majority

A BELOVED UK holiday park is set to bring Wetherspoon pubs to almost of all its sites.

The popular bargain boozer will team up with the parks to bring affordable food and drinks to Brits enjoying a staycation.

Haven Holidays has 39 seaside parks spanning across the UK and have been welcoming holidaymakers since 1964.

After a successful trial that saw JD Wetherspoon pubs pop up at nine Haven locations, it’s been confirmed that most of the rest will follow suit.

The pub’s first collaboration with Haven came in 2025 with the arrival of The Five Stones pub at Primrose Valley holiday park in Filey, North Yorkshire.

The Humber Stone in Cleethorpes, The London Stone in Rochester, The Red Rocks in Exmouth and The Sir Thomas Haggerston in Haggerston also arrived last year.

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Four more launched in early 2026, with Cornwall’s Riviere Sands welcoming The Bluff Inn and Cumbria’s Lakeland Leisure Park opening The Alfred Wainwright.

Hopton Holiday Village in Great Yarmouth also introduced The White Clover and Gala Cran in Blackpool opened The Springfield.

Speaking to the Mirror about the growing partnership, Simon Palethorpe, CEO of Haven Holidays, shared his hopes for all of the Haven parks to have a Spoons.

“I would like to see us growing this concept further across our estate. I definitely think there is an opportunity for the majority of our parks to have a Wetherspoons,” he said.

“I could only have dreamed at that point that it would be this successful with our guests as it has been”

Following the news that one million Wetherspoon pub meals have been sold at Haven over the past two years, Simon added, “We are here celebrating a million, but I expect it to be many millions in a couple of years time.”

The Sun has contacted Haven Holidays for more information.

More than a day after polls closed, voters still hadn’t learned which two candidates would run off in the November general election for dozens of races.

Many significant races are still too close to call. In the race for governor, Republican Steve Hilton and Democrat Xavier Becerra held leads, with Democrat Tom Steyer and Republican Riverside County Sheriff Chad Bianco trailing. Former Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa, San José Mayor Matt Mahan and former Rep. Katie Porter conceded the race Tuesday night.

The Associated Press surveys the numbers posted by local election officials and projects the winner using vote returns and other data. Races can be called within minutes of polls closing on election night. However, if a race has tight margins or an high expected volume of mail-in ballots, it can take longer to call.

In some cases, such as for L.A. mayor and state treasurer, the tight race is between second and third place.

In California’s primary, the top two vote-getters move on to the general election regardless of candidate pool size, party preference, or whether one candidate receives a majority of votes. Locally and in nonpartisan races, however, a candidate can avoid the November election if they win with a majority.

Statewide

State Senate

State Assembly

Congress

Almost half of California’s 52 U.S. House of Representatives seats had known finalists on election night. But in tight races such as the Republican vs. Republican competition in the 40th District and the Democrats’ challenging of Republican Rep. David Valadao in a redrawn 22nd District, the top two vote-getters weren’t yet known.

Local

In Los Angeles County, there were still 27 races with uncertain results. The Times considers uncertain races those where no candidate has a majority or where the vote share for the top two is between 55% and 40%. The Associated Press does not call winners for most local races, such as city councils, city officers and ballot measures. If no candidate wins with a majority, the top two will face off in November. That could be the case for the sheriff and L.A. City Council’s 3rd District.

The L.A. County registrar will continue to count and confirm mailed-in, provisional and conditional ballots until June 26. Updates to the results charts below are expected approximately once a day in the early evening.

Close city races

Voters can track their own cast ballot here.

The secretary of state will certify results in early July.

Los Angeles County’s half-cent sales tax to fund healthcare services was trailing Tuesday, with early returns showing a majority of voters rejecting the measure.

The tax — a half-penny of every dollar spent in the county — is meant to prop up local hospitals and clinics that are hemorrhaging funding after recent federal cuts.

The sales tax, which needs a simple majority to pass, would take effect Oct. 1 and last five years. Officials say it would pull in $1 billion annually to help plug the budget holes hitting local hospitals and clinics.

L.A. County health officials anticipate the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, signed into law by President Trump last summer, will slash more than $2 billion from the county’s health services budget within the next three years. Due to eligibility changes, the county will no longer be able to get reimbursements for many Californians who have lost Medi-Cal.

The measure was championed by a coalition of healthcare advocates called Restore Healthcare for Angelenos who warned that mass layoffs and emergency room closures could be imminent if new funding didn’t come fast. The Department of Public Health recently closed seven clinics — a grim sign, supporters said, of service cuts to come.

Voters haven’t rejected a sales tax hike since 2012, when a transportation measure fell just short with 66.1% support. It needed 66.7% to pass.

A majority of county supervisors had supported the new tax proposal, voting 4 to 1 this February to put it on the ballot. But the measure faced significant opposition from local cities, with opponents arguing the sales tax hike would unfairly burden the poorest county residents and encourage people to spend their dollars across the county line.

Supervisor Kathryn Barger, the board’s lone opponent of the tax, said she was concerned it was a “general” tax, meaning the money wouldn’t be earmarked for healthcare costs. Instead, she argued, politicians would have final say over how the money gets spent.

The supervisors have created a plan for spending the tax money, with the largest chunk of the money meant to cover the costs for patients without insurance. The measure also asked voters to sign off on a nine-member oversight committee.

The county currently has a base sales tax rate of 9.75%, and cities impose local taxes on top of that.

WASHINGTON — Alabama on Wednesday asked the Supreme Court to allow it to use a congressional map favoring Republicans in this year’s elections, despite a lower court’s ruling that the redistricting plan intentionally discriminates against Black people.

The state’s Republican leadership filed an emergency appeal with the justices a day after a three-judge court refused to let the state use a map it adopted three years ago that has a majority Black population in just one of its seven congressional districts.

The judges instead required Alabama to continue using a court-ordered map that was put in place for the 2024 elections that includes two districts where Black residents comprise a majority or close to it.

Atty. Gen. Steve Marshall told the court that the state did not intentionally discriminate against Black residents and should be allowed to hold elections this year under a map chosen by lawmakers, not judges.

The appeal is the latest development in the fallout from last month’s Supreme Court ruling that struck down a Black-majority district in Louisiana and weakened the federal Voting Rights Act. That ruling has led Republicans in several Southern states, including Alabama, to take steps to reshape voting districts with large minority populations that have elected Democrats.

The redistricting frenzy is part of a broader push by President Trump to try to hold on to Republicans’ slim House majority in the November elections.

The Alabama cases stretches back several years. The three-judge panel in 2023 ruled that a map drawn by Republican state lawmakers intentionally diluted the voting power of Black citizens. The court said the state, which is about 27% Black, should have two districts where Black voters are the majority or close to it. The court-selected map was used in 2024.

After the Supreme Court’s recent ruling in the Louisiana case, Alabama officials moved to implement the 2023 state-drawn map. The Supreme Court’s conservative majority agreed to lift the injunction that had blocked the map’s use and sent the case back to the three-judge panel for reconsideration in light of the Louisiana ruling.

In the meantime, voters cast ballots in Alabama’s May 19 primaries, and Republican Gov. Kay Ivey set new special primaries for Aug. 11 in four congressional districts affected by the map switch.

Upon further review, the judicial panel said it was standing behind its initial finding that there was “undisputed evidence” of intentional racial discrimination, a holding that was independent of and unaffected by the Supreme Court ruling on the Voting Rights Act.

It said the special congressional primaries should instead proceed under the previous court-approved districts.

The use of the court-ordered map led to the 2024 election of U.S. Rep. Shomari Figures, a Black Democrat. State Republicans are seeking to use a map that would give the GOP an opportunity to reclaim the south Alabama seat.

The state is asking for Supreme Court action by Monday as it makes preparations for the special vote in August.

Sherman writes for the Associated Press.

WASHINGTON — The first baby boomer on the Supreme Court hit a milestone on Thursday, becoming the second-longest-serving justice in history at a time when his influence has never seemed greater.

Once an outlier on the nation’s highest court, Justice Clarence Thomas has become a towering figure in the conservative legal movement over the last decade as he helped secure landmark rulings on abortion, voting and Second Amendment rights.

The only justice with a longer tenure is liberal William O. Douglas. Thomas would overtake Douglas in 2028 if he remains on the court — and there’s no sign he plans to retire anytime soon.

“I think he’s more energized and excited now than when I first met him,” said John Yoo, a law professor at the University of California, Berkeley, who served in Republican President George W. Bush’s administration after his time as a Thomas clerk three decades ago.

Thomas was confirmed in 1991 after contentious hearings that included sexual harassment allegations. More recently, his acceptance of luxury trips has raised a storm of ethics questions. He’s nevertheless gone from near-silence at oral arguments to asking the first questions and penning a landmark ruling expanding Second Amendment rights.

Following the appointment of three conservative justices by Republican President Trump, Thomas is now the most senior member of a supermajority that’s also overturned abortion as a constitutional right, ended affirmative action in college admissions and sharply limited the Voting Rights Act.

“The court has radically moved in his direction over the course of his time on the court,” said Stanford University law professor Pamela Karlan. Thomas’ seniority means he can decide who writes an opinion if he’s part of a majority that doesn’t include Chief Justice John Roberts, a factor that can nudge other votes behind closed doors, Karlan said.

Off the bench, Thomas’ sphere of influence also includes his large, close-knit network of former clerks, who have served in the Trump administration and are increasingly filling out the ranks of federal judges.

“That is an important legacy that he will leave,” said Sarah Konsky, director of the Supreme Court and Appellate Clinic at the University of Chicago Law School. “Even as justices’ own time on the court winds down, significant influence lives on through their clerks.”

That’s not to say Thomas’ time on the court is up. In a recent speech, Thomas tied the nation’s highest ideals to a conservative vision of limited government — and launched a broadside on progressivism seen by critics as unfair and inappropriate. In the room at the University of Texas, though, it earned a standing ovation.

Thomas, who became the second Black member of the court, now has a tenure that tops 34 years, putting him ahead of Justice Stephen J. Field, who was appointed by Lincoln before the end of the Civil War and served as the only 10th justice until 1897.

For Thomas, 77, it’s a long way from the hearings at which his nomination by Republican President George H.W. Bush was nearly derailed by allegations that he had sexually harassed Anita Hill, a charge he forcefully denied.

Thomas has more recently come under scrutiny for lavish, undisclosed trips from a GOP megadonor and the conservative political activism of his wife, who backed false claims that the 2020 election was stolen from Trump. The justice has said he wasn’t required to disclose the trips he took with friends and ignored calls to recuse himself from cases related to the election.

On the court, though, recent years have also brought perhaps the most significant work of his career, especially a 2022 opinion he wrote that found people generally have the right to carry a gun in public. The justice did not respond to a request for comment on his tenure.

His own jurisprudence has changed little over the years, said Scott Gerber, author of “First Principles: The Jurisprudence of Clarence Thomas.” Even as the majority moves his way, he’s continued to write dissents that get noticed.

“He’s incredibly consistent,” Gerber said. Once known for solo dissents, “now he writes majority opinions.”

Whitehurst writes for the Associated Press.

A majority of South Koreans support raising the country’s senior age threshold to 70 from the current 65, a survey by Gallup Korea showed Friday.

The survey, conducted from Tuesday to Thursday on 1,002 adults aged 18 and older, found that 59 percent of respondents favored raising the eligibility age for senior benefits.

Opposition stood at 30 percent, while 12 percent either declined to answer or said they were unsure.

In similar surveys conducted in 2015 and 2023, 46 percent and 60 percent of respondents, respectively, backed raising the threshold.

The poll also found 60 percent of respondents believe individuals should be primarily responsible for their own livelihood in old age.

By contrast, 29 percent said the government and society should take responsibility, while 4 percent said such responsibility fell on their offspring and 3 percent chose other options.

Across all age groups, more than half said individuals should take primary responsibility for their retirement.

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