Aside from last season’s glitch, where they failed to lift a major trophy, City have been a relentless winning machine themselves, with six Premier League titles in the last eight seasons, as well as a Champions League in 2023.
In Haaland, they have someone destroying defences with power, speed and clinical finishing.
The 1-0 defeat at Villa Park was City’s first in 10 games and, while they responded with wins over Swansea and Bournemouth, he has not forgotten that blip.
“I didn’t score last game,” Haaland told Sky Sports when asked if he felt unstoppable. “I try to help the team to win – that’s my goal.
“Even by scoring, helping or winning duels, it doesn’t matter as long as we are winning games. I want to help the team become a better football team, that’s my job.”
Haaland’s numbers this term are on a different level. The only other player to score 13 times in the opening 10 Premier League games was Les Ferdinand for Newcastle in the 1995-96 campaign, while Haaland himself managed 15 in 2022.
He has the highest xG (9.20) in the league without scoring a penalty, while he accounts for 65% of City’s goals in the top flight and Champions League – scoring 17 of their 26 goals across the two competitions.
“To give the chances and the passes to him, this is what we have to do,” added Guardiola. “He knows that, but we are so blessed and lucky to have, first of all, an incredible person because he is the sweetest and kindest.
“And he will improve. After that, as a player the numbers are just outstanding.”
Much has been said of City’s over-reliance on Haaland and the need for other players to ‘step up’ and score more goals.
“Of course you want other people to join in and they will eventually,” journalist Julien Laurens told BBC Radio 5 Live.
“But I don’t even know why this is a debate. When you have Haaland and the best finisher in the world right now, it would be silly to even give a chance to anyone else. You want the ball to fall in the box to Haaland 100% of the time.”
Within 24 hours of approving a rule change that will allow student athletes and athletic department staff to bet only on professional sports, the FBI arrested more than 30 people in connection with a major sports gambling and betting scheme. The level of sophistication alleged in one 22-page indictment reads like an “Ocean’s Eleven” script with four New York Mafia families, a current NBA player and a head coach all allegedly involved.
For Adam Silver, commissioner of the NBA, the news and arrests are a public relations nightmare.
But for the NCAA, it’s a warning.
Since a 2018 Supreme Court ruling paved the way for sports betting, more than 35 states have legalized it, so I understand why the industry no longer feels dirty. But the governing body for more than half a million young athletes must remember nothing will ever sanitize that industry.
A century ago, the Black Sox scandal nearly destroyed baseball in America. Fast forward a hundred years and we find out 16 professional tennis players — including a U.S. Open champion — were fixing matches for gambling syndicates in Russia and Italy. In between, Pete “Charlie Hustle” Rose received a lifetime ban for betting on baseball games as a manager and Tim Donaghy, an NBA referee, is busted for betting on games. Last year, former NBA player Jontay Porter was found to have placed several bets on games using another person’s account. We call him “former” because the league banned him for life.
So, if NCAA officials believe it is too cumbersome to enforce its current gambling ban (it is investigating multiple violations across several schools), imagine what life inside the organization would be like without some sort of deterrent.
In fact, no imagination is required. Just read the indictment filed by the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of New York. The FBI alleges the gambling scheme began in 2019, operated across 11 states and involved crime families with origins that date back more than a century.
According to documents, hidden cameras, programmable card shuffling machines and X-ray tables were among the pieces of technology used to steal tens of millions from victims during rigged poker games. Those allegedly involved in the scheme included Chauncey Billups — a Hall of Fame player and head coach of the Portland Trailblazers. Authorities said Billups, who led the Detroit Pistons to the 2004 championship, used his celebrity to lure in victims. In addition, the FBI said Damon Jones, a former player and assistant coach for the Lakers, shared inside information about the health of LeBron James with betters back in 2023. Terry Rozier, an active NBA player on a $100-million contract, was also arrested.
Now consider this: There are roughly 40,000 young men and women who play NCAA basketball and about 8,000 head and assistant coaches leading teams. How confident are you that March Madness won’t take on a different meaning if coaches and players are allowed to bet on games and find themselves underwater? A recent UC San Diego study found internet searches seeking help with gambling addiction increased 23% between 2018 and June 2024.
And while it’s true, the new rule maintains a ban against student athletes and coaches betting on college sports — so there are some guardrails against fixing games — but tilting outcomes is only one possible harm from gambling. The International Tennis Federation found that angry gamblers accounted for 40% of social media attacks aimed at players, with several threats credible enough to be submitted to the FBI. And there is already evidence that college students who aren’t athletes are using student loan money to place bets, and a 2023 NCAA survey found that 14% of U.S. 18- to 22-year-olds bet at least a few times a week.
Another 16% use a bookie.
I repeat: a bookie.
This just feels like a tragedy we can all see coming.
And we’re to believe the NCAA will be equipped to protect student athletes from predators when the Mafia is said to be using professional athletes and X-ray machines to steal from card players who are supposed to know better? The decision-making process for the human brain isn’t fully developed until a person is 25, and the NCAA just voted to let 18-year-olds with “name, image, likeness” money go in the deep water with sharks.
Given what just unfolded in the NBA this week the responsible move for the NCAA would be to pause the rule change — which is to take effect Nov. 1 — and reassess the risks. It’s one thing for sports gambling to cost a pro athlete to lose his career. It would be worse to see addiction or debt obligations steal a young person’s future before it begins.
Russia, the second largest oil exporter globally, is considering its response to U. S. sanctions targeting major oil companies Rosneft and Lukoil, amid the possibility of reduced sales to India, its largest buyer. President Vladimir Putin has been in talks with U. S. President Donald Trump for months about finding a resolution to the ongoing war in Ukraine, but no progress has been made yet.
On October 22, the U. S. Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control imposed sanctions on Rosneft, Lukoil, and their subsidiaries, urging Russia to agree to a ceasefire. Together, these two companies represent about half of Russia’s oil production and over 5% of the global oil supply. Earlier in January, sanctions were enacted against other Russian energy firms, but these did not severely disrupt Russian oil exports. The U. S. has also targeted the vessels and companies involved in transporting Russian oil, with some lawmakers calling for stricter measures.
Indian refiners, such as Reliance Industries, are reportedly looking to reduce or stop importing Russian oil due to increasing U. S. pressure. India purchased 1.9 million barrels per day in the first nine months of 2025, making up 40% of Russia’s total oil exports. Stricter sanctions may force Russia to offer larger discounts to maintain export levels, as oil and gas revenues are crucial for its budget and military efforts in Ukraine.
While halting crude exports is an option for Russia, it could also harm its allies, including China. Other choices include cutting exports of enriched uranium or rare metals, although these would also negatively impact Russia’s economy. Strengthening ties with China for rare-earth cooperation could counter U. S. pressures, given Russia’s substantial reserves.
Russia is a key member of OPEC+, which manages about half of global oil production, and any disruption to its exports could affect the organization’s market strategies. China, another significant buyer of Russian crude, reaffirmed its opposition to unilateral sanctions following the recent U. S. restrictions against Rosneft and Lukoil.
SACRAMENTO — Gun rights organizations filed a lawsuit Tuesday challenging a new California law that bans certain types of Glock-style semiautomatic firearms.
The law, signed by Gov. Gavin Newsom last week, prohibits the sale of semiautomatic pistols with a “cruciform trigger bar” — a feature that allows gun owners to attach a device, commonly called a switch, that boosts the weapon’s firepower and converts it into a machine gun capable of spraying dozens of bullets in a fraction of a second.
“Newsom and his gang of progressive politicians in California are continuing their crusade against constitutional rights,” John Commerford, executive director of the National Rifle Association Institute for Legislative Action, said in a statement. “They are attempting to violate landmark Supreme Court decisions and disarm law-abiding citizens by banning some of the most commonly owned handguns in America.”
The lawsuit, filed in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of California, alleges the law violates the 2nd Amendment. Plaintiffs include the NRA, Firearms Policy Coalition, and the Second Amendment Foundation, as well as some individuals and smaller businesses.
The legal action alleges that California’s new law essentially bans the sale of certain Glock-brand handguns and others with similar features that allow modification by owners.
“A law that bans the sale of — and correspondingly prevents citizens from acquiring — a weapon in common use violates the Second Amendment,” the lawsuit states. “Semiautomatic handguns with cruciform trigger bars are not different from any other type of semiautomatic handgun in a constitutionally relevant way. The Supreme Court has already held that handguns are in common use and cannot be banned.”
The lawsuit states the only justification for banning a firearm is when the weapon is “dangerous and unusual” and argues that semiautomatic pistols are neither.
“They are also unquestionably in common use for lawful purposes,” the lawsuit states. “In fact, they are among the most popular handguns in the nation.”
Assemblymember Jesse Gabriel, who introduced Assembly Bill 1127, said his bill was intended to help protect communities from gun violence.
“Automatic weapons are exceptionally lethal and capable of firing hundreds of rounds per minute; they are illegal in California,” he told the Senate Public Safety Committee in July. “Unfortunately, some semiautomatic firearms feature a dangerous design element allowing them to be converted to automatic weapons through the attachment of an easy-to-use device known as a switch.”
Over the last few years, handguns retrofitted with switches were used in several prominent shootings in California, including the 2022 mass shooting in downtown Sacramento that left six people dead and a dozen injured.
Machine gun conversion switches are illegal in the United States and are mostly manufactured overseas. They also can be built at home using 3D printers. Instructions for installing one on a firearm can be found online and require little to no technical expertise.
The Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives reported a 570% increase in the number of conversion devices collected by police departments between 2017 and 2021, according to the Associated Press.
Many of us love a morning coffee boost, and investing in a coffee machine can make the at-home experience a lot nicer.
The Nespresso Citiz Coffee Machine has been reduced from £175 to £116.10 on Amazon right now.
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The coffee machine is great for a quick drink fix.
Nespresso Citiz Coffee Machine £116.10 (was £175)
Buying coffee out has become very expensive, but sometimes instant coffee just can’t compete.
It may not be a household essential, but a coffee machine is nice little luxury to own, especially for those slow weekend mornings when you have time to sip at a frothy coffee.
With black and silver details, it’s a super-sleek design, and very simple to use too.
To make your coffee, you just have to pop a pod into the top, and then choose from two buttons – lungo for a longer, weaker drink or espresso for a more intense shot that you can drink straight away.
Seven coffee pods are included so you can get brewing straight away, but it also uses the size of coffee pods that are very readily available at supermarkets, so when you need a top-up you can get cheaper own brand versions too.
If you’ve got a thermal flask, you can easily take a coffee out and about with you, especially if you’re hoping the investment will save you money buying takeaway drinks.
The coffee machine has made its way into Amazon’s bestsellers list, so it’s proving popular online.
Shoppers are leaving their feedback on the Nespresso device, with one saying: ‘’Such a game-changer for morning coffees.
‘’Couldn’t live without it after I’d experienced having this.
‘’Easy to use, easy to clean, small and compact but still stylish on the kitchen side.’’
Another shopper commented: ‘’Great coffee machine!
‘’Love the style and colour, also fits cheaper brand coffee pods such as the Amazon range and Lidl.
‘’Makes lovely coffee, I’m so glad I invested in this machine!‘’
A third shopper added: ‘’A replacement for our old coffee machine which went well.
‘’We’re very pleased with it so far as it’s not too big and sits on our worktop nicely, plus it makes lovely coffee.’’
Nespresso Citiz Coffee Machine £116.10 (was £175)
If you’re still unsure which is the perfect machine for you, take a look at our pick of the best coffee machines.
Weekly insights and analysis on the latest developments in military technology, strategy, and foreign policy.
The American subsidiary of Belgian gunmaker Fabrique Nationale (FN) has delivered new prototype rifles and machine guns chambered to fire the 6.5x43mm Lightweight Intermediate Caliber Cartridge (LICC) to the U.S. military. LICC is one of several avenues the U.S. military has pursued in the past decade to find new small arms that offer greater range and terminal effectiveness, particularly over existing types firing the 5.56x45mm round. Though a U.S.-led effort, Canada has also been deeply involved in LICC.
FN America put out a press release today saying it had provided an unspecified number of test samples of the LICC-Individual Weapon System (LICC-IWS) and LICC-Assault Machine Gun (LICC-AMG) to the Irregular Warfare Technical Support Directorate (IWTSD). The IWTSD, first established in 1999 as the Combating Terrorism Technical Support Office (CTTSO), resides within the Office of the Assistant Secretary of Defense for Special Operations and Low-Intensity Conflict. It is charged with identifying and developing new capabilities primarily to aid in irregular warfare operations. In U.S. military parlance, irregular warfare is an umbrella term that encompasses a host of lower-intensity mission sets, including counter-insurgency and counter-terrorism, as well as advising and assisting foreign forces, often performed by special operations units.
FN America’s LICC-AMG, at left, and LICC-IWS, at right. FN America
The LICC effort traces its roots back to the mid-2010s. The 6.5x43mm cartridge evolved directly from the .264 USA round, which was developed internally by the U.S. Army Marksmanship Unit (AMU). FN has been under contract to develop a weapon system to go with the LICC ammunition since 2019. The steel-cased 6.5x43mm rounds are 20 percent lighter than equivalent cartridges with brass cases, and have better accuracy, range, and performance compared to typical 5.56x45mm loadings, according to the company.
FN America has developed three subvariants of the LICC-IWS with 12.5-inch, 14.5-inch, and 18-inch barrels, referred to as the Close Quarters Battle, Carbine, and Designated Marksmanship Rifle types, respectively. The company says the 14.5-inch barrelled version is 35 and a half inches overall (32 and a half inches with its stock collapsed) and weighs 7.75 pounds. This puts it in the same general size and weight class as the 5.56x45mm M4A1 carbine, which continues to be widely issued across the U.S. military and has been something of a control standard for the LICC effort.
The LICC-IWS Carbine subvariant, at left and center right. The Close Quarters Battle and Designated Marksmanship Rifle subvariants are also shown at right. FN America
“Initial test firing results from the U.S. Army Marksmanship Unit and other operators show that the accuracy of the LICC-IWS is consistently two times better than the M4A1,” Jim Williams, Vice President of Military Programs for FN America, said in a statement today. “Additionally, the LICC-IWS handles like the M4A1, yet remains soft shooting when firing the new 6.5×43 lightweight ammunition.”
The LICC-AMG is a 6.5x43mm variant of FN’s Evolys machine gun, which made its public debut in 2021. The belt-fed Evolys is also offered chambered in 5.56x45mm and 7.62x51mm. The LICC version has a 14.5-inch barrel, is nearly 40 inches long overall (36 and a half inches with its stock collapsed), and weighs nearly 14 pounds. FN America says it has tested the LICC-AMG against its Mk 48, Mk 46, and M249 Squad Automatic Weapon (SAW) machine guns. The Mk 48 is a 7.62x51mm derivative of the 5.56x45mm M249. The Mk 46 is a special-purpose subvariant of the M249. All three types are in service with various elements of the U.S. military.
The LICC-AMG machine gun. FN America
“In prototype testing, the AMG was more accurate than the FN MK 48 in full auto mode,” according to FN America’s release today. “Overall, the AMG demonstrated improved performance in lethality, accuracy, durability, balance, and handling over the FN M249 and FN MK 46/MK 48 machine guns.”
“FN’s ultimate goal is to advance from development into production and field a final solution that provides operators a system that is easier to operate, more accurate and more effective than anything available today,” Mark Cherpes, President and CEO for FN America, also said in a statement. “After this test and evaluation phase, our plan is to take user feedback, fine-tune the systems, and move into low-rate initial production.”
“Multiple users will test the operational samples, providing critical feedback to aid FN and IWTSD in the final development of the systems,” today’s press release adds.
FN America
All this being said, what the exact plan is going forward for the LICC effort, and who might be in line to field the LICC-IWS and/or the LICC-AMG on any level, is not entirely clear. Key to the genesis of the preceding .264 USA cartridge were lessons learned by U.S. forces from combat in Afghanistan during the Global War on Terror era, where being outranged was a common complaint.
“Tactical operators require an integrated, user-tailorable, lightweight shoulder-fired individual weapon and lightweight intermediate caliber cartridge (LICC) that can overmatch the current maximum effective range and terminal effects of peer, near peer, and future threat individual weapons and ammunition, while also defeating current and emerging threat individual protective equipment out to 800 meters,” what was then CCTSO had said in a Broad Agency Announcement (BAA) contracting notice back in 2018.
Since then, the U.S. Army has selected a new standard service rifle and replacement for the M249, the M7 and M250, both from Sig Sauer and chambered to fire a 6.8x51mm round. The Next Generation Squad Weapons program that birthed those weapons was driven heavily by the same concerns about range as LICC, as well as improvements in adversary body armor.
The M250 machine gun, at top, and the M7 rifle, at bottom. Sig Sauer
Army special operations units were involved in developmental testing of the M7 and M250, though it remains to be seen how widespread the use of those guns within the broader special operations community might be in the end. The M7 rifle has been the subject of some controversy recently, including criticism about its weight, bulk, and increased recoil compared to the M4A1, as you can read more about here.
In recent years, the U.S. special operations community has also increasingly embraced the 6.5mm Creedmoor round, again because of the increased range, accuracy, and terminal performance it offers over 5.56x45mm, as well as 7.62x51mm. U.S. Special Operations Command (SOCOM) has ordered examples of at least two new rifles in this caliber in the past two years, and has also been evaluating belt-fed machine guns chambered to fire this round.
The Lewis Machine & Tool (LMT) Mid-Range Gas Gun-Assault (MRGG-A), one of two 6.5mm Creedmoor rifles SOCOM has begun to acquire in recent years. LMT
This all prompts a question of whether the IWTSD is now continuing to pursue LICC with more of an eye toward requirements from foreign allies and partners. As mentioned, Canada is known to be heavily involved in the effort. The 2018 BAA notably used Colt Canada’s C8 Special Forces Weapon (SFW), an AR-15/M16 pattern carbine distinct from the U.S. standard M4A1, as the comparison point for many of the stated LICC requirements. At the time of writing, the LICC-IWS and LICC-AMG pages on FN America’s website notably show the IWTSD logo and the crest of Canadian Special Operations Forces Command (CANSOFCOM).
Screen captures from the LICC-AMG and LICC-IWS webpages on FN America’s website showing the IWTSD logo and CANSOFCOM crest. FN America
“With an eye to the future, CANSOFCOM is pursuing a NATO Standardization Agreement (STANAG) for 6.5 x 43 mm in partnership with at least one additional NATO member,” Soldier Systems Daily reported earlier this year, citing unnamed sources. “At this point, the other party has not been disclosed. However, I know it is not the US, which has been working on the 6.8 x 51mm common case cartridge as their path forward.”
Whatever the case, FN America is clearly continuing to work with the IWTSD to advance the LICC effort, with series production of guns chambered in that round now said to be finally on the horizon.
You have to look long and hard for stability and continuity in this era of transfer mania, but Beaumont football coach Jeff Steinberg is proud to point out that 26 of his 27 players in the starting rotation have been at Beaumont since their freshman seasons. The only one that didn’t came as a sophomore.
That kind of loyalty and confidence in a program produces community pride and helps build community support every time Beaumont plays.
The team is 5-1 and is favored to win the Citrus Belt League and be a factor in the Southern Section Division 2 playoffs.
Linebacker Matt Casas is a tackling machine with 52 tackles. Beaumont owns wins over Cathedral and Chaminade. Its only loss was 21-14 to Vista Murrieta.
Imagine how many fans from the Beaumont area will show up to playoff games. Can you say sellout?
This is a daily look at the positive happenings in high school sports. To submit any news, please email [email protected].
The contradictions of mixed martial arts brawler Mark Kerr can’t be contained by a ring, an octagon or a film. A vulnerable man with a brutal career, he went undefeated on the mat while struggling in his private relationships and public addiction to painkillers, which he bravely revealed in John Hyams’ 2002 HBO documentary “The Smashing Machine: The Life and Times of Extreme Fighter Mark Kerr.” In that footage, shot between 1997 and 2000, you’re continually startled by how Kerr could clobber his opponents until some lost teeth — putting himself in a mental state he once likened to being a shark in a feeding frenzy — and then after the bell, flash a smile so wide and happy, it split his own head in half.
That’s Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson’s whole thing, too: Kill ’em with charm. So it’s as all-natural as his daily diet of organic chicken breast that the wrestler-turned-blockbuster-star would want to play Kerr in his own pursuit of excellence. He’s overdue for a sincere indie movie. Fair enough. Yet bizarrely, Johnson and writer-director Benny Safdie (“Uncut Gems,”“Good Time”), working solo without his brother Josh, have decided to simply shoot Hyams’ documentary again.
These two high-intensity talents, each with something to prove, seem to have egged each other on to be exhaustingly photorealistic. Johnson, squeezed into a wig so tight we get a vicarious headache, has pumped up his deltoids to nearly reach his prosthetic cauliflower ears. And Safdie is so devoted to duplicating the earthy brown decor of Kerr’s late-’90s nouveau riche Phoenix home that you’d think he was restoring Notre Dame. In setting out to establish his own style, Safdie just mimics another.
Their version of “The Smashing Machine” tells the same story that Hyams did, across the same years with the same handheld aesthetics and rattle-snap jazz score (by composer Nala Sinephro). It’s stiff karaoke that earns a confounded polite clap. That can’t possibly have been the intention, yet even the songs used as needle-drops are conspicuously borrowed: covers of the country crooner Billy Swan singing Elvis, and Elvis singing Frank Sinatra. Meanwhile, Johnson’s Kerr huffs up a set of stairs in a training montage that already belongs to “Rocky.”
Once again, Kerr gets shaken by his first defeat to Igor Vovchanchyn (played by Oleksandr Usyk, the current heavyweight boxing champion) in Japan’s Yokohama Arena, and responds by bottoming out, getting sober and committing to win his next tournament. All the while he bickers with his on-again, off-again alcoholic girlfriend, Dawn (Emily Blunt), who gets blamed for everything that goes wrong in the ring. A teeth-grindingly mismatched couple, they can’t get through a conversation without arguing. Even trying her best to empathize, she’s overbearing. When Dawn alerts his friend and colleague Mark “The Hammer” Coleman (MMA fighter Ryan Bader in his acting debut) that her battering ram of a boyfriend was drinking before a bout, Coleman snaps at her for letting him act so stupid.
Safdie frames Dawn as a force of domestic destruction (although Kerr tears down doors like wet cardboard). In her introduction, she — horrors! — makes his smoothie with the wrong milk and, a beat later, insists on cuddling the cat on their leather sofa. A shattered Japanese kintsugi bowl is a newly added visual metaphor of their relationship, as is Dawn’s attempt to fix it with Krazy glue, a wink-wink at her emotional volatility. Still, we never understand what holds them together. Blunt is stuck in a reprise of her Oscar-nominated supporting role in “Oppenheimer” as the drunk whose cruelty pardons the male lead’s flaws. Yeah, Mark fizzled in Yokohama, but boy was she awful.
What’s the point? Having stripped away most of the documentary’s narration and sit-down interviews with Kerr’s family and friends, the film barely explores anyone’s psychology — and Blunt’s railroaded Dawn loses her chance to speak for herself. “I don’t think you know a damn thing about me,” she snipes mid-screaming match. She’s right. We don’t know much about her either, nor any of the noisy things onscreen, from the bloodrush of combat to the pull of their co-dependent affair.
We’re supposed to find depth in Johnson’s weary, pinched grin as he appreciates the sunset on a flight to Japan or watches fans at demolition derby cheer just as loudly for mindless chunks of metal getting crushed. He’s quieter than the real Kerr, who could come across like a guileless chatterbox, and when he does talk, it’s often about the control he must exert on his body and his backyard — the diet, the exercise, the sobriety, the gardening — delivered with the conviction of someone giving motivational advice to the manosphere.
If you squint, there’s an idea here that his personal needs set an unyielding tempo in their home, a notion Johnson must resonate with as someone who sets his morning alarm for 3:30 a.m. But we become better acquainted with how light ripples across Johnson’s shirtless back in a tracking shot than with whatever’s going on in his character’s head. More often than not, we’re just watching him walk around in a skin suit of Kerr, trying and failing not to see the movie star underneath. I wonder if Johnson might have channeled the open-faced Kerr better without the fake eyebrows, if he’d trusted his own inner glow instead of immediately going for the dramatic kill.
Look at how dutifully Safdie and Johnson have worked to re-create this world, the movie seems to be saying. Appreciate the intentionally cruddy camerawork by Maceo Bishop that duplicates Hyams’ low-budget limitations. Enjoy how costume designer Heidi Bivens has put Johnson in another silver-buckled black leather belt similar to the one in his infamous, much-memed Y2K-era photo, the one with the turtleneck, chain jewelry and fanny pack. You know without doing the math that, at this time, 39-year-old Safdie was in his early teens, an age that’s a sweet spot for nostalgia. This is his chance to go back to the future. No wonder he doesn’t want to change a thing.
But “The Smashing Machine” should be about change. For the MMA, this was an era of evolution as it transitioned from a contest of raw strength to one of endurance and skill. Former collegiate wrestlers like Kerr and Coleman could no longer win with their signature ground-and-pound techniques. Organizers forbade several of their key moves as their brusque victories weren’t telegenic. Kerr’s early contests often ended in less than two minutes, an oops-I-missed-it-grabbing-a-beer brevity that would have made pay-per-view buyers grumble. Headbutts were disallowed in part to draw the action out, and also because John McCain didn’t want what he called “human cockfighting” on TV.
These underlying tensions were just coming into focus. The original documentary felt blurry because Hyams didn’t yet know how the off-camera legalities would play out. He would have never guessed that the once-maligned Ultimate Fighting Championship league, purchased in 2001 for $2 million, would become a powerhouse with the clout to ink a $7.7-billion television deal just this summer. He also didn’t know that the cash payments Kerr earned in Japan would be revealed to have the yakuza’s fingerprints on them, or that Kerr’s opioid addiction was start of a burgeoning national health crisis that would soon have America in a chokehold.
Surely, Safdie with his two decades of perspective and his own knack for movies about hard-charging, charismatic screwups like Adam Sandler’s gambling addict Howard Ratner in “Uncut Gems” has something to add? Nope, just tell the same tale twice.
Hyams stopped filming in May 2000, at a point when it appeared that Kerr had chosen love over war. Safdie is aware that Kerr would live on to make more choices and that love doesn’t win, either. But despite the benefit of hindsight, Safdie doesn’t seem to have considered that the old narrative no longer fits. He just updates the title cards on the end: a sentence about Kerr and Dana’s future, a note that today’s MMA stars are better paid, a point undermined by a shot of the actual Kerr climbing into an exorbitantly glossy new truck. Turns out Kerr has been a car salesman for the last 15 years, but you wouldn’t know that leaving “The Smashing Machine.” You wouldn’t know why this movie existed at all.
Dwayne ‘The Rock’ Johnson is transformed by prosthetics for his Mark Kerr roleCredit: AP
WHEN big stars take parts that require them to alter their face with prosthetics it’s often a sign they want to be taken more seriously.
Think Steve Carell in Foxcatcher and Bradley Cooper in Maestro.
In The Smashing Machine — director Benny Safdie’s biopic of UFC heavyweight champion Mark Kerr — it’s Dwayne ‘The Rock’ Johnson’s turn to sit in the make-up artist’s chair.
Signalling a departure from the typical action hero roles he is best known for, Johnson’s nose, lips, eyebrows and hairline are transformed to play the fighter.
He’s not totally unrecognisable, though.
A professional wrestler himself, The Rock already had the fighter’s hulking physique.
Acting muscles
And he’s in familiar territory being on screen with his trademark biceps on display.
But here he proves he absolutely can flex his acting muscles too.
American amateur wrestling champion Kerr became one of the pioneers of MMA at the turn of the millennium, well before the sport became the worldwide phenomenon it is today.
We meet him as an unbeaten man, skilled at then-permitted, wincingly violent moves like eye gouges, who lives to win, and who can’t comprehend the thought of losing.
But as painkiller addiction takes hold and Kerr succumbs to his first ever defeat, he returns home a human wrecking ball, tearing his house apart in sheer frustration.
Johnson depicts this rage-fuelled tantrum with real proficiency so we can understand it as a loss of control underpinned by a deep vulnerability.
Emily Blunt, excellent as his girlfriend Dawn, can only look on as the “big man who she loves” demolishes their kitchen with his bare hands.
Screen beauty Emily Blunt shows off stunning figure in backless dress at London premiere of Smashing Machine
The real Kerr eventually acknowledged and overcame his narcotic reliance, returning from rehab to the ring.
As a sporting tale, this is in familiar triumph-over-tragedy territory, with no surprises.
While the performances are gripping, the script lacks nuance.
Is this brutal watch a knockout? No, not completely.
But will the prosthetics pay off for Johnson come awards season?
They just might.
A HOUSE OF DYNAMITE
(15) 112mins
★★★★★
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Rebecca Ferguson delivers a career best as security specialist Captain Olivia WalkerCredit: PA
KATHRYN BIGELOW has done it again, this time turning the camera on the nightmare we all pretend that we can ignore – a nuclear strike.
The director’s tense, claustrophobic, brilliantly staged film grips you from the very first frame.
The story is simple and terrifying – an 18-minute window between a rogue missile launch in the Pacific and its projected strike on Chicago, seen from multiple perspectives.
Every decision, every glance at a screen, every phone call carries huge weight. Uncertainty is the enemy here, and Bigelow wrings every ounce of drama from it.
The cast is flawless. Idris Elba is compelling as a President caught between disbelief and duty, while Rebecca Ferguson delivers a career best as security specialist Captain Olivia Walker.
Elsewhere, Jared Harris, Gabriel Basso, Jonah Hauer-King and Anthony Ramos bring depth as they try to hold a crumbling chain of command together.
It isn’t just a thriller, it’s a heart-stopping meditation on human fragility. If you want cinema that makes you feel the weight of the world in real time, this is the one.
LINDA MARRIC
FILM NEWS
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HIM
(18) 96mins
★☆☆☆☆
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Retired legend Isaiah (Marlon Wayans, pictured) invites Cameron to a secluded training campCredit: PA
HORROR film Him feels like it has been stitched together from a dozen better movies, without ever finding a soul of its own.
In short, this is a mess.
The story follows Cameron (Tyriq Withers), a hotshot quarterback whose bright future is thrown off course after a brutal injury.
When retired legend Isaiah (Marlon Wayans) invites him to a secluded training camp, it feels like a chance to rebuild, stronger and faster than before.
But the deeper Cameron steps into Isaiah’s world, the more unsettling it becomes.
Produced by Get Out, Us and Nope director Jordan Peele, Him’s fatal flaw is its emptiness. For long stretches, nothing happens.
Characters drift around muttering ominous nonsense, occasionally raising their eyebrows at the weirdos around them, before going right back to ignoring the obvious.
Withers and Wayans put in respectable perform-ances but the dialogue is clunky, the pacing is dead on arrival and the supposedly shocking reveal is anything but. Even the stylistic additions feel less like art and more like padding for a story that never gets to the point.
Bleak, boring and painfully pretentious, Him isn’t just a bad horror film, it’s the kind of bad movie that thinks it’s being very clever.
VLADIMIR Putin’s prized golden goose – Russia’s oil empire – has become a sitting duck, and it’s Ukraine’s drones that are pulling the trigger.
In the latest episode of Battle Plans Exposed, military intelligence expert Philip Ingram MBE lays bare how Kyiv has opened a devastating new front in the war in the oilfields, refineries and pipelines that bankroll Putin’s invasion.
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In the latest edition of Battle Plans Exposed, Philip Ingram unpacks Ukrainian drone strikes on Russian oil refineries
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Ukrainian drones struck the ELOU AVT-11 installation at the Novokuybyshevsk oil refineryCredit: East2West
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Plumes of smoke coming out of another Russian oil refinery after a Ukrainian strike
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Ukrainian soldiers launch a reconnaissance drone in the direction of Toretsk, Donetsk OblastCredit: Getty
For decades, Russia’s vast energy reserves paid for everything from tanks and cruise missiles to soldiers’ salaries and propaganda handouts.
Before the invasion, energy exports made up around 40 per cent of the Kremlin’s budget.
Even under sanctions, oil and gas still bring in 30 per cent of Russia’s income.
The episode shows how Ukraine has zeroed in on this “river of oil money” with pinpoint strikes hundreds of miles inside Russian territory.
Long-range drones have torched colossal refineries, exploded pumping stations and set storage tanks ablaze – systematically dismantling Moscow’s refining capacity.
Footage of Rosneft’s Ryazan refinery erupting into flames after a single drone strike captures the scale of the destruction.
“This isn’t a military base on the border,” Ingram warns.
How Putin’s war hinges on Ukraine’s bloodiest battle for ‘prized jewel’ city that could rage on for FOUR years & kill millions
“This is a core piece of Russia’s national infrastructure – hundreds of miles from Ukraine.”
What makes these attacks so devastating is their precision.
Ingram explains that the real targets aren’t the giant tanks but the refinery’s processing units – “the heart of the refinery,” where crude is split into diesel for tanks, jet fuel for fighters and gasoline for the home front.
Knock one of these units out, and the entire facility is useless for months, even years.
The episode shows how Ukraine has already knocked out at least 12 per cent of Russia’s refining capacity – stripping away over 600,000 barrels a day.
That’s billions in lost revenue that can’t be pumped into Putin’s war chest.
The impact is twofold. First, it chokes the Russian military itself: “No diesel, and tanks don’t move.
“No jet fuel, and fighters are grounded,” Ingram says.
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Ukraine have been heavily defending the key town for over a yearCredit: Getty
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Ukrainian soldier loads a shell while defending Pokrovsk, Donetsk Oblast
Second, it hits ordinary Russians – with fuel shortages, soaring prices and the chilling sight of their industrial heartland burning.
The Kremlin’s response? Denial, spin and panic.
Moscow has been forced to ban fuel exports for six months, sacrificing vital revenue just to stop unrest at home.
“Putin’s greatest fear,” Ingram says, “is the Russian people rising up.”
This is asymmetric warfare at its most ruthless – cheap Ukrainian drones inflicting billion-dollar wounds on the Kremlin.
The episode shows how the campaign has shattered Russia’s aura of invulnerability, exposed its sprawling oil empire as a fatal weakness, and brought the war crashing into the lives of ordinary Russians.
And as Ingram puts it: “It proves that in modern warfare, the most effective battle plans aren’t always about brute force on the tactical frontline, but about finding your enemy’s single point of failure – and striking it again and again with unrelenting precision.”
Kyiv’s top general Oleksandr Syrskyi said his troops had clawed back around 60 square miles since August, with Putin’s men retreating from a further 70 square miles north of bomb-blitzed Pokrovsk.
He boasted Russian forces had paid a horrifying price — 1,500 killed, another thousand wounded and 12 main battle tanks blown to pieces.
“Control has been restored in seven settlements and nine more have been cleared of enemy sabotage and reconnaissance groups,” Syrskyi declared, claiming nearly 165 square kilometres were liberated and almost 180 cleared of Russian saboteurs.
The breakthrough follows a shaky summer where Russian “saboteurs” punched six miles through Ukrainian lines overnight, threatening to cut supply roads.
But Ukraine has regrouped and is now pushing them back, Syrskyi insisting: “In the past 24 hours alone the enemy have lost 65 servicemen, 43 of them killed in action, along with 11 pieces of equipment.”
The destroyed kit ranges from tanks to artillery, drones and even a quad bike used by desperate Russian troops.
Russia has tried to claw back the narrative, claiming it captured a hamlet south of Pokrovsk — a claim Ukraine flatly denies.
Instead, Kyiv points to wrecked Russian armour littering the battlefield and insists the Kremlin’s army is being bled dry.
Ukraine’s war leader is set to press the US president for tougher sanctions if Putin refuses to come to the table.
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Ukraine are defending the Donetsk Oblast, which Russia partly occupiesCredit: AP
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Ukraine’s military have outsmarted Russian war doctrineCredit: Getty
Trump — who once called Putin a “genius” — admitted the dictator had “let him down”.
“I thought this war would be one of the easiest to solve because of my relationship with Putin. But he has really let me down,” he said during his visit to Britain.
But Britain’s spy chief Sir Richard Moore has poured cold water on any idea of a quick peace.
In a message aimed squarely at Trump, he said: “I have seen absolutely no evidence that President Putin has any interest in a negotiated peace short of Ukrainian capitulation.”
He warned the world not to be duped by the Kremlin tyrant: “We should not believe him or credit him with strength he does not have.”
Moore added Russia was grinding forward “at a snail’s pace and horrendous cost” — and that Putin had “bitten off more than he can chew.”
He lauded Ukraine’s resistance and heaped praise on Zelensky, saying: “My admiration for him is unbounded,” while savaging Putin for plunging Russia into “long term decline” where he invests only in “missiles, munitions and morgues.”
Last month, Kyiv marked Independence Day with a wave of drone attacks crippling Russian energy sites and claimed to have wiped out three of the “Butchers of Bucha” in precision bombings in occupied Luhansk.
The Russian soldiers had been accused of taking part in the notorious 2022 massacre where hundreds of civilians were executed, tortured and raped as Putin’s troops stormed towards Kyiv.
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Ukrainian soldiers fire toward Russian position on the frontline in Zaporizhzhia regionCredit: AP
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An air cannon is fired as Ukrainian artillery division supports soldiers in a counteroffensive on the Zaporizhzhya frontlineCredit: Getty
Movie fans come to Toronto to get an early peek at the year’s awards heavyweights. I didn’t see a knockout punch, but I saw some strong contenders — and in a couple cases, I just got bludgeoned.
Directors Benny Safdie (“Uncut Gems”) and David Michôd (“Animal Kingdom”) faced off with competing docudramas about the sufferings of two professional brawlers whose careers peaked in the ’90s — i.e., new “Raging Bulls” for today’s nostalgists. “The Smashing Machine” is a solo effort from the younger Safdie brother after making a string of energetic cult hits with his sibling, Josh. It stars Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson as MMA fighter Mark Kerr, who could beat almost anyone inside the octagon but struggled to conquer his own demons at home with his then-wife, Dawn (Emily Blunt).
Based on the names and talent involved, I was expecting anything other than what I got: a conventional biopic. Its one bit of flair is a commitment to looking as though it was filmed on VHS. But projected in Imax, it just looked dreary (as did Johnson’s hairpiece). I’ll go another round with it in a more apropos ring.
Michôd’s “Christy” shares several of the same touchstones — the bloodrush of victory, a bruising domestic life, a distracting wig — but gender-flipped. Sydney Sweeney throws a convincing jab as Christy Martin, the first female boxer to make the cover of “Sports Illustrated.” A lesbian from a conservative West Virginia family, she was pressured to hide her sexuality by wearing pastel pink in the ring and marrying her much older, emotionally abusive male coach, Jim Martin (Ben Foster). The script only has a few ideas under its belt, but they’re effective, particularly our dawning recognition that while Christy thinks she’s fighting to prove her worth, she’s really fighting for the patriarchy.
Sweeney is good, even when the leaden dialogue does her a disservice. It’s her first substantial, serious part since 2023’s underseen “Reality” and she seizes the opportunity to be talked about as something other than the internet’s most polarizing ingenue. (Social media is forever singling out one young actress to be damned now and redeemed later, sigh.) As for Foster, who first snagged my attention as the pathetic loon in “Alpha Dog,” he knows how to play a hiss-worthy heel. You spend “Christy” aching to see him get socked in the face. If you need him to take more punishment, he’s just as vile in another TIFF title, “Motor City.”
Tessa Thompson in the movie “Hedda.”
(Prime Video)
At this year’s festival, ladies in corsets did more damage than gals in padded gloves. My favorite mean girl — perhaps even my favorite film of the festival — was Nia DaCosta’s “Hedda,” a devilish and dynamic adaptation of Henrik Ibsen’s “Hedda Gabler,” in which the lead character (played by a fantastic Tessa Thompson) starts firing off her daddy’s old pistols as soon as the opening credits. DaCosta, who also adapted the play into a script, restages the action so that the chaos all takes place during a giant, drunken bacchanal at a rented mansion Hedda can’t afford. Thompson’s scheming newlywed manipulates the other characters with the confidence of a queen who controls all the pieces on the board, but every so often she simply has to flip the table over. The spirit is faithful; the subtext is fresh.
“Mārama,” a striking feature debut by Taratoa Stappard, bills itself as a Māori gothic and the combination works. In 1859 England, a white-passing woman from New Zealand named Mary (Ariāna Osborne) has sailed halfway around the world seeking information about her parents. The globe-trotting lord Sir Cole (Toby Stephens) strong-arms her into becoming his niece’s governess, calling the Māori a “magnificent people” while amusing his guests with parlor room reenactments of whale-hunting expeditions done with massive puppets. “Mārama” doesn’t reinvent the wheel, but it’s a good ride with first-rate cinematography and production design and a story with one or two more surprises than we expect.
Similarly, “Honey Bunch,” co-directed by Madeleine Sims-Fewer and Dusty Mancinelli, is another manor-bound thriller that toys with familiar tropes. An amnesiac bride (Grace Glowicki, a go-for-broke oddball who always gets my attention) arrives at an isolated and secretive trauma center where everyone seems to be screwing with her memories, including her shady husband (Ben Petrie). Straightaway, we have our suspicions about how this is going to go. The first half of the film doesn’t deviate from the formula — it’s a little dull — but the second half is a superb right hook.
Guillermo del Toro’s grisly, occasionally great “Frankenstein,” shot in Toronto and the U.K., hews more faithfully to Mary Shelley’s novel than the 1931 Boris Karloff classic, scrapping the mob of pitchfork-wielding villagers and salvaging the wraparound story of an ambitious explorer marooned in the the Arctic ice. But it’s still very much Del Toro’s own monster. One of his smartest adjustments is retooling the romantic heroine, Elizabeth (Mia Goth), from the ideal childhood sweetheart to a science-loving pacifist with limited patience for egomaniacs like Oscar Isaac’s Victor Frankenstein. Costume designer Kate Hawley makes Goth look like an exotic beetle with antenna-ish plumes sticking out of her hair.
Jacob Elordi as the Creature in the movie “Frankenstein.”
(Ken Woroner / Netflix)
Jacob Elordi’s creature amps up the pathos a tad too much for my taste, but there’s no denying how much he’s invested in the role, or how well Del Toro’s critiques about narcissistic inventors suit the present day. Still, Del Toro knows there’s a time and place to boast: At the film’s Toronto premiere at the Princess of Wales Theatre, he playfully accused his local below-the-line crew of being too humble and made them stand up for applause. “Stop being so Canadian,” he teased.
Del Toro told the audience that when he first saw Karloff’s creation as a boy, he thought to himself, “That’s my messiah, that’s the guy I’m going to follow like Jesus.” But the prize for the most idol-worshipping film in the festival belongs to Baz Luhrmann’s “EPiC,” which stands for “Elvis Presley in Concert.” Constructed from hours of previously unseen live footage from Presley’s stint in Las Vegas, its rapturous showing felt like attending the church of Elvis.
Luhrmann insists that “EPiC” is neither a concert film nor a documentary. I don’t see the issue with calling it either, but it’s also fair to consider it a companion piece to Luhrmann’s 2022 “Elvis.” It certainly shows that Austin Butler’s Oscar-nominated portrayal of the King wasn’t one rhinestone over the top. Here, the real Presley is charismatic as hell, and looks great beaded in sanctified sweat. Whenever he throws a damp scarf into the audience, the women go so crazy you’d think it was the Shroud of Turin.
Luhrmann continues to be outraged that Col. Tom Parker constricted Presley’s artistic growth by parking him in the city of buffet tables rather than letting him tour the world. Presley only did one week of international concerts during his entire career: five shows in Canada, two of them just a 10-minute drive from my theater. You can hear Presley’s resentment toward the better-traveled (and at the time, better-respected) artists stealing his spot on the charts. “It’s so dry in here, I feel like I’ve got Bob Dylan in my mouth,” he jokes. Later, he slings a guitar around his neck to strum “Little Sister,” and then speeds up the tempo and starts belting the Beatles’ “Get Back,” a subtle dig that the boys from Britain weren’t always that original.
A scene from the movie “A Useful Ghost.”
(TIFF)
Speaking of, I can’t wrap up my final dispatch from this year’s Toronto International Film Festival without mentioning the most creative Oscar contender I saw all week: “A Useful Ghost,” which won the Grand Prix of Critics’ Week at Cannes and will be Thailand’s entry for an Academy Award. Ratchapoom Boonbunchachoke’s arch hybrid of horror, comedy, romance and political thriller starts when a self-described “academic ladyboy” (Wisarut Homhuan) discovers that his new vacuum cleaner is possessed. From there, the movie defies prediction at every turn.
I ducked into “A Useful Ghost” on a whim, wondering how it would pair with TIFF’s world premiere of “Dust Bunny,” a nice and nasty Roald Dahl-esque adventure in which a little girl hires Mads Mikkelsen to battle a man-eating monster under her bed. I came out of the theater abuzz with energy. Even though some of this season’s noisiest awards hopefuls are rooted in classic genres, there are still directors making movies that feel entirely new — and still audiences delighted to cheer for a big swing.
Picture this: A gaggle of 21-year-olds squeeze into a booth, pull the curtain and smile for the camera. After a series of mysterious analog rumblings, the booth expels a tiny strip of prints. The posers crowd in to savor the tiny film prints — and raise their cameras to snap digital images of them.
While boomers blink in puzzlement, legions of digital natives have embraced the old-school ritual and machinery of the photo booth — and the people at San Francisco-based Photomatica are among those building empires on that enthusiasm. Their latest venture: a Photo Booth Museum in Silver Lake, which opens Thursday.
For anyone who grew up with digital photography, a photo booth is a sort of visual adventure — a selfie with “analog magic.” And at $6.50 to $8.50 for a strip of four photos, it’s more affordable than plenty of other entertainment options. Photomatica, one of several companies riding the photo booth wave, has been restoring and operating these contraptions since 2010. This is the company’s second “museum.”
At the new L.A. site at 3827 W. Sunset Blvd. (near Hyperion Avenue), the company has gathered four restored analog photo booths — two of which date to the 1950s — and one digital booth. The 1,350-square-foot space is designed to look “as if you walked into a Wes Anderson movie set,” said spokeswoman Kelsey Schmidt.
The machines are retrofitted to accept credit cards and Apple Pay, but otherwise the technology is original on the old machines — which means no retakes and a 3-to-5-minute wait for image processing. The film-based booths print black-and-white images only; the digital booth offers a choice of color or black and white.
Is this at all like a traditional museum experience? No. It’s a for-profit venture. Though visitors might learn a little about photography history, the core activity is making and celebrating selfies. So far, Schmidt said, the booths have been especially popular with people under 25, especially female visitors.
A birthday group gathers for a snapshot in the Photo Booth Museum, San Francisco.
(Christopher Reynolds / Los Angeles Times)
Photomatica rents out and operates about 250 booths (including bars, restaurants, hotels, music venues and special events) nationwide. The company hatched the museum idea after drawing immediate crowds with a booth in the Photoworks film lab on Market Street in San Francisco’s Castro neighborhood.
On its Thursday opening night, the L.A. Photo Booth Museum will operate from 6 to 10 p.m., offering up a limited number of free photo sessions and key chains. Otherwise, daily hours will be 1 to 9 p.m.
After a weekend of raucous “No Kings” protests across the country — especially throughout Los Angeles — immigrant activists in music have a new benefit show planned for tonight in Echo Park.
Tom Morello, the guitarist of Rage Against the Machine and a longtime leftist and human rights advocate, will headline a sold-out show called “Defend L.A.” set at the Echoplex on Monday in support of the Coalition for Humane Immigrant Rights (CHIRLA).
The show will feature like-minded peers including B-Real of Cypress Hill, Pussy Riot, K.Flay and visual artist Shepard Fairey. The Neighborhood Kids, a rising young San Diego hip-hop group whose songs document the on-the-ground reality of communities under threat from immigration raids, will play its most prominent L.A. set to date there. Comedian George Lopez will host.
Morello joined the recent anti-ICE marches in Los Angeles, where protest signs and slogans often echoed his band’s radical-resistance lyrics and imagery. The singer-songwriter wore a guitar emblazoned with anti-ICE messaging onstage at the Boston Calling festival last month.
While downtown L.A., a site of many heated protests, had been placed under a nighttime curfew, Saturday’s “No Kings” marches were broadly peaceful, with only 38 arrests in Los Angeles, mostly for curfew violations. After the marches, the Trump administration recently announced efforts to expand immigration raids in sanctuary cities like Los Angeles.
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Our team of shopping experts are constantly on the lookout for the best deals on household essentials — whether that’s pantry staples, laundry pods or necessities like kitchen and loo rolls.
Here are the best deals we’ve spotted at Amazon this week:
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Plymouth Original Dry Gin, £28.50 £19.30 – buy here
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Garnier Micellar Cleansing Water, £9.99 £6.80 – buy here
NIVEA Q10 60+ Mature Skin Body Lotion, £12.09 £5.11 – buy here
Those who remember Calgon’s famous jingle — “washing machines live longer with Calgon” — know that this product is nothing short of essential for those living in hard water areas like London, the South East and East Anglia.
Hard water can cause limescale to build up in your washing machine, leading to unpleasant odours, reduced efficiency, and costly repairs.
Calgon tablets help your washing machine in four ways:
They remove limescale and other harmful hard water deposits
They soften water, protecting your washing machine and clothes
They prevent rust
They neutralise bad odours
Reviewers have highlighted how effective Calgon is at keeping their washing machines in working order.
One Amazon customer wrote: “Third time ordering. UK water is hard so it makes your drum in your [washing machine] smell, this helps a lot and it also softens the water for softer washing. Good value for money”.
Another wrote: “[I] bought a new Bosch washing machine in January 2011, have used a Calgon tab in every wash for the last 15 years and it’s never missed a beat, still going strong — brilliant price for 75 tabs, can’t be beaten anywhere.”
SACRAMENTO — The defeat of Rep. Howard Berman last fall marked the end of an era in California politics.
Berman, a former state Assemblyman who lost a bitter fight for the speakership in 1980, went on to serve the San Fernando Valley for three decades in Congress. During that time, he and fellow Rep. Henry Waxman built a network of political allies that came to be known as the Waxman-Berman machine.
“A Waxman-Berman blessing could make a political career. The two dished out campaign cash, forged alliances, drew districts for friends (and themselves), and developed microtargeting techniques before a word for it even existed.”
May 18 (UPI) — The federal government will allow the sale of devices that enable standard rifles to operate like machine guns, a move that angered gun control groups.
“This Department of Justice believes that the Second Amendment is not a second-class right,” Attorney General Pamela Bondi said in a statement. “And we are glad to end a needless cycle of litigation with a settlement that will enhance public safety.”
There are two ways to speed the firing of bullets. Bump stocks use the recoil of the weapon to repeatedly bump the trigger, while trigger devices are aftermarket items that directly engage the trigger.
During the first Trump administration, the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives banned bump stocks, which mimic rapid trigger pulls to fire rapidly in a way similar to a machine gun. In 2017, the gunman in a mass shooting killed 58 people in Las Vegas while firing from his hotel room window using bump stocks.
In 2022, ATF included specific trigger devices under the National Firearms Act of 1934. The ATF determined that the devices allow a semiautomatic AR-15 rifle to fire as fast as a military M-16 in automatic mode.
In 2023, the Justice Department, as part of the Biden administration, brought a lawsuit in New York against Rare Breed Triggers.
The National Association of Gun Rights filed a separate lawsuit in Texas challenging the ban and a judge there ruled the ban was unlawful.
In June 2024, the U.S. Supreme Court, by a 6-3 vote in Cargill v. Garland, ruled ATF exceeded its statutory authority by issuing a rule classifying a bump stock as a “machine gun.”
The Court’s majority found that bump stocks do not meet the definition of a machine gun because they didn’t allow for automatic fire with the single pull of a trigger.
The next month, the Northern District of Texas applied the case to a device called a “forced-reset trigger” and concluded that they also cannot be classified as a “machine gun.”
DOJ is avoiding additional legal action against Rare Breed Triggers in appeals and related cases concerning the similar issue, Bondi said.
The settlement with Rare Breed Triggers includes agreed-upon conditions that significantly advance public safety with respect to FRTs, including that Rare Breed will not develop or design them for use in any pistol and will enforce its patents to prevent infringement that could threaten public safety.
Rare Breed also agreed promote the safe and responsible use of its products.
“The cuffs are off. As of May 16, 2025, we’re free! Expect the website to be updated on Monday, May 19,” the company posted on its website.
The decision was condemned by Vanessa Gonzalez, a spokeswoman for Giffords, the national gun violence prevention group led by former Rep. Gabrielle Giffords, who was shot in 2011 while meeting with constituents in her hometown of Tucson, Ariz.
“The Trump administration has just effectively legalized machine guns. Lives will be lost because of his actions,” Gonzalez said. “This is an incredibly dangerous move that will enable shooters to inflict horrific damage. The only people who benefit from these being on the market are the people who will make money from selling them, everyone else will suffer the consequences.”
The national gun control advocacy group Brady United said in a press release that “highly dangerous weapons of war can now be purchased anonymously” and without a background check.
“The Trump Administration’s secret settlement with the gun lobby to permit the sale of Forced Reset Triggers will turn already deadly firearms into weapons of mass destruction,” Kris Brown, president of Brady United, said in the release.
“Machine guns are weapons of war that have absolutely no place in our communities. This dangerous backroom deal is not only an astonishing abuse of power, but undermines decades of sensible government gun safety policy and puts whole communities at immediate serious risk,” he said.
Brady previous was called the National Council to Control Handguns and founded in 1974 by Dr. Mark Borinsky, whose son was shot and killed in 1974.
In 1981, White House Press Secretary Jim “the Bear” Brady suffered a bullet to the head, and the organization now bears his name.
WHETHER you want to get your body summer ready or just want to incorporate some more exercise to your routine, pilates makes for a great workout.
And reformer pilates has become a viral hit online in recent years with over 2.8 million posts being made about it on TikTok.
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Aldi is selling a reformer pilates machine and it’s much cheaper than other brandsCredit: Supplied
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There are plenty of accessories up for grabs to for just £5.99Credit: Supplied
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The budget retailer is also selling a step deck for cardio loversCredit: Supplied
While it is proven to be an effective workout, it can be costly.
Prices for just one class start at £37 – not something we can afford to do multiple times a week.
Fortunately, Aldi has come to the rescue by selling a reformer pilates machine you can use at home.
And the best part is that it’s a fraction of the price of other brands selling one.
The easy-to-assemble machine costs just £149.99 while the Original Fold Reformer costs £1,899.99.
That’s a huge saving of £1,750 if you buy it from the German retailer.
The machine featuring adaptable resistance levels with five resistance bands and adjustable height settings.
It has a smooth gliding functionality, and has transport wheels for easy movement, and foldable storage capabilities.
Aldi bosses say: “Whether looking to strengthen cores, improve flexibility, or tone muscles, the machine is designed to help anyone achieve their fitness goals.
“Complete with an introductory exercise chart, it’s a must-have addition to any home gym.”
The 9 best exercises to get a reformer Pilates body without the expense
If that wasn’t enough for your fitness journey, Aldi is also selling lots of gym accessories to go with it.
Also up for grabs is a pilates pad, a three piece pilates ball set, a pilates ring, and rotation ring,
Each of the products are just £5.99 each, and will help with strength, balance, conditioning and coordination.
For additional strength training, Aldi’s adjustable step deck (£12.99) allows fitness gurus to add in cardio with ease, and even includes resistance handles and a balance board for a full-body workout.
The 5 best exercises to lose weight
By Lucy Gornall, personal trainer and health journalist
EXERCISE can be intimidating and hard to devote yourself to. So how do you find the right workout for you?
As a PT and fitness journalist, I’ve tried everything.
I’ve taken part in endless fitness competitions, marathons and I maintain a regime of runs, strength training and Pilates.
Fitness is so entrenched in my life, I stick to it even at Christmas!
The key is finding an activity you love that can become a habit.
