite nepo babies and many of them are currently in talks.

“The show has already been commissioned and will almost certainly go ahead as soon as everyone is signed up.”

When you walk into a room with Los Primos del Este, the happy-go-lucky guys immediately make you feel like part of the family. What they first cultivate with silly banter and lighthearted ad-libs eases into a more vulnerable, introspective atmosphere, comparable to a cathartic therapy session.

When I met the norteño-sax band in at Interscope Records — the major label that signed them in early 2023 — it was just a couple of hours before the official release of Los Primos’ new album, “Dulce Amargo,” on Thursday.

For a young band of players in their early 20s, they play it cool; “Dulce Amargo” is their eighth LP to date. The project feels thoroughly chiseled to their refined sonic tastes (influenced by Julión Álvarez, Legado 7 and Remmy Valenzuela) inflected with raw, sentimental lyricism and a wailing saxophone that commands each track with the spirit of an electric guitar.

“Play it back to back and actually start understanding the sound more and realize there’s new sounds being created,” said lead vocalist Geovanni Flores. “Because a lot of people get stuck in their old ways.”

Made up of five members — Flores, bassist and supporting vocalist Ariel Jesus Lopez, accordionist Juan Luis Hernandez, drummer Alejandro Tellez and saxophonist David Tellez — the group has built a steady momentum in the música mexicana genre. They’ve championed the resurgence of norteño-sax, a subgenre that fuses the accordion sounds of norteño music with an invigorating alto saxophone, made popular by legendary groups like Conjunto Primavera.

Since forming in 2017, the North Carolina-based band has gained over 2 million listeners on Spotify through catchy norteño-sax songs like “No Es Mentira (Version Norteña),” “Poema” and “Mami” — drawn together by a polka-like beat that has made them a staple of Mexican dance venues.

In 2024 alone, the subgenre grew by 39% in both the U.S. and Mexico, per Spotify.

Los Primos del Este formed in 2017 out of North Carolina.

(Arwen Clemans / Los Angeles Times)

The band took a few years to find its groove. Its 2020 debut album, “PDE,” experimented more with the prickly, sad sierreño sound popularized by acts like Eslabon Armado and DannyLux — as well as trap-infused corridos tumbados with a thumping tololoche. Still, this was music one could bop their head to, even if dance parties were limited during the global pandemic. With norteño-sax, the group could incorporate contemporary dating themes into songs that bring people physically closer to one another on the dance floor.

“There’s been a sense of maturity that’s happened within the group. In the past, we would just make music to make music and release it,” said Flores. “ We thought about every single detail now, even down to the album cover.”

Before getting into the thick of their recent music catalog, Los Primos del Este quickly unfurled details of the album cover, which shows the group sprawled across the flatbed of a white truck. The image was inspired by Alejandro Cartagena, a Dominican Republic-born Mexican creative who photographed carpooling laborers on the flatbeds along a highway in Monterrey, Mexico, in 2012. The project was a visual representation of how everyday people — often marginalized individuals — navigate transit in a sprawling suburban area.

Such an open stance on community issues appears to be a norteño-sax speciality. In 2000, their forefathers Conjunto Primavera previously told The Times that they make music for working-class audiences: “Wealthy people don’t like what we do.”

“Personally, I found myself in the bed of a truck at one point, low-income, trying to make something out of nothing,” said Lopez. “That’s the world I grew up in, and that’s the world I wanna show everybody. It’s not all sweet, you know?”

The band also nods to injustices faced by immigrant communities — including the recent fatal shootings of 52-year-old Lorenzo Salgado Araujo and 26-year-old Johan Sebastian Duran Guerrero by Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents in Texas and Maine, respectively.

“We’re willing to take the heat,” said Lopez, referring to the band’s pro-immigrant stance. “The community looks at us as a negative presence, but in reality, we’re hard-working, dedicated family people.”

It is both that honesty and vulnerability that are etched into the 14-track LP “Dulce Amargo,” which translates to “bittersweet” in English. The band shared that each member contributed details of his own personal experience to the brainstorming sessions — a process they likened to therapy.

“We were comfortable enough with each other to let [our] stories be heard,” said Lopez. “In the Latino community, there is kinda like that stereotype [that] you have to be strong.  I think this message goes out to everybody — if you’re feeling something, specifically the men, it’s OK to just let it out.”

(Arwen Clemans/Los Angeles Times)

The hazy love melody “Tremenda,” for example, underscores an intense yearning for connection. Written after Lopez was starstruck by a woman, its first lyrics begin in wondrous marvel: “Tal vez fue tu mirada,” or, “Perhaps it was your gaze.”

“What’s the first thing you do when you look at somebody? I look at the eyes,” said Lopez. “They say the eyes are the doors to the soul.”

Alejandro Tellez’s contribution came with the punchy “Linda Sonrisa,” that pleads for someone to realize the realities of the mistreatment they’re facing with another lover.

“How many times are you gonna let him do you wrong until you realize that you have the right guy in front of you?” said Alejandro Tellez in a sing-song twang. “That’s a story that I went through in high school.”

For Flores, the EDM-fused, echoing melody “Mejor Sin Ti,” struck a personal chord; could a relationship be the only thing standing in your way to personal success? “Some people do hold you back, some people tie you down — that’s what I felt,” said Flores.

Hernandez gets a bit teary-eyed when talking about his favorite song, “Sentimientos,” a whirling polka-driven ballad about an avoidant situationship, he said. “To me, it’s like we both kinda love each other already, but we’re kind of afraid to say it,” he explained. “A lot of people are afraid of falling in love again, so that song hits close to home.”

The concept behind “Mereces Mejor,” a trance-inducing ode with floating melodies that implores a loved one to recognize their self-worth, was inspired by David Tellez’s own experience with unrequited love: “She’s trying to go to the bad guy, and I’m over here giving everything I got.”

As the five artists prepare to take their new album on the road — including an upcoming performance at the Lone Star State’s Truck Show Texas Fest on July 25 — they want to make clear that norteño-sax is not a stagnant subgenre. Like most of música mexicana, it, too, is evolving, both in sound and lyricism, encapsulating today’s complex dating culture. Their emotional vulnerability is welcome in a field flooded with artists that may otherwise shrink away from such honesty — perhaps due to the stigma of mental health issues in the Latino community, especially among men.

“We understand that changing the sound may not be for everybody, but we’re making music for the next generation,” said Lopez. “Who knows? Maybe their parents might end up liking this too.”

The US military has continued strikes against Iran, hitting targets further to the country’s north as well as close to capital Tehran for the first time in the latest round of violence.

US Central Command (CENTCOM) said early on Thursday it struck several military sites and assets in a bid to “further degrade Iran’s ability to threaten innocent mariners” in the Strait of Hormuz. The unit also said it disabled an oil tanker in the passageway.

At least 35 people have died, and more than 300 have been wounded in the latest wave of attacks that began last Wednesday after CENTCOM launched strikes on Iranian port cities close to the Strait of Hormuz. The US says the attacks are in retaliation for Iran hitting three commercial ships in the Strait.

Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) said it targeted US military assets in neighbouring Gulf countries.

Here’s what has happened in Iran and the US on Wednesday and Thursday and what both sides are saying:

Where did the US hit?

CENTCOM said in a statement early on Thursday that US air strikes targeted Iranian command centres, air defence sites, missile and drone capabilities as well as coastal surveillance facilities.

Multiple locations were hit, CENTCOM said, including Bandar Abbas on Thursday.

An earlier wave of strikes late on Wednesday hit coastal defence and cruise missile sites on Greater Tunb Island in a 90-minute bombing wave, CENTCOM added. The small, strategically located island sits near the Strait of Hormuz and is believed to hold a naval base, although details are not publicly available. It is also believed to be a point from which the Iranian military has disrupted shipping routes.

Meanwhile, Iranian media reported attacks in Bandar Abbas, Qeshm Island, Sirik, Chabahar, Konarak, Rask, Khondab, Khorramabad and Semnan.

A hospital in Ahvaz was forced to evacuate 211 patients after reportedly being hit in the strikes.

Air defences were activated in Tehran and neighbouring Pakdasht and Parchin on Thursday.  The Iranian military said an MQ-9 drone was downed over the city of Andimeshk.

CENTCOM, in a separate statement on Thursday, said it was enforcing a naval blockade reimposed on Tuesday by disabling a “non-compliant” oil tanker that was attempting to sail towards Iran’s Kharg Island using Hellfire missiles.

How has Iran responded?

Iran’s army claimed retaliatory attacks on US military assets in Kuwait and Bahrain on Thursday.

Kuwait: The Iranian army said in a statement it targeted radar systems, the Patriot defence system and fuel tanks belonging to US forces at the Ali Al Salem airbase in Kuwait. In an earlier statement, it said it hit a radar and gathering point for US soldiers in Kuwait, as well as US communications systems and fuel depots in Jordan’s al-Azraq airbase.

Bahrain: Drones also targeted US Super Hawk radars and Patriot defence systems at the Sheikh Isa airbase in Bahrain, the army added.

Jordan: Meanwhile, Jordan said it intercepted eight Iranian missiles on Thursday.

Iraq: Iraqi authorities said five drones attacked the city of Erbil, with two crashing near a US base and one shot down near the US consulate. Iran’s army has not claimed the attacks.

What are both sides saying?

Iran’s parliament speaker and lead negotiator, Mohammad Ghalibaf, said on Wednesday Iran is prepared for a fuller military confrontation if the US does not live up to the terms of the interim deal. The country is fighting an “existential” battle, he added.

The IRGC has, meanwhile, threatened to halt all energy exports from the Middle East over the US’s naval blockade, which was reimposed on Tuesday.

“The export of oil and gas from the region will be either for everyone or for no one,” it said in a statement.

Speaking at the US Army War College in Pennsylvania on Wednesday, President Donald Trump reiterated his claims that Iran was pushing to strike a peace deal behind the scenes but did not provide details.

“They don’t like what we’re doing, and they do want to settle. We’ll find out whether or not we settle with them, or we just finish it off,” he said.

However, in a rare show of gratitude on Wednesday, Trump thanked Iran via his Truth Social platform for the release of Dena Karari, an American citizen the US says was “wrongfully” jailed in the country since 2024.

Meanwhile, US Vice President JD Vance, in an interview with podcaster Joe Rogan released on Wednesday, defended the war on Iran but added that an agreement was needed between the two sides to end the conflict.

The United States carried out attacks against Iran for a third consecutive night late on Monday.

Iran has continued to hit targets in the Gulf in several waves of retaliatory strikes on Tuesday, including UAE‑flagged oil tankers in the Strait of Hormuz and US military facilities in Bahrain and Kuwait.

Here is a recap of what has happened on Monday night and Tuesday, and what each side has said.

Where did the US attack Iran?

US Central Command, the military’s regional command known as CENTCOM, said its latest strikes began at 4:45pm ET (20:45 GMT) on Monday and were aimed at degrading Iran’s capacity to attack “innocent civilians and commercial shipping” in the strait.

CENTCOM later announced the conclusion of its strikes and said the latest round of attacks on Iran lasted five hours. It added that US forces “successfully struck military targets across Iran including Bushehr, Chah Bahar, Jask, Konarak, Abu Musa, and Bandar Abbas”.

Iranian state television and semi-official news agencies reported explosions throughout the night across the country’s southern coast, including the port city of Bandar Abbas, and on Kish and Qeshm islands, as well as the town of Jam in Bushehr province.

A projectile that struck western Bandar Abbas caused no casualties, the Fars news agency reported, citing the regional governor’s office.

What areas did Iran target?

For its part, Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) said it had launched a wider retaliatory campaign against US allies and interests across the Gulf.

Iran’s Tasnim news agency reported that Iranian forces had struck several “violating” vessels in the strait, and that a US-made drone had been shot down near Bandar Abbas.

The UAE: The UAE said two of its oil tankers had been hit by Iranian cruise missiles in Omani waters in the Strait of Hormuz. The UAE added that one Indian national crew member had been killed on one of the tankers, and eight other people were wounded.

Iran’s Tasnim news agency said the IRGC hit two “offending” oil supertankers, citing an IRGC statement – apparently referring to the two UAE tankers.

Kuwait: The Iranian army said on Monday that it had carried out a drone attack on US military targets in Kuwait. In a statement posted by state broadcaster IRIB, the army said it launched drones at a US Patriot missile system, fuel tanks, a watchtower, an ammunition depot and communication systems.

Bahrain: The IRGC said it targeted “several weapons storage depots, a satellite communications centre, and a building housing US forces” at al-Juffair Base in Bahrain. It also said it had hit the US Fifth Fleet in Bahrain with missiles and drones.

Air sirens have been heard four times in Bahrain on Tuesday so far.

Jordan: Jordan’s army said it shot down four missiles in Jordanian airspace that were fired from Iran, according to the official Petra news agency. After this, the IRGC said it launched ballistic missiles at US forces and key facilities at an airbase in Jordan.

In a message addressed directly to Jordanians, the IRGC insisted that the operation was aimed at the US military presence in the country rather than at Jordan or its citizens. “You know that we hold no animosity toward your country. On the contrary, we deeply love you, the noble people. You understand the pain and suffering of the Palestinian people better than any other nation, and you are aware of the crimes of the Zionist regime in the massacre of 70,000 Palestinians, including 20,000 children in Gaza, carried out with the direct involvement of the United States,” it said.

What have the US and Iran said?

US President Donald Trump formally notified Congress on July 10 that fighting with Iran had resumed on July 7, invoking his authority to keep US forces in combat for another 60 days without lawmakers’ approval.

At a news conference on Monday, Trump said Iran’s offensive capabilities were being dismantled, but he still thinks a “deal is possible” despite the return to open fighting.

Trump also repeated an earlier demand that Gulf nations help cover the cost of protecting shipping, saying Washington was “protecting a very rich portion of the world” and expected to be paid for it.

On Monday, Trump also threatened to “take out” Kuh-e Kolang Gaz La, also known as Pickaxe Mountain, a suspected nuclear site near the Natanz uranium enrichment facility in central Iran.

Meanwhile, the US blockade on Iran, confirmed by the US Navy-led Joint Maritime Information Centre (JMIC), is due to begin at 20:00 GMT on Tuesday.

The US’s blockade covers Iran’s ports and terminals along the entire southern coastline, according to JMIC.

Ebrahim Azizi, the head of the Iranian Parliament’s National Security Committee, has warned that Iran remains steadfast in defending its red lines, following the formal introduction of a bill to manage the Strait of Hormuz.

In an X post on Tuesday, Azizi wrote: “Last night, coinciding with the downing of US drones, the ‘Strategic Action for the Security and Sustainable Progress of the Strait of Hormuz and the Persian Gulf’ bill was formally introduced in Iran’s Parliament. We remain steadfast in defending our red lines, particularly regarding the management of the Strait of Hormuz.”

What is happening to shipping in Hormuz?

Oil prices rose more than 9 percent on Monday, with Brent crude climbing to about $81 a barrel, its highest level since mid-June.

Kpler, the ship-tracking firm, said crossings through the strait fell by about 52 percent between July 10 and July 12, compared with the previous week.

Hungarian parliament passes amendment that would remove President Sulyok, appointed under ex-Prime Minister Viktor Orban.

Hungary’s parliament has approved a constitutional amendment to remove President Tamas Sulyok from his largely ceremonial position, the latest move to dismantle the power of figures associated with former Prime Minister Viktor Orban.

The measure, passed on Monday with 139 votes in favour and only six opposing, would immediately bring an end to Sulyok’s term in office and pave the way for parliament to elect a new president.

Hungarians voted out the right-wing nationalist Orban in April, with new Prime Minister Peter Magyar’s Tisza Party winning in a landslide. The election result ended 16 years of power for Orban’s Fidesz party, which had come to dominate many aspects of the country.

Since Magyar’s victory, he has sought to erode that power, including by removing the current president. The constitutional amendment also introduces a series of judicial reforms, creates a body to investigate alleged financial abuses under the previous government, and imposes a 12-year term limit on lawmakers.

Sulyok now has five days to sign the constitutional amendment passed by parliament. Magyar has said that parliament will launch an impeachment procedure against Sulyok if he does not sign it.

The president and other members of Fidesz boycotted Monday’s parliamentary session.

Sweeping away the old order

The parliament elected Sulyok, a former chief of the Constitutional Court of Hungary, in February 2024. He was nominated to replace Katalin Novak, who resigned after pardoning a man convicted of covering up child sexual abuse.

But days after Magyar’s centre-right Tisza Party won a two-thirds parliamentary super-majority in April, the new prime minister declared Sulyok “unworthy to embody the unity of the Hungarian nation” and demanded that he leave office once the new government was formed.

In June, after the deadline to resign had passed, Magyar branded the president a “puppet” of Orban and promised to strip him and other holdovers from office by constitutional means. Weeks later, he unveiled a reform programme, dubbed “Operation Cleansing Fire”, which seeks to install a new constitution, purge state institutions and establish an anticorruption office.

While the presidency is a largely symbolic post, it is empowered to approve laws and can refer them to the Constitutional Court for review, raising fears that Sulyok might use his presidential powers to stymie Tisza’s ambitious reform agenda.

Since a US-brokered truce in October, Israeli attacks have killed more than 1,098 Palestinians in Gaza.

An Israeli drone attack and gunfire in Gaza have killed at least five people, including a nine-year-old girl, according to Gaza’s Health Ministry.

Tala Abu Matar died when Israeli gunfire targeted an encampment on the eastern side of the Al-Bureij refugee camp in central Gaza, medics said.

Also on Sunday, a drone attack on a blacksmith’s shop in the Sabra neighbourhood of Gaza City killed at least four Palestinians and wounded another, according to officials at al-Shifa hospital where the casualties were taken.

The Israeli military acknowledged striking the area, saying without elaborating that it targeted “terrorist infrastructure”.

Following shooting on Friday, a Palestinian man died of wounds sustained from Israeli fire near Al-Bureij camp, said a health official. Another Palestinian succumbed to injuries from an Israeli drone strike east of Khan Younis in southern Gaza.

The continued attacks in Gaza are in violation of the ceasefire agreed last October by Israel and Hamas. While fighting on the ground has mostly stopped since then, Israel has continued carrying out air strikes in Gaza, killing at least 1,098 Palestinians and wounding 3,535 during the so-called ceasefire, health ministry data shows.

Since October, Israel has expanded its control over the enclave beyond the so-called “Yellow Line”, which demarcates territory occupied by Israel from the rest of Gaza under the ceasefire agreement. Last week, Gaza’s Government Media Office said Israeli forces now control about 80 percent of Gaza.

The latest ⁠violence comes as Hamas leaders visited Cairo for further talks on implementing the second phase of US President Donald Trump’s Gaza peace plan.

The discussions include Hamas disarmament ⁠and Israeli army withdrawals, according to sources close to the talks, who said no breakthrough has been achieved.

Since the beginning of Israel’s genocidal war on Gaza in October 2023, the health ministry said at least 73,118 Palestinians have been killed.

The government of Daniel Ortega and Rosario Murillo has been accused of human rights abuses against critics.

Nicaragua’s government has stripped masses of lawyers of their licences to practise, in what critics see as yet another attack on the country’s critics.

On Friday, a United Nations expert called the government’s actions a “purge of the legal profession”, aimed at eroding the country’s final shreds of democratic checks and balances.

Nicaragua’s husband-wife co-presidents, Daniel Ortega and Rosario Murillo, have led a government that has increasingly carried out an all-out crackdown on dissent.

That effort intensified after mass social protests in 2018 that the government violently repressed.

Since then, the government has imprisoned adversaries, religious leaders, journalists and others, forcing thousands to flee the country. It has also stripped hundreds of their Nicaraguan citizenship and possessions.

Since 2018, it has also shut down more than 5,000 nongovernmental organisations, largely religious groups, but also local rotary clubs and scouting organisations.

In recent days, lawyers noticed that their licences to practise law in Nicaragua were removed without explanation from the Supreme Court of Justice’s registry, according to Reed Brody, an American human rights lawyer and member of a UN panel of experts on the Central American country.

Other lawyers also confirmed their certifications were revoked.

There was no official notification by the government, and Nicaragua’s government did not respond to a request for comment by The Associated Press news agency.

Brody said the full scope of the revocation was not immediately clear, but it “would certainly appear to be at least hundreds, if not thousands of lawyers” who were affected.

“This follows the pattern that we’ve been seeing for years. First, they closed the NGOs, the universities, the independent media. You know, they’ve gone after the churches, and now it seems the legal profession,” Brody said. “Anyone who might stand between the government and citizens.”

Brody said he knew of at least 20 lawyers who had been affected.

Juan Diego Barberena, a lawyer and human rights defender exiled in Costa Rica since 2022, was among those stripped of his official certification and said he knew of at least 25 more colleagues like him.

On Thursday, Barberena tried to access his legal accreditation on the government’s database and said his name and licence number were wiped clean from the system.

“This is a means of exercising totalitarian control over the legal profession,” Barberena said. “This means that the dictatorship can decide who gets to practise and who doesn’t.”

The move echoes other steps the government has taken in recent years.

Many Nicaraguan exiles who were stripped of their citizenship and rendered “stateless” have reported similar stories. They or their family members would search for their birth certificates and other legal documents in official databases, only to be told they do not exist.

But Barberena and Brody said the move this week by authorities went a step further, noting that those erased from the system were not just dissenters. Some were simply Nicaraguans living abroad.

Others practised criminal or family law that didn’t touch on politics, while some were government sympathisers, Barberena said.

Brody framed it as a move to whittle away at any last remaining shred of independence in a judicial system already firmly under control of Ortega and Murillo.

“On one hand, it’s an arbitrary measure to punish political dissent,” Barberena said. “On the other, it’s the dictatorship looking medium-term and wanting to prevent lawyers, experts and academics from participating in the future of the country’s institutions.”

WASHINGTON — President Trump dismissed all remaining members of the bipartisan U.S. Elections Assistance Commission this week, his latest move to assert control over national elections in the final months before midterm voting.

The White House defended the move as justified by a recent U.S. Supreme Court decision handing the president greater authority to reshape independent government agencies, including by replacing appointed leaders.

Democrats and some independent elections experts blasted it as politically motivated, counter to the interests of voters and foolhardy with the November election so close.

“Purging commissioners just months before the midterm elections and further gutting support for our state and local elections officials is a blatant part of his plan to politicize our elections and enable more unlawful and dangerous election interference,” said Sen. Alex Padilla (D-Calif.), the top Democrat on the Senate Rules Committee, which oversees federal elections.

Padilla alleged the dismissals are an attempt by Trump “to dismantle yet another independent guardrail of our democracy designed to keep elections fair and secure.”

A White House official framed the dismissals in starkly different terms, saying the departing commissioners were “not totally aligned with the important task of securing America’s elections and ensuring every legal vote is counted.” It did not say when the president planned to appoint new commissioners.

The four-member commission was created by Congress in 2002 as part of the Help America Vote Act to help states improve their voting systems and voter access. By law, no more than two commissioners may belong to the same political party.

Historically, it has provided voluntary guidance and best practices for voting systems, and served as a sort of clearinghouse for election performance around the country — so that states and localities can learn from each other.

Since 2018, the panel has also disbursed more than $1 billion in election security grants, according to a report by the Bipartisan Policy Center. Those grants are then used to protect IT systems from foreign and domestic cyberattacks, update voting systems, ensure the accuracy of voter rolls and protect the integrity of ballots after they are cast.

Without leadership, the panel cannot take any official action until new members are nominated and confirmed by the Senate.

Benjamin W. Hovland, one of the Democratic commissioners removed by Trump, told NBC News that taking away a key federal agency designed to help state and local election administrators will have a negative effect on already strained elections officials.

“When you’re asking more and more of people without giving them the necessary resources, you know, mistakes happen,” he said.

California Secretary of State Shirley Weber, in a statement to The Times, said Trump was “injecting unnecessary chaos, confusion and instability into the very systems that Americans rely on to make their voices heard,” but that California “will not be intimidated or deterred” from maintaining elections “in which everyone can fairly and securely participate.”

Gov. Gavin Newsom’s office said on X that “Newsom’s election protection efforts become more important by the day” — a reference to his recent push for state legislation that would make it a felony in California for anyone to seize ballots before a vote has been certified.

Newsom had said Thursday that Trump’s efforts to seize control over elections represented a “five-alarm fire” that must be confronted.

“We will lose this country unless we are vigilant about what’s going on in terms of election security,” he said.

Trump’s dismantling of the commission comes as he wages a much broader campaign to rewrite voting rules. He has sought to place new restrictions on mail ballots, to enhance voter ID and proof of citizenship requirements for voters, to subject state voter rolls to federal oversight and purges, and to assert federal control over how and whether the U.S. Postal Service delivers mail ballots.

Much of that agenda, pushed through executive orders and other administrative actions, has been stymied by the courts, while stalling out in Congress, where it lacks support.

Whether Trump’s move to dismantle and reconstitute the commission will prove an effective path to instituting his election agenda — or will face its own court challenges — remains unclear, experts said.

Rick Hasen, an election law expert and director of the Safeguarding Democracy Project at UCLA Law, wrote that Trump could try to illegally direct the commission to “do his bidding” by amending the federal voter registration form to require proof of citizenship.

“If he tries anything like this, it will be high profile and very important litigation that will end up at the Supreme Court on the emergency docket over the summer,” Hasen wrote.

Michael Waldman, president and chief executive of the Brennan Center for Justice at NYU Law, said in a statement that Trump’s terminations were “deeply concerning” in light of his “relentless efforts to try to interfere in elections.”

But he also said that the “guardrails” Congress put on the commission remain intact, require it to be made up of a bipartisan group and preclude Trump from directing it to enforce his voting agenda.

Sen. Adam Schiff (D-Calif.) said Trump’s firing of the commissioners was part of a broader effort by the president to “sow distrust in our voting system so he can contest the results if they are not to his liking.”

Kim Alexander, president of the California Voter Foundation, said the very name of the commission makes it clear that it was “designed to assist states and localities, not dictate what states and localities must do” with elections. She said California has “the most robust standards” for elections in the country, which won’t change with the removal of the commissioners.

Still, she said word of the firings rocketed around a conference of county elections officials in San Diego on Thursday — with some wondering whether the dismissals would threaten federal funding for election administration moving forward, and others lamenting the loss of the current commissioners’ deep experience.

Dean Logan, head of the L.A. County Registrar-Recorder/County Clerk’s office, said in a statement to The Times that “any sudden change to the support structure for elections in the middle of an election cycle is concerning,” but that California “has a strong local and state foundation for election administration and voting systems support, and that will minimize any potential disruption caused by this action.”

In recent months, Trump has leveraged federal agencies to overhaul the nation’s voting rules in ways no previous president has attempted. He has repeatedly pressured Republican lawmakers to pass a federal law that would require voters to provide proof of citizenship when they register, show identification when casting a ballot and force states to send voter data to the Department of Homeland Security.

Republican leaders have said the proposed SAVE America Act does not have enough votes to pass in the Senate. The GOP resistance has angered Trump, who on Friday said he was refusing to sign a bipartisan housing bill in protest.

The housing bill, which Trump called a “yawn” this month, would become law at midnight Friday without Trump’s signature.

Logan Webb has long been a bright spot amid San Francisco Giants chaos and dysfunction. Now he’s gone dark, deleting his X.com account after exchanging volleys with a radio reporter.

The right-hander who led the National League in innings pitched each of the last three seasons gave up five runs Wednesday in the first inning of the Giants’ 10-0 loss to the Toronto Blue Jays, including surrendering the first grand slam of his career.

Webb settled down and tossed six scoreless innings thereafter. But the Giants were well on their way to dropping to 39-54, 21.5 games behind the first-place Dodgers. Blue Jays starter Dylan Cease took a no-hitter into the ninth inning before Heliot Ramos singled for the Giants’ lone hit.

Jack Loder, a clearly exasperated digital content producer for the Giants’ flagship station KNBR, posted a two-minute video on X shortly after the game that singled out Webb for criticism.

“People say, ‘How do you blame Webb when the offense didn’t do anything?’” Loder said. “Yes, the offense didn’t do anything. I’m spreading the blame here. Maybe they do something if it’s 0-0 or 1-0. When someone is supposed to be your ace, you think they are going to give you the best chance to win every week….

“I’ve really appreciated his Giant tenure, but there’s always been a little bit lacking. I wish he was a little bit more of an ace. Because Lord knows this team has needed him in so many instances the last few years.”

Loder then accurately predicted that Webb “might be searching his name on Twitter after the game, which is never a great look.”

Webb commented on Loder’s video soon thereafter: “You know what’s sad is they allow people like you in the locker room.”

Loder, in turn, posted Webb’s response, adding, “If you’re wondering where the Giants are at mentally after a 10-0 loss to fall to 16 games under .500.”

Webb responded to another reporter’s comment in the thread and to at least two Giants fans, telling one, “Honestly you probably don’t know anything about anything some loser on the couch that couldn’t make his little league team.”

Later in the evening, Webb deleted his account and has not reactivated it. Perhaps reporters may speak to him next at the All-Star Game. He is representing the Giants for the third year in a row.

Near the end of his video, Loder broadened his criticism: “The veterans — the highest-paid guys — let this team down, let the franchise down, let the fans down.”

Six Giants players are being paid more than $20 million this season: First baseman Rafael Devers ($25 million), third baseman Matt Chapman ($25 million), starter Robbie Ray ($25 million), Webb ($23 million), outfielder Jung Hoo Lee ($22 million) and shortstop Willy Adames ($21 million).

Only Chapman (2.5 WAR) has been worth even two wins above replacement, and he is on the injured list.

Giants woes have extended beyond the field. Four pitchers pushed back against the team’s annual Pride Night in June, with three writing Bible verses next to the rainbow-tinted logo on their caps and the fourth declining to wear the colorful cap at all. MLB informed them that they were in violation of uniform protocols, triggering a culture skirmish between one of the nation’s most vibrantly diverse and queer cities and Republican politicians who asserted that the players’ actions were an expression of religious freedom protected by the Constitution.

The response from Giants president and Hall of Fame catcher Buster Posey was considered inadequate. He refused to discuss the players’ actions or the team’s response, telling reporters, “I’ll take baseball questions.”

Baseball questions pertaining to the Giants have been numerous, from the hiring of a manager — Tony Vitello — who had zero professional baseball experience to Devers seemingly defying Vitello by waving off a pinch-runner to three outfielders engaging in a provocative hip-thrust celebration.

Webb’s social media meltdown can be added to the list.

President Trump has ousted members of a bipartisan federal election commission that resisted his efforts to require would-be voters to document their U.S. citizenship before registering.

The White House on Friday confirmed the executive action against members of the Election Assistance Commission, which distributes federal grants to states, oversees the testing of voting systems and maintains the national voter registration forms.

It’s the latest move in the Republican president’s effort to expand White House influence over how U.S. elections are conducted and comes after a recent U.S. Supreme Court ruling that gave the president new personnel authority to fire members of independent agency boards.

“The President, and head of the Executive Branch, reserves the right to remove individuals that may not be totally aligned with the important task of securing America’s elections and ensuring every legal vote is counted. The Slaughter decision gives the President precedence to do so,” said a White House statement to AP.

The president removed the commission’s two Democratic members, Thomas Hicks and Benjamin Hovland. The panel’s Republican member, Christy McCormick resigned. Former Republican commissioner Donald Palmer already had left his post voluntarily earlier this year.

The changes were first reported by VoteBeat, a news outlet that covers elections and voting across the U.S.

While the White House statement did not offer a specific reason for Trump’s action, the commission has previously declined to change the national voter registration form to require documentation of an applicant’s U.S. citizenship, as Trump’s urged in a sweeping March 2025 executive order on U.S. elections. A federal judge blocked the order, ruling it exceeds the president’s authority since the U.S. Constitution grants authority over elections management and oversight to Congress and the states. The administration has indicated it will appeal.

It was not clear whether Trump planned to nominate new members immediately or leave the positions vacant — a move that, months ahead of midterm elections, could prevent the agency from distributing new grants to state or local elections offices and, at the least, complicate its role in overseeing testing and certification of voting systems around the country.

“The Administration from the start has been working across all agencies and local partners to safeguard elections from fraud and abuse, and investing in a strong infrastructure to sustain that mission especially in the midterm elections,” the White House said.

Congress created the four-member commission as part of the Help America Vote Act, a bipartisan law signed by Republican President George W. Bush in 2002. The act requires the commission to include two Democrats and two Republicans, nominated by the president and confirmed by the Senate. Hicks and McCormick were appointed by President Barack Obama. Trump appointed Hovland during his first presidency.

According to VoteBeat, Hicks and Hovland were notified of their removal by an email signed by Morgan DeWitt Snow, the deputy director of presidential personnel in the Executive Office of the President.

Barrow writes for the Associated Press.

The FIFA World Cup round of 16 on Sunday has two heavyweight ties as Brazil face Norway in New Jersey before cohosts Mexico take on England in Mexico City.

Here’s the full schedule, Opta’s predictions and the latest news from the tournament, including Morocco’s march into the quarterfinals and France’s fiery win over Paraguay.

What is Sunday’s schedule?

• Brazil vs Norway: 4pm (20:00 GMT) at New York New Jersey Stadium in East Rutherford, New Jersey, United States
• Mexico vs England: 6pm (00:00 GMT into Monday) at Mexico City Stadium

What are the predictions for Brazil vs Norway?

Brazil will be hoping to end an unwanted trend when they face Norway in the round of 16.

The teams have met four times previously in all competitions, and Norway have yet to lose the fixture. The Scandinavians have won twice and drawn twice, including a memorable 2-1 victory over Brazil at the 1998 World Cup.

Despite those historical trends, the Opta supercomputer calculates Brazil as the clear favourites. After running 25,000 pre-match simulations, Brazil won in regulation time in 53.6 percent of the outcomes.

Norway claimed victory within 90 minutes in 22.4 percent of the simulations while 24 percent ended level after normal time, sending the tie to extra time and potentially penalties.

What are the predictions for Mexico vs England?

England and Mexico have crossed paths only once before at the World Cup, and that meeting dates back nearly 60 years.

The encounter came during the group stage of the 1966 tournament when tournament hosts England secured a 2-0 victory, thanks to goals from Bobby Charlton and Roger Hunt. The Three Lions went on to lift the trophy that summer, claiming the only World Cup title in their history.

England have also enjoyed the upper hand in the fixture outside the World Cup, winning each of their last four meetings with Mexico. Those victories all came in international friendlies played from 1986 to 2010.

Opta’s supercomputer predicted one of the closest contests of the round of 16 with neither side holding a decisive advantage.

England enter the tie with a favourable historical record against Mexico, but El Tri’s home support and familiarity with the conditions help narrow the gap.

Across 25,000 simulations, England won in normal time 40.6 percent of the time, while Mexico did so in 31.5 percent. A further 27.9 percent of simulations ended level after 90 minutes, meaning the match would require extra time and possibly a penalty shootout.

Remaining round of 16 schedule:

• Brazil vs Norway: Sunday, New York New Jersey Stadium, 20:00 GMT
• Mexico vs England: Sunday, Mexico City Stadium, 00:00 GMT going into Monday
• Portugal vs Spain: Monday, Dallas Stadium, 19:00 GMT
• USA vs Belgium: Monday, Seattle Stadium, 00:00 GMT going into Tuesday
• Argentina vs Egypt: Tuesday, Atlanta Stadium, 16:00 GMT
• Switzerland vs Colombia: Tuesday, BC Place Vancouver, 20:00 GMT

What else is happening?

Morocco’s historic quarterfinal run

Morocco reached the World Cup quarterfinals for a second consecutive tournament after defeating cohosts Canada 3-0 on Saturday with Azzedine Ounahi scoring twice to end the North Americans’ historic run.

The final score did not reflect the balance of the game. Canada controlled much of the first half, creating several promising chances while keeping Morocco from registering their first shot until the 28th minute.

Morocco coach Mohamed Ouahbi was visibly frustrated on the touchline before the break as misplaced passes and sloppy errors disrupted his side’s rhythm, but the team responded with a much-improved display after half-time.

“It’s a World Cup match, and these are difficult games with teams playing for their lives,” Ouahbi said. “We reacted very well in the second half, especially in the duels and in winning the second balls.

Was Paraguay’s play ‘dirty’?

France captain Kylian Mbappe insisted his side were prepared to match Paraguay’s physical approach after securing a hard-fought 1-0 victory on Saturday to reach the World Cup quarterfinals.

Mbappe, who converted the decisive penalty in the 70th minute after Desire Doue was fouled in the area, dismissed the suggestion that France were unsettled by Paraguay’s aggressive tactics.

“They thought we’d come out in tuxedos, trying fancy tricks and one-twos,” Mbappe said. “But we know how to play dirty football too. If that’s what the game requires, we have no problem doing it.”

The winning penalty was awarded only after a VAR review with France coach Didier Deschamps questioning referee Ilgiz Tantashev’s handling of the increasingly physical contest.

“We received three yellow cards while they kept fouling us throughout the game,” Deschamps said. “Every team is entitled to play in its own way, but I could have done without some of the insults from the opposition.”

Mexico’s fortress awaits England

Mexico will look to end a 40-year wait to advance to the World Cup quarterfinals when they face England on Sunday, backed by one of international football’s strongest home records.

The cohosts have lost only two official matches at Mexico City Stadium since it opened in 1966 with the last defeat coming against Honduras in a World Cup qualifier in 2013.

Former Mexico striker Hugo Sanchez believes the stadium could once again make the difference.

“The stadium is a monster; that explains the high number of wins and draws and the few losses, which were just accidents. We approach this with optimism because we know it’s England, but if we play the way we did against Ecuador, we can beat them.”

Mexico’s World Cup record at the stadium reflects that dominance. Across the 1970, 1986 and 2026 tournaments, El Tri have played 10 World Cup matches there, winning eight and drawing two. In this year’s tournament, they have beaten South Africa, Czechia and Ecuador in Mexico City without conceding a goal while also defeating South Korea in Guadalajara.

Another day, another stunning Wimbledon outfit for Naomi Osaka.

After the four-time Grand Slam champion arrived for her opening match at the All England Club in an elegant, full-length kimono – entirely white to adhere to the tournament’s strict dress code – Osaka chose to “mix it up a little bit”.

Returning to action on Wednesday, the 28-year-old combined a white jacket with floral pattern with a long train that trailed behind her, attached to her waist by an obi – a large, decorative belt traditionally worn with a kimono.

Osaka stopped spectators and photographers in their tracks on her walk from the locker room to number two court.

Little over an hour later, she equalled her best Wimbledon run by beating Russian Anastasia Gasanova 6-3 6-2 to reach the third round.

“I feel like my inspiration can be anything,” said former world number one Osaka, who was born in Japan to a Haitian father and Japanese mother and mostly grew up in Florida.

“I took a trip to Japan one day. Obviously, you go to Harajuku [a district of Tokyo famous for its fashion culture], and see everyone expressing themselves through clothes.

“It was just so cool and colourful. That stuck out to me a lot. I kind of used that in my fashion experimentation.

“I don’t really ever have a plan when it comes to clothes. I think it’s OK to try something and fail, but I’d rather just try it and see how it goes.”

Reporting from Washington — Justice Neil M. Gorsuch, President Trump’s first appointee to the Supreme Court, is proving to be a different kind of conservative.

He is a libertarian who is quick to oppose unchecked government power, even in the hands of prosecutors or the police. And he is willing to go his own way and chart a course that does not always align with the traditional views on the right or the left.

In several of the term’s biggest cases, Gorsuch voted as expected. He joined the court’s conservatives, including Justice Brett M. Kavanaugh, to reject legal challenges to partisan gerrymandering. The two Trump appointees voted in dissent to uphold the administration’s plan to add a citizenship question to the 2020 census.

In the case of whether a giant cross on a Maryland highway violated the separation of church and state, Gorsuch took the most conservative position and said lawsuits filed by people who are “offended” but not actually harmed by such things should be tossed out.

But in the last month, he also wrote several broad and bold opinions — mostly in dissent — urging the court to revive the Constitution’s protections for individual liberty. He did so while taking the side of people not usually embraced by conservative justices, including a sex offender from Maryland, an Alabama man who was prosecuted twice for carrying a gun in his car, and two African American men from Texas who were sentenced to more than 50 years in prison for robbing gas stations.

Jonathan Adler, a law professor at Case Western Reserve University in Cleveland, calls Gorsuch “a maverick conservative with a libertarian streak. It’s remarkable that he and Kavanaugh disagreed in 30% of the term’s cases. This shows they are quite different types of conservatives.”

Earlier this year, Gorsuch wrote an opinion clearing the way for long-haul truckers to sue their employers over substandard wages, and he wrote dissents in favor of an injured railroad worker who was battling the train line over the damages he won, and a disabled construction worker fighting the Social Security Administration over disability benefits.

“Walk for a moment in Michael Biestek’s shoes,” he wrote in a dissent in the construction worker’s case that was joined by Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg and in part by Justice Sonia Sotomayor. “As part of your application for disability benefits, you’ve proven that you suffer from serious health problems and can’t return to your old construction job. Like many cases, yours turns on whether a significant number of other jobs remain that someone of your age, education and experience, and with your physical limitations, could perform.”

At Biestek’s hearing, an expert testifying for the agency said there were 360,000 jobs nationwide that he could perform. “Where did those numbers come from?” Gorsuch asked. When pressed about the source of this data, the expert said it came from a confidential private survey. The agency examiner ruled this evidence was good enough to justify denying Biestek’s claim, and the high court agreed by a 6-3 vote. “Count me” with the lower-court judges who were skeptical, Gorsuch said.

His most important opinion of the term came in a case that was seen as an opening salvo in the war over the “administrative state.” Conservatives have sought to rein in federal regulators, including the Environmental Protection Agency. Liberals are just as determined to defend them. The battle was fought, oddly enough, in the case of Herman Gundy, a sex offender who served five years in prison in Maryland and then moved to New York in 2012.

There, he was charged with failing to register as a sex offender as required under a law adopted by Congress in 2006, two years after his crime. The law said the “attorney general shall have the authority” to decide whether to apply the registration rule to the more than 500,000 offenders like Gundy whose crimes predated it.

Sarah Baumgartel, a federal public defender in New York, appealed Gundy’s conviction, in part, for violating “the non-delegation doctrine.” This refers to the principle that Congress may not delegate its lawmaking power to the president or executive agencies. It’s a doctrine studied in law schools, but not since 1935 has the high court struck down a law on this basis.

But she thought the appeal might interest Gorsuch and other justices, even though it had lost in every lower court. “This has been considered a dead-letter doctrine by many people. But he has a libertarian streak and a greater skepticism about federal power,” she said.

Her instinct was right. The eight-member court heard the case in the first week of October, a week before Kavanaugh was confirmed. But on June 20, the court ruled against Gundy in a splintered 5-3 decision, with Gorsuch writing a 33-page dissent in Gundy vs. U.S.

“The Constitution promises that only the people’s elected representatives may adopt new federal laws restricting liberty,” Gorsuch wrote. “Yet the statute before us scrambles that design. It purports to endow the nation’s chief prosecutor with the power to write his own criminal code governing the lives of a half-million citizens. Yes, those affected are some of the least popular among us. But if a single executive branch official can write laws restricting the liberty of this group of persons, what does that mean for the next?”

Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. and Justice Clarence Thomas agreed with Gorsuch. Justice Samuel A. Alito said he would be willing to accept this argument in a future case. And with Kavanaugh on board, the conservatives would have a majority.

Gorsuch was also on the losing end of an effort to reject the “dual sovereigns” doctrine that allows both the federal government and a state to prosecute a person for essentially the same crime. This double prosecution seems, to some, to conflict with the 5th Amendment, which says: “No person shall … be subject for the same offense to be twice put in jeopardy for life and limb.”

The case began in 2015 when a police officer in Mobile, Ala., pulled over Terance Gamble for a damaged headlight and found a loaded handgun in his car. Gamble had an earlier robbery conviction and pleaded guilty to state charges for having a gun in his possession. Later, federal prosecutors also charged him as a felon with a gun, and he was given three more years in prison.

The Supreme Court rejected his double-jeopardy claim on June 17, over dissents by Gorsuch and Ginsburg. “A free society does not allow its government to try the same individual for the same crime until it’s happy with the result,” Gorsuch wrote in Gamble vs. United States. “Unfortunately, the court today endorses a colossal exception to this ancient rule against double jeopardy.… The separate sovereigns was wrong when it was invented, and it remains wrong today.”

But on June 24, Gorsuch spoke for a 5-4 majority to overturn about half of 50-year prison terms given to Maurice Davis and Andre Glover of Texas for robbing four gas stations. They were convicted of the robberies and for brandishing a gun and given long prison terms. They were given an extra 25 years under a 1986 law for conspiring to engage in conduct that, “by its nature, involves a substantial risk that physical force” will be used.

In United States vs. Davis, Gorsuch said this part of the law is so vaguely worded that no one can tell for sure what it means. “Vague statutes threaten to hand responsibility for defining crimes to relatively unaccountable police, prosecutors and judges, eroding the people’s ability to oversee the creation of the laws they are expected to abide,” said Gorsuch, who was joined by the court’s four liberals. In dissent, Kavanaugh called the ruling a “serious mistake” and said it could mean “many dangerous offenders … might walk out of prison early.”

Brandon Beck, a federal public defender in Lubbock, Texas, who appealed on behalf of Davis, said he tailored his argument to Gorsuch because he “is very concerned by the text and the separation of powers. … He is also very independent, and I have lot of respect for that.”

Progressive lawyers stress that Gorsuch is a reliable conservative on most issues. Brianne Gorod, counsel for the Constitutional Accountability Center, said he “is like the justice he replaced — Justice Antonin Scalia — in more ways than one.”

Gorsuch’s record is exceptionally conservative, she said. But also like Scalia, he has sometimes demonstrated a willingness to part ways with his fellow conservatives in criminal justice cases. “Those votes suggest possible libertarian-liberal alliances may be something to look out for in the terms ahead,” Gorod said.

A Colorado native, Gorsuch has also tilted the court in favor of Native Americans and tribal treaties. In March, he cast the fifth vote with the liberals to rule for the Yakama tribe, which relied on a 1855 treaty in refusing to pay a fuel tax to Washington state for using its highways.

Gorsuch wrote a concurring opinion in Washington State vs. Cougar Den, joined by Ginsburg, to explain the history and closed with this passage: “Really, this case just tells an old and familiar story. The state of Washington includes millions of acres that the Yakamas ceded to the United States under pressure. In return, the government supplied a handful of modest promises. The state is now dissatisfied with the consequences of one of those promises. It is a new day, and now it wants more. But today and to its credit, the court holds the parties to the terms of their deal. It is the least we can do.”

What you need to know about boarding pass policies for the UK’s biggest airlines, including the carriers that have gone completely paperless and the destinations that require a printed pass

Getting your hands on your boarding pass was once a straightforward affair. You’d turn up at the airport, check in at the desk, and a member of staff would hand you a printed copy.

These days, however, with increasing numbers of passengers choosing to check in online and airlines offering digital boarding passes, the whole process can feel rather bewildering.

If you haven’t got the airline’s app, do you need to download it? And if you choose to use a digital boarding pass, what happens should your phone go missing or your battery gives out?

Here’s what some of the UK’s biggest airlines have to say about boarding passes and what’s expected of you when you travel with them, reports the Liverpool Echo.

Ryanair

Ryanair has confirmed it has “moved to 100% Digital Boarding Passes (DBP)”. This means you’ll receive your boarding pass via the Ryanair app once you’ve checked in — which can be done either through the website or the app itself.

All travellers will be required to download the Ryanair app and check in online, with reminder notifications sent 48 and then 24 hours before departure. Any passenger who fails to check in online will face an airport check-in fee of €/£55 for most flights, or €/£30 for flights departing from Spain.

Once you’ve checked in, your boarding pass should appear automatically within the Ryanair app. Should you lose your phone or your battery runs flat after checking in, Ryanair confirms it will print a replacement boarding pass free of charge.

Travellers departing from certain airports in Morocco are still required to have a printed boarding pass. Ryanair explain: “Passengers flying from Morocco must check in online as normal and then present their DBP at the airport to collect a printed boarding pass, with the exception of those flying from Marrakech, Fez, Agadir, Tangier, Nador or Oujda, where you can now use your digital boarding pass on the Ryanair app.”

Jet2

Jet2 provides a paperless option for its flights and package holidays. By downloading the Jet2 app, passengers can access documents such as boarding passes all in one place.

Jet2 advise that “you can save boarding passes for up to eight passengers on one device.” It added: “When using multiple boarding passes per device, please make sure your group stays together at the bag drop, security, gate and when boarding the plane.”

For those who prefer the peace of mind that comes with a printed boarding pass, Jet2 explains you can: “Log in to Manage My Booking, then select ‘Get boarding pass’. From here, you can either get a PDF boarding pass sent to you or save it to your device. No need to print – just show the pass on your screen when you get to the airport.”

TUI

TUI explains: “if you’re flying with TUI Airways (flight numbers starting with TOM or BY), you have a choice. TUI Airways accepts both digital and paper boarding passes.”

It clarifies that passengers who would rather have a printed boarding pass should be sure to use A4 paper, ensure their copy is legible with no tears or damage, and that the barcode is clearly visible, as it will need to be scanned at the airport.

It’s important to bear in mind that not all TUI package holidays involve TUI Airways flights. If you’ve arranged a package holiday but the flight is operated by an airline such as Ryanair or easyJet, you’ll need to verify the regulations for the particular airline you’re travelling with.

EasyJet

There is a list of airports that don’t accept mobile boarding passes on easyJet’s website, including Antalya and Izmir. The majority of these are located in Egypt, Turkey, and Tunisia. If you’re travelling to one of these airports you should check in online and print a boarding pass.

That said, for most easyJet flights, the airline suggests downloading its app to keep all your trip details in one place. It says: “For more convenience and to access your boarding passes offline, you can download mobile boarding passes directly to your Apple or Google wallet.”

For those who prefer a paper boarding pass, these remain perfectly acceptable, with easyJet’s website stating: “The best way to store your boarding passes is to use the free easyJet mobile App or you can choose to print them out. You cannot use a PDF scan of your boarding pass on your mobile device as the airport security team will be unable to scan them.

“If you lose your boarding pass don’t worry, you can simply print them again. If printing, make sure the entire boarding pass is clearly printed.”

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The California dream, according to the latest Times’ poll: National Guardsmen patrol the border with Mexico, bayonets at the ready. Every resident, citizen and non-citizen alike, carries a tamper-proof identi ty card (You can’t leave home without it). Countless times a day, the card is shown to bureaucrat or police officer to prove citizenship. The 14th Amendment, guaranteeing citizenship to the U.S.-born, is abrogated. Truant officers, lists in hand, enter classrooms and pull undocumented children from behind their desks, trundling them into vans for shipment to relocation centers. At hospitals nearby, emergency-room doctorsturn away the sick or injured who do not possess the identity card.

Every now and then, the people of California surrender themselves to a recurrent paranoid delusion that is virtually a badge of Californian identity. Now is such a time. And the combination of a paranoid-delusional populace and demagogic politicians has engendered among Californians a mean-spiritedness, a detachment from reality–and worse, a fear of freedom itself.

It happened in Los Angeles on Oct. 24, 1871, when a mob, which included some of the city’s best citizens, tortured and hanged 17 Chinese men from downtown lampposts, among them a teen-age boy, then looted the Chinese quarter.

It happened in the 1930s, in the midst of the mother of all Depressions, to Dust Bowl migrants. In February, 1936, the city of Los Angeles declared both the federal and state constitutions null and void, dispatched 126 police officers to seal off all California’s land borders from entry by migrants–all American citizens–who could not prove their net worth.

It happened most sweepingly in 1942, when American citizens of Japanese descent were shipped off to what were euphemistically called relocation centers.

It happened in June, 1943, when thousands of young servicemen wandered the streets of Los Angeles, beating up young Mexican males, stripping them of their zoot suits, blaming them, implicitly and explicitly, for the fact that they, the Anglos, had to go off to war while the Mexican youths were able to stay home and jitterbug.

As Yogi Berra would say, “It’s deja vu all over again.” Just as Californians once believed that the Chinese, the Japanese, the Dust Bowlers, or Mexican youths in zoot suits were the cause of their ills, they now believe, with the full force of mass psychosis, that illegal immigrants–read: illegal Mexicans–constitute the gravest threat to our way of life, in a close third to the economy and crime, to which illegal immigration is intimately linked.

Think of it! Mexican illegals responsible for bloated bureaucracy. Mexican illegals responsible for special-interest-dominated politicians. Mexican illegals responsible for a soaring divorce rate, the breakdown of the family, AIDS, venereal disease, declining standards in culture and education, anti-female violence in rap music, drugs, child abuse, spousal batterings, the loss of religion and personal morality, deferred maintenance of the infrastructure, teen-aged pregnancies, the Inquisition of political correctness, slovenliness in personal dress–or whatever other symptom one might choose to signify the decline of California as a culture.

To say all this is not to deny that California faces a terrible array of problems, including illegal immigrants. As Delmore Schwartz once pointed out, even paranoids have enemies. Illegal immigrants are a drain on the public sector. The underground economy–with its exploitative wages, lack of benefits, forged and perjured documents–corrupts employer and employee alike.

Furthermore, in an economy partly dependent upon illegal immigration, citizenship is devalued. What previous generations struggled for across a lifetime–the chance to live and work in America–is stolen by means of false papers. The ghetto existence of illegal immigrants reinforces an unfortunate tendency in the legal immigrant community not to learn English, not to assimilate, on some level, the language, legal and institutional structures, heritage and historical identities of the United States of America.

As bad as these problems are, however, they are not the whole picture. The state’s current malaise cannot be blamed on the young busboy, far from home, washing dishes late into the night in an upscale restaurant on the Westside. Indeed, in the vast majority of instances, Mexican illegals are doing the work that others–even those on welfare–will not do, yet needs to be done.

How did we lose faith in the premise of America and California, which is freedom and an open society, personal liberty, courage, fairness and, whenever possible, generosity to others who also wish something better for themselves? Why are we talking about bayonets on the border when, every day, there are tens of thousands of legal crossings between Mexico and California crucial to the survival of our economy? Why are we scapegoating obliquely, perhaps, yet with loathsome effectiveness, the fact of Mexican immigration to America, an immigration that was absolutely necessary for the creation of modern California?

Mexican labor built the interurban electrics that made possible modern Los Angeles and its hinterlands. Mexican labor played the major role in the creation of the agricultural economy that still remains the leading component of California’s domestic product.

Californians had it easy in that long arc of prosperity extending from World War II through the ‘80s? When it was taken away–when California began to suffer like the Rust Belt or rural New England or Appalachia–they turned around and blamed the weakest, especially an underclass approaching non-personhood.

Paranoia is intrinsically self-destructive. Paranoids not only blame others; they do damage to themselves. And so it is not surprising that the current paranoid-delusional mind-set, not content with soldiers on the border and identity cards, with kids yanked from classrooms and the sick denied treatment, now seeks to sink the North American Free Trade Agreement. True, the treaty requires some amending, but to kill the entire idea of economic cooperation with Mexico on the ground that Mexico will hijack our economy is to betray in an instant how far our self-esteem has sunk, how far we have devolved into paranoia. We want it both ways: to see the Mexicans as, on the one hand, illegals enervating our social system; and, on the other, to see them back on their own turf, capable of stealing our industrial base.

What a horrible hypocrisy for California to simultaneously exploit and berate those who come only for a better life.

Passengers have been urged to read up on their airline’s mobile boarding pass requirements

With many youngsters soon breaking up from school for the summer holidays, it won’t be long before families begin making their way to the airport.

However, before loading up the car and wheeling out the luggage, it’s worth brushing up on the rules surrounding mobile boarding passes, as certain airports do not accept them. On top of location-specific restrictions, one budget airline has gone entirely paperless since November 2025. Here’s what you need to know if you’re travelling with easyJet or Ryanair.

What are easyJet’s mobile boarding pass rules?

The airline encourages travellers to use mobile boarding passes, as they allow all travel information to be stored in one secure, easy-to-access location. They also help reduce paper waste by eliminating the need for printed boarding passes.

For added convenience and offline access, you can also save your mobile boarding passes directly to your Apple Wallet or Google Wallet.

Not all airports accept mobile boarding passes. Easyjet explains: “The majority of our airports accept mobile boarding passes, however, the airports listed below do not currently accept mobile boarding passes.”

This includes:

• ADB – Izmir
• AGA – Agadir
• AYT – Antalya
• AQJ – Aqaba
• BEG – Belgrade-Beograd
• DJE – Djerba
• ESU – Essaouira
• EVE- Harstad
• HRG – Hurghada
• JSH – Sitia
• LXR – Luxor
• NBE – Enfidha-Hammamet
• RAK – Marrakech
• RBA – Rabat Sale
• RMF – Marsa Alam
• SCR- Scandinavian Mountains
• SPX – Cairo Sphinx
• SSH – Sharm El Sheikh

It adds: “If you’re flying from an airport that doesn’t currently accept mobile boarding passes, please check in online at www.easyJet.com and print out a paper boarding pass for your flight.

“Many of these airports require all passengers to complete a document check before going to security. If travelling from an affected airport, please make sure you, and anyone you’re travelling with goes to our Bag Drop for a document check before going through security.”

You can find out more online via the easyJet website here.

What are Ryanair’s mobile boarding pass rules?

Ryanair confirmed it has “moved to 100% Digital Boarding Passes (DBP). This means all passengers will receive a DBP to their Ryanair App when they check-in online.”

Passengers simply need to check in online via Ryanair.com or through the Ryanair App before arriving at the airport. Once checked in, your DBP will appear automatically within the Ryanair App.

You should present your DBP at airport security and at the boarding gate for your flight. The airline explains the shift to fully digital means:

• DBP lowers airport costs and fares for all Ryanair passengers.
• Provides a better service (including flight info) for customers on day of travel.
• Improves customer service and re-booking during flight disruptions.
• Better for our environment (gets rid of 300 tonnes of paper annually).

If you have completed online check-in and your smartphone or tablet is lost, stolen, or runs out of battery, you can get a complimentary boarding pass at the airport.

It adds: “If passengers don’t have a smartphone or tablet, as long as they have already checked-in online before arriving at the airport, they will receive a free of charge boarding pass at the airport. However, they will not be able to access real-time flight updates or benefit from enhanced customer service during any flight disruptions.”

If passengers don’t check-in online before arriving at the airport, they will be required to pay the airport check-in fee.

You can find out more online via the Ryanair website here.

The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences invited 529 artists and executives to join its membership Wednesday, including actors Jenna Ortega, Teyana Taylor, Jacob Elordi, Mia Goth and Josh O’Connor and filmmakers Benny and Josh Safdie, as the organization continues to reshape the body that votes on the Oscars.

If all invitees accept, the academy’s voting membership will grow to 10,338 members, up from roughly 6,000 a decade ago, as the organization continues to expand its ranks and broaden its international reach. Overall membership, including emeritus members who no longer vote, will rise to 11,319.

The academy’s expansion accelerated after the 2015 #OscarsSoWhite controversy, which drew attention to the organization’s overwhelmingly white and male membership and prompted a sustained effort to recruit more women, people of color and international filmmakers. The academy met its initial post-#OscarsSoWhite diversity targets several years ago but has continued to expand and internationalize its membership.

The latest class includes 95 Oscar nominees, 21 Oscar winners and three recipients of Scientific and Technical Awards.

“We are delighted to invite this remarkable group of film artists and professionals from around the world to join the Academy,” academy CEO Bill Kramer and President Lynette Howell Taylor said in a joint statement. “Through their commitment to filmmaking, this year’s exceptionally talented class has made significant contributions to our global movie industry.”

The academy said 42% of this year’s invitees are women, 56% are from underrepresented communities and 53% are from 60 countries and territories outside the United States. Last year’s class was 41% women, 45% from underrepresented ethnic or racial communities and 55% international.

Across the academy’s overall membership, 36% are women, 25% come from underrepresented communities and 22% are international, according to the organization.

Other notable invitees include actors Jon Bernthal, Julia Garner, Bill Skarsgård, Anthony Ramos, Jemaine Clement, Jenny Slate and Simu Liu; singer-songwriter Sara Bareilles; documentary filmmaker Andrew Jarecki (“Capturing the Friedmans”); and director Zach Cregger (“Weapons”).

Nine individuals, including filmmakers Benny Safdie (“The Smashing Machine”) and Josh Safdie (“Marty Supreme”), received invitations from multiple branches and must choose one upon accepting membership.

Membership in the academy is by sponsorship rather than application. Oscar nominees are automatically considered for membership in the year they are nominated, while branch executive committees review additional candidates before recommendations are approved by the academy’s Board of Governors.

The latest class is five names fewer than last year’s group of 534 invitees. The academy’s largest-ever class came in 2018, when it invited 928 new members as part of a broader effort to diversify its ranks.

The 99th Oscars will take place March 14, 2027, at the Dolby Theatre at Ovation Hollywood.

If you’re planning to go on holiday this summer, you may need a new passport

With the summer holidays now in full swing, many travellers need a new passport. Anyone intending to go abroad will need the document, and there are specific criteria it must meet.

For instance, following Brexit, anyone travelling to the EU using a UK passport must ensure their passport’s “date of issue” falls within 10 years from their arrival date. The “expiry date” must also extend at least three months beyond the intended departure from the Schengen area, which encompasses 29 countries, including Spain, Greece, France, and Italy.

According to His Majesty’s (HM) Passport Office, when you submit an application for a new or replacement document, “you’ll usually get your passport within three weeks”. In an effort to inform travellers precisely when they can anticipate receiving theirs, independent website “UK Passport Waiting Time” is monitoring how long people are presently waiting for a new or replacement passport to be delivered.

The team, which operates independently from HM Passport Office, collects data from members of the public, including the dates they submitted applications for and received their new documents recently. Based on the most recent figures, people are waiting 19 days on average for a first adult passport, and 14 days for a replacement or renewed passport.

According to the website, the average processing time for a first child passport stands at 16 days, while a replacement takes 15 days. One traveller, using the Corby passport office to apply for a replacement passport, shared on the site that they submitted their application on May 19.

They said: “My passport was initially water damaged (to the point where the signature and previous immigration information had smudged) so required a replacement. No issues with digital photo submission from myself, just making sure to have a lot of light and a white background, and setting a timer to take the headshot (as I had no one else available) seemed to be sufficient.”

They subsequently received their new passport 23 days later, on June 11. A second applicant revealed they had applied for a first adult passport through the Hemel Hempstead passport office.

They submitted their application on May 1 and received their travel document on June 6, 36 days later. Naturally, timescales can differ between applicants, and HM Passport Office notes that: “It may take longer than three weeks if we need more information, or we need to interview you.

“We’ll tell you this within three weeks. There are different turnaround times if you’re applying from another country.”

Should you require a replacement passport as a matter of urgency, the one-day Premium Service is available to you. Bear in mind, however, that this comes at an additional cost, with an adult passport setting you back £239.50.

There’s also a one week Fast Track service available for renewing or replacing an adult or child passport – or for applying for a first child passport. The price is £192 for an adult passport, or £156.50 for a child’s.