Maria

Catherine Tyldesley says her returning Coronation Street character Eva Price is set to lock horns once more with nemesis Maria Connor, while a ‘scary’ new arrival will also see a clash

There’s set to be plenty of drama on Coronation Street as Eva Price makes her big return.

Catherine Tyldesley reprises her role very soon, and it seems there’s more than one character she will clash with. Viewers will recall Eva’s feud with Maria Connor over Aidan Connor, with catfights and even a fight in a water fountain on Eva’s wedding day.

Well, we can confirm that conflict between the characters is still very much there, and it will be reignited when Eva makes her comeback. But it isn’t just Maria that Eva is set to clash with, as a “scary” new character features in dramatic scenes with the new Rovers Return landlady.

Catherine told The Mirror: “I was so thrilled when Kate Brooks said we’d be playing that out [between Eva and Maria]. Kate referenced Gail Platt and Eileen Grimshaw, which I just absolutely loved.

“She is a dog with a bone, she will lock onto things in the same way that Maria does. And Eva really loved Aidan, she really loved him. Although she’s moved on and she loves Ben, she finds that very hard to let go of and she loves a grudge, so I think that’s going to be a long-term thing. Don’t let them near any water features, I think.”

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Then there’s Eva’s “mother-in-law from hell” Maggie Driscoll, and the pair do not get on. Catherine spilled: “I’ve watched a lot of what Pauline McLynn’s done and when I’m watching what she’s doing on set, sometimes I’ll just watch the monitor and I know I am seeing a Corrie icon.

“The writers have structured things for our characters, it’s hilarious, it’s constant jibes. But I think deep down, there’s a moment that we did not so long ago where Eva, in a roundabout way, says ‘If I wasn’t with Ben and I’d just met Maggie, I think we’d be mates.’ There’s a lot of similarities.

“They both love the family, they’re both striving for the same thing, it’s just that now and again they come to blows. But that’s great fun to play.” Things will get heated between them, with Catherine hinting that scenes will reveal just how “scary” Maggie can be.

She explained: “It’s an interesting one, because early doors, I wouldn’t say she’s scared of her, she’s more irritated by her. But as time goes on, Eva does start to see this side to her that’s like ‘Wow, okay, I’ve got your number’ and I think that element develops where she goes ‘Yeah, I am a little bit scared of her now and intimidated’, yes.”

There’s more nostalgia too when Eva bumps into her ex Adam Barlow, but Catherine says Eva’s new partner Ben has nothing to worry about. She told us: “The day that Eva left Weatherfield, Adam was slightly heartbroken but said ‘I really care about you.’

“They’ve maintained that and they’ve stayed in touch. You know when you can be friends with an ex – it’s rare, but it happens – and they’ve kept that. Ben doesn’t have anything to worry about there.”

Catherine also offered a glimpse of what we can expect with Eva being the new landlady. She shared: “I think it’s easy to underestimate Eva as a dizzy blonde. She does have that side to her and she’s great fun and can be dizzy and spontaneous but she is a very strong woman and we start to see even more reasons why, as time goes on, why she has got this inner strength.

“And also, she’s her mother’s daughter, Stella was a really strong woman, and that is probably part of the reason why her and Maggie clash so much, they’re such strong personalities. But again, to bring that fun dynamic into The Rovers, especially with Sean and Glenda, has just been an absolute scream.”

Catherine’s also thrilled to be reunited with co-stars Jane Danson and Georgia Taylor, who play Eva’s sisters Leanne and Toyah Battersby. She teased: “I’ve pretty much stayed in touch with everybody, so it’s extra lovely to come back to. That dynamic, the three witches reunited, it’s great.

“It’s strong women, again, and when they’re together, they’re even stronger, they’re a real force to be reckoned with. They’ve got each other’s backs, it’s that solidarity, it’s such a joy to play as an actress. The three concubines of Nick Tilsley, and the girls are just a dream and we’ve stayed in touch. I felt really welcomed by everyone, especially my sisters, so it’s great that we’ve got lots of stuff coming up together.”

Coronation Street airs Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays at 8pm on ITV1 and ITV X. * Follow Mirror Celebs and TV on TikTok , Snapchat , Instagram , Twitter , Facebook , YouTube and Threads .

Maria worked cleaning schools in Florida for $13 an hour. Every two weeks, she’d get a $900 paycheck from her employer, a contractor. Not much — but enough to cover rent in the house that she and her 11-year-old son share with five families, plus electricity, a cellphone and groceries.

In August, it all ended.

When she showed up at the job one morning, her boss told her that she couldn’t work there anymore. The Trump administration had terminated the Biden administration’s humanitarian parole program, which provided legal work permits for Cubans, Haitians, Venezuelans and Nicaraguans like Maria.

“I feel desperate,’’ said Maria, 48, who requested anonymity to talk about her ordeal because she fears being detained and deported. “I don’t have any money to buy anything. I have $5 in my account. I’m left with nothing.’’

President Trump’s sweeping crackdown on immigration is throwing foreigners like Maria out of work and shaking the American economy and job market. And it’s happening at a time when hiring is already deteriorating amid uncertainty over Trump’s tariffs and other trade policies.

Immigrants do jobs — cleaning houses, picking tomatoes, painting fences — that most native-born Americans won’t, and for less money. But they also bring the technical skills and entrepreneurial energy that have helped make the United States the world’s economic superpower.

Trump is attacking immigration at both ends of the spectrum, deporting low-wage laborers and discouraging skilled foreigners from bringing their talents to the United States.

And he is targeting an influx of foreign workers that eased labor shortages and upward pressure on wages and prices at a time when most economists thought that taming inflation would require sky-high interest rates and a recession — a fate the United States escaped in 2023 and 2024.

“Immigrants are good for the economy,’’ said Lee Branstetter, an economist at Carnegie-Mellon University. “Because we had a lot of immigration over the past five years, an inflationary surge was not as bad as many people expected.”

More workers filling more jobs and spending more money has also helped drive economic growth and create still more job openings. Economists worry that Trump’s deportations and limits on even legal immigration will do the reverse.

In a July report, researchers Wendy Edelberg and Tara Watson of the centrist Brookings Institution and Stan Veuger of the right-leaning American Enterprise Institute calculated that the loss of foreign workers will mean that monthly U.S. job growth “could be near zero or negative in the next few years.’’

Hiring has already slowed significantly, averaging a meager 29,000 a month from June through August. (The September jobs report has been delayed by the ongoing shutdown of the federal government.) During the post-pandemic hiring boom of 2021-23, by contrast, employers added a stunning 400,000 jobs a month.

The nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office, citing fallout from Trump’s immigration and trade policies, downgraded its forecast for U.S. economic growth this year to 1.4% from the 1.9% it had previously expected and from 2.5% in 2024.

‘We need these people’

Goodwin Living, an Alexandria, Va., nonprofit that provides senior housing, healthcare and hospice services, had to lay off four employees from Haiti after the Trump administration terminated their work permits. The Haitians had been allowed to work under a humanitarian parole program and had earned promotions at Goodwin.

“That was a very, very difficult day for us,” Chief Executive Rob Liebreich said. “It was really unfortunate to have to say goodbye to them, and we’re still struggling to fill those roles.’’

Liebreich is worried that 60 additional immigrant workers could lose their temporary legal right to live and work in the United States. “We need all those hands,’’ he said. “We need all these people.”

Goodwin Living has 1,500 employees, 60% of them from foreign countries. It has struggled to find enough nurses, therapists and maintenance staff. Trump’s immigration crackdown, Liebreich said, is “making it harder.’’

The ICE crackdown

Trump’s immigration ambitions, intended to turn back what he calls an “invasion’’ at America’s southern border and secure jobs for U.S.-born workers, were once viewed with skepticism because of the money and economic disruption required to reach his goal of deporting 1 million people a year. But legislation that Trump signed into law July 4 — and which Republicans named the One Big Beautiful Bill Act — suddenly made his plans plausible.

The law pours $150 billion into immigration enforcement, setting aside $46.5 billion to hire 10,000 Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents and $45 billion to increase the capacity of immigrant detention centers.

And his empowered ICE agents have shown a willingness to move fast and break things — even when their aggression conflicts with other administration goals.

Last month, immigration authorities raided a Hyundai battery plant in Georgia, detained 300 South Korean workers and showed video of some of them shackled in chains. They’d been working to get the plant up and running, bringing expertise in battery technology and Hyundai procedures that local American workers didn’t have.

The incident enraged the South Koreans and ran counter to Trump’s push to lure foreign manufacturers to invest in America. South Korean President Lee Jae Myung warned that the country’s other companies might be reluctant about betting on America if their workers couldn’t get visas promptly and risked getting detained.

Sending Medicaid recipients to the fields

America’s farmers are among the president’s most dependable supporters.

But John Boyd Jr., who farms 1,300 acres of soybeans, wheat and corn in southern Virginia, said that the immigration raids — and the threat of them — are hurting farmers already contending with low crop prices, high costs and fallout from Trump’s trade war with China, which has stopped buying U.S. soybeans and sorghum.

“You’ve got ICE out here, herding these people up,’’ said Boyd, founder of the National Black Farmers Assn. “[Trump] says they’re murderers and thieves and drug dealers, all this stuff. But these are people who are in this country doing hard work that many Americans don’t want to do.’’

Boyd scoffed at Agriculture Secretary Brooke Rollins’ suggestion in July that U.S.-born Medicaid recipients could head to the fields to meet work requirements imposed as part of the One Big Beautiful Bill Act. “People in the city aren’t coming back to the farm to do this kind of work,’’ he said. “It takes a certain type of person to bend over in 100-degree heat.’’

The Trump administration admits that the immigration crackdown is causing labor shortages on the farm that could translate into higher prices at the supermarket.

“The near total cessation of the inflow of illegal aliens combined with the lack of an available legal workforce results in significant disruptions to production costs and [threatens] the stability of domestic food production and prices for U.S. consumers,’’ the Labor Department said in an Oct. 2 filing to the Federal Register.

‘You’re not welcome here’

Jed Kolko of the Peterson Institute for International Economics said that job growth is slowing in businesses that rely on immigrants. Construction companies, for instance, have shed 10,000 jobs since May.

“Those are the short-term effects,’’ said Kolko, a Commerce Department official in the Biden administration. “The longer-term effects are more serious because immigrants traditionally have contributed more than their share of patents, innovation, productivity.’’

Especially worrisome to many economists was Trump’s sudden announcement last month that he was raising the fee on H-1B visas, meant to lure hard-to-find skilled foreign workers to the United States, from as little as $215 to $100,000.

“A $100,000 visa fee is not just a bureaucratic cost — it’s a signal,” said Dany Bahar, senior fellow at the Center for Global Development. “It tells global talent: You are not welcome here.”

Some are already packing up.

In Washington, D.C., one H-1B visa holder, a Harvard graduate from India who works for a nonprofit helping Africa’s poor, said Trump’s signal to employers is clear: Think twice about hiring H-1B visa holders.

The man, who requested anonymity, is already preparing paperwork to move to the United Kingdom.

“The damage is already done, unfortunately,’’ he said.

Associated Press writers Wiseman and Salomon reported from Washington and Miami, respectively. AP writers Fu Ting and Christopher Rugaber in Washington contributed to this report.

Oct. 10 (UPI) — María Corina Machado, a Venezuelan opposition leader who has worked to restore democracy to her country, won the Nobel Peace Prize, the Norwegian Nobel Committee announced Friday.

The committee hailed Machado as “one of the most extraordinary examples of civilian courage in Latin America in recent times” for her work to promote human rights and attempts to end the dictatorship of President Nicolás Maduro.

“Ms. Machado has been a key, unifying figure in a political opposition that was once deeply divided — an opposition that found common ground in the demand for free elections and representative government,” a news release from the committee said.

“This is precisely what lies at the heart of democracy: our shared willingness to defend the principles of popular rule, even though we disagree. At a time when democracy is under threat, it is more important than ever to defend this common ground.”

As a leader of the Vente Venezuela, a centrist liberal political party, Machado ran for president in 2011 and 2024. The former National Assembly member was the candidate chosen to run against Maduro, representing a variety of opposition groups in the 2024 election.

The Venezuelan government, however, banned her from participating in the election for her earlier activism against the Maduro regime. The ban was instituted for 15 years. The government also accused Machado of planning to assassinate Maduro.

In 2002, Machado was a co-founder of Súmate, an election-monitoring organization that trained volunteers to observe polling locations to ensure all votes were fairly and accurately counted in Venezuelan elections.

“It was a choice of ballots over bullets,” she said of her involvement in the organization.

She later left Súmate to prevent the group from becoming politicized.

“María Corina Machado meets all three criteria stated in Alfred Nobel‘s will for the selection of a Peace Prize laureate,” the Nobel Committee said.

“She has brought her country’s opposition together. She has never wavered in resisting the militarization of Venezuelan society. She has been steadfast in her support for a peaceful transition to democracy.”

Britain’s Jodie Burrage lost just four games as she began her bid to reach the US Open main draw.

Burrage, 26, won eight games in a row to close out a 6-4 6-0 victory over Romania’s Patricia Maria Tig in the first round of qualifying in New York.

The world number 149, bidding to reach the US Open main draw for the second time, will face 18th seed Arantxa Rus next.

Burrage is joined in the second round by Billy Harris, who fought back to beat Japan’s James Kent Trotter 3-6 6-1 6-2, but Johannus Monday lost 7-5 6-3 to France’s Harold Mayot.

Dan Evans and Jay Clarke will also begin their campaigns on Monday at Flushing Meadows.

Players must win three matches in qualifying to advance to the main singles draws for the tournament, which begins on Sunday.

Jack Draper, Cameron Norrie and Jacob Fearnley have direct entry into the men’s singles, with Emma Raducanu, Katie Boulter and Sonay Kartal in the women’s.

SACRAMENTO — For nearly 20 years, Maria would call her sister — a nurse in Mexico — for advice on how to manage her asthma and control her husband’s diabetes instead of going to the doctor in California.

She didn’t have legal status, so she couldn’t get health insurance and skipped routine exams, relying instead on home remedies and, at times, getting inhalers from Mexico. She insisted on using only her first name for fear of deportation.

Things changed for Maria and many others in recent years when some Democratic-led states opened up their health insurance programs to low-income immigrants regardless of their legal status. Maria and her husband signed up the day the program began last year.

“It changed immensely, like from Earth to the heavens,” Maria said in Spanish of Medi-Cal, California’s Medicaid program. “Having the peace of mind of getting insurance leads me to getting sick less.”

At least seven states and the District of Columbia have offered coverage for immigrants, mostly since 2020. But three of them have done an about-face, ending or limiting coverage for hundreds of thousands of immigrants who aren’t in the U.S. legally — California, Illinois and Minnesota.

The programs cost much more than officials had projected at a time when the states are facing multibillion-dollar deficits now and in the future. In Illinois, adult immigrants ages 42 to 64 without legal status have lost their healthcare to save an estimated $404 million. All adult immigrants in Minnesota no longer have access to the state program, saving nearly $57 million. In California, no one will automatically lose coverage, but new enrollments for adults will stop in 2026 to save more than $3 billion over several years.

Cuts in all three states were backed by Democratic governors who once championed expanding health coverage to immigrants.

The Trump administration this week shared the home addresses, ethnicities and personal data of all Medicaid recipients with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials. Twenty states, including California, Illinois and Minnesota, have sued.

Healthcare providers told the Associated Press that all of those factors, especially the fear of being arrested or deported, are having a chilling effect on people seeking care. And states may have to spend more money down the road because immigrants will avoid preventive healthcare and end up needing to go to safety-net hospitals.

“I feel like they continue to squeeze you more and more to the point where you’ll burst,” Maria said, referencing all the uncertainties for people who are in the U.S. without legal permission.

‘People are going to die’

People who run free and community health clinics in California and Minnesota said patients who got on state Medicaid programs received knee replacements and heart procedures and were diagnosed for serious conditions like late-stage cancer.

CommunityHealth is one of the nation’s largest free clinics, serving many uninsured and underinsured immigrants in the Chicago area who have no other options for treatment. That includes the people who lost coverage July 1 when Illinois ended its Health Benefits for Immigrants Adults Program, which served about 31,500 people ages 42 to 64.

One of CommunityHealth’s community outreach workers and care coordinator said Eastern European patients she works with started coming in with questions about what the change meant for them. She said many of the patients also don’t speak English and don’t have transportation to get to clinics that can treat them. The worker spoke to the AP on condition of anonymity to protect patients’ privacy.

Health Finders Collective in Minnesota’s rural Rice and Steele counties south of Minneapolis serves low-income and underinsured patients, including large populations of Latino immigrants and Somali refugees. Executive director Charlie Mandile said his clinics are seeing patients rushing to squeeze in appointments and procedures before 19,000 people age 18 and older are kicked off insurance at the end of the year.

Free and community health clinics in all three states say they will keep serving patients regardless of insurance coverage — but that might get harder after the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services decided this month to restrict federally qualified health centers from treating people without legal status.

CommunityHealth Chief Executive Stephanie Willding said she always worried about the stability of the program because it was fully state funded, “but truthfully, we thought that day was much, much further away.”

“People are going to die. Some people are going to go untreated,” Alicia Hardy, chief executive officer of CommuniCARE+OLE clinics in California, said of the state’s Medicaid changes. “It’s hard to see the humanity in the decision-making that’s happening right now.”

A spokesperson for the Minnesota Department of Health said ending the state’s program will decrease MinnesotaCare spending in the short term, but she acknowledged healthcare costs would rise elsewhere, including uncompensated care at hospitals.

Minnesota House Speaker Lisa Demuth, a Republican, said the state’s program was not sustainable.

“It wasn’t about trying to be non-compassionate or not caring about people,” she said. “When we looked at the state budget, the dollars were not there to support what was passed and what was being spent.”

Demuth also noted that children will still have coverage, and adults lacking permanent legal status can buy private health insurance.

Healthcare providers also are worried that preventable conditions will go unmanaged, and people will avoid care until they end up in emergency rooms — where care will be available under federal law.

One of those safety-net public hospitals, Cook County Health in Chicago, treated about 8,000 patients from Illinois’ program last year. Dr. Erik Mikaitis, the health system’s CEO, said doing so brought in $111 million in revenue.

But he anticipated other providers who billed through the program could close, he said. “Things can become unstable very quickly,” he said.

Monthly fees, federal policies create barriers

State lawmakers said California’s Medi-Cal changes stem from budget issues — a $12-billion deficit this year, with larger ones projected ahead. Democratic state leaders last month agreed to stop new enrollment starting in 2026 for all low-income adults without legal status. Those under 60 remaining on the program will have to pay a $30 monthly fee in 2027.

States are also bracing for impact from federal policies. Cuts to Medicaid and other programs in President Trump’s massive tax and spending bill include a 10% cut to the federal share of Medicaid expansion costs to states that offer health benefits to immigrants starting October 2027.

California health officials estimate roughly 200,000 people will lose coverage after the first full year of restricted enrollment, though Gov. Gavin Newsom maintains that even with the rollbacks, California provides the most expansive healthcare coverage for poor adults.

Every new bill requires a shift in Maria’s monthly calculations to make ends meet. She believes many people won’t be able to afford the $30-a-month premiums and will instead go back to self-medication or skip treatment altogether.

“It was a total triumph,” she said of Medi-Cal expansion. “But now that all of this is coming our way, we’re going backwards to a worse place.”

Fear and tension about immigration raids are changing patient behavior, too. Providers told the AP that, as immigration raids ramped up, their patients were requesting more virtual appointments, not showing up to routine doctor’s visits and not picking up prescriptions for their chronic conditions.

Maria has the option to keep her coverage. But she is weighing the health of her family against risking what they’ve built in the U.S.

“It’s going to be very difficult,” Maria said of her decision to remain on the program. “If it comes to the point where my husband gets sick and his life is at risk, well then, obviously, we have to choose his life.”

Nguyễn and Shastri write for the Associated Press and reported from Sacramento and Milwaukee, respectively. AP journalist Godofredo Vasquez in San Francisco contributed to this report.

Coronation Street’s Maria Connor wonders what’s happened to Gary Windass in a new spoiler preview for the ITV soap, as she demands his whereabouts in an angry voicemail

Gary Windass sparks concern on Coronation Street next week according to a new spoiler clip.

In the preview, his wife Maria Connor is annoyed at him after his recent abrupt exit away from the Street. He’s been staying with his mum Anna Windass amid a rocky time with Maria over her feud with Lou Michaelis.

Of course viewers know that Gary learned the hard way that it was Lou causing trouble, as a recent episode showed him being blackmailed. After she allowed Maria to worry there was something going on between them, getting closer to him, her real intentions were exposed.

She sent a message from Garry’s phone to her own device to set him up, before trying to kiss him. When he knocked her back she threatened him, trying sell her silence by telling him to do as she said or Maria would find out.

Gary feared Maria would believe they were having an affair, and was left torn. While Lou’s plans were not fully made clear, it’s clear Gary was rattled.

READ MORE: Coronation Street team hit by huge new blow as budget cuts trigger more setbacks

New spoilers have revealed Gary has been staying with his mother Anna in the fallout, while Maria doesn’t know about the kiss and the threats. So when Gary doesn’t come home when he’s meant to, Maria is frustrated.

With them still not on the best terms, she ends up trying to contact him about his decision to delay his return. His stepson Liam Connor can’t hide his worry after failing to get in contact with him, and he asks his mum if she knows anything.

This annoys Maria further as it’s messing Liam around, but where is Gary and why is he not heading straight home? In the preview clip, Maria is shown and heard leaving Gary a message.

She pleads with him, telling him that it’s fine if he’s decided to extend his visit or has other plans but to make sure he lets her know so they don’t wonder what’s happened. Calling him out, she says: “It’s not on. Call me back when you get this.”

Liam then asks if she’s heard from him but reassures him: “I’m sure he’ll be back soon.” Liam panics saying: “I thought you said he’d be home last night?”

Maria reassures him again saying: “Yeah I know, maybe he’s just like got his days mixed up or he’s missed his train. You know what he’s like.” As she looks away from Liam she can’t hider her own confusion and concern.

Meanwhile spoilers for later in the week reveal that Gary does eventually make contact, telling Maria his whereabouts. According to the message he sends her he’s decided to stay with a mate but will be home soon.

Whether there’s more to Gary being AWOL remains to be seen, while it’s also not been revealed if Maria will find out about Lou.

Coronation Street airs Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays at 8pm on ITV1 and ITV X. * Follow Mirror Celebs and TV on TikTok , Snapchat , Instagram , Twitter , Facebook , YouTube and Threads .

Maria went an early break up in the first set, drawing errors out of Anisimova, before a thumping backhand winner from the American put it back on terms.

However, Maria kept Anisimova on the move, visibly frustrating her, and a netted forehand gave Maria the break back, before she served out the set with ease.

The numbers told the story, with Anisimova committing 10 unforced errors to Maria’s three in the opener, and the momentum stayed with the German as she broke at the first chance in the second set.

A mammoth fourth game saw seven deuces and Maria saving two break points for 3-1, before a brilliant scamper to a drop shot in the next allowed her to go a double break up.

Anisimova, who won the WTA 1000 title in Qatar earlier this year, went for broke, pummelling her shots to rescue a break and keep in touch.

But Maria, backed by the packed crowd, kept her nerve to serve out to 30 and secure her place in Queen’s history.

Maria is due to compete at the Nottingham Open, which begins on Monday, but said she will celebrate with her family first.

“This doesn’t happen every week so we have to celebrate with something,” she added.

“I think the kids will probably want some crepes with Nutella!”

Coronation Street viewers think they know who reported Maria Connor to the police after a showdown with Lou Michaelis, with someone close to home tipped to be to blame

There was drama on Coronation Street on Friday night, as a showdown between Maria Connor and Lou Michaelis ended with an arrest.

Maria was horrified when the police came to take her away, with her accused of actual bodily harm. She’d been caught up in a fight with Lou after spotting her trying to steal from Shona Platt.

Her attempt to stop her led to Lou taking a tumble, slamming into a coffee table. As the camera panned back to her she was laying on the floor covered in blood and cuts, with glass everywhere.

She accused Maria of pushing her on purpose, telling the others she had been attacked. As Maria’s partner Gary Windass helped Lou onto her feet, Maria claimed it was an accident and that while she did grab Lou, Lou had tripped over.

With Maria not being believed by some of her neighbours, Gary headed to the hospital with Lou while he begged her not to get the police involved. Gary made it clear he didn’t think it was an accident, telling Maria she needed to apologise.

READ MORE: Coronation Street Lisa’s true intentions for ‘corrupt’ Kit as star teases drama ahead

Maria then accused him of getting too close to Lou, with fans also predicting Lou was trying to get closer to Gary. Gary claimed she was lying about Lou trying to steal money, and also lying about what really happened.

She accused him of fancying her and it led to a row. Things got awkward later on, with Sarah Platt backing Maria and agreeing with her side of the story.

It wasn’t enough though as the police entered the pub and arrested her. But while the obvious culprit behind the report was Lou herself, fans were not convinced.

With upcoming spoilers suggesting Lou denies being involved, fans think they know who really told the police – with an affair plot sealed. Viewers suggested it was Gary behind the call after her refusal to own up and apologise.

They think Gary wants Maria out of the way so he can embark on a romance with Lou. Taking to X, one fan suggested: “Gotta be Gary turning Maria in! Lou doesn’t wanna deal with all that, but Gary’s getting so fed up.”

Another fan agreed: “It definitely wasn’t Lou, it was either Gary because he’s sick of it or someone trying to make it look like it was Lou.” A third viewer posted: “Does anyone else think it was Gary who reported Maria to the police? Is he going to have an affair with Lou?”

A further post read: “Maybe he just wanted Maria out the way,” as another fan commented: “Wtf has Gary dobbed Maria to the rozzers?” As for the affair, one fan suggested: “I’m here for Gary and Lou!” as another fan commented: “Gary and Lou affair impending.”

Coronation Street airs Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays at 8pm on ITV1 and ITV X. * Follow Mirror Celebs and TV on TikTok , Snapchat , Instagram , Twitter , Facebook , YouTube and Threads .

There was reason for Raducanu to be confident against Zheng, who is still finding her feet on the grass court and has a serve that can waver when under pressure.

World number 37 Raducanu had also made relatively serene progress through her first two matches, dropping just eight games across four sets.

But, as Raducanu found against Iga Swiatek in Melbourne and Paris, and Coco Gauff in Italy, there is a different, consistent level needed to beat the players for who winning is a habit.

In an edgy start, Raducanu put pressure on Zheng’s serve while saving break points in her own games.

But Zheng broke through at the seventh attempt, a blistering backhand down the line silencing the crowd, who had earlier voiced their displeasure after Zheng had to change her shoes midway through the game.

Raducanu kept up the pressure, creating an immediate break-back opportunity, but Zheng’s huge groundstrokes kept her at bay, and a rushed forehand into the net handed the top seed the first set.

Raducanu left court for a medical timeout on her back but took advantage as Zheng’s first serve all but disappeared on her return.

With the wind picking up, Raducanu produced a series of ruthless returns to Zheng’s second serve and quickly found herself 3-0 up.

But Zheng wrestled a break back and upped her intensity when needed, creeping forward to attack Raducanu’s serve. A double fault handed Zheng the break back and she reeled off four games in a row to close out the match.

Despite the loss, there will be enough for Raducanu to be confident she can perform well on the grass – but she will know there is still a gap to be bridged when it comes to challenging the very best.

Maria Reva creates beautiful, purposeful chaos. Informed by deep personal loss, her startling metafictional debut novel, “Endling,” is a forceful mashup of storytelling modes that call attention to its interplay of reality and fiction — a Ukrainian tragicomedy of errors colliding with social commentary about the Russian invasion.

A poorly planned crime serves as the anchor. “Endling” throws three strangers involved with Ukraine’s for-profit international matchmaking market together for a quixotic kidnapping caper in a nation on the brink of war. There’s a twisted, postmodern “Canterbury Tales”-like quality to these proceedings: Like medieval pilgrims, its central characters are each on a journey they hope will change their lives. And everyone is suffering some level of delusion.

If “Endling” has a main character, it’s the woman whose mission is to save the nation’s endangered snails; another key player is a lone wolf terrorist who hopes her political orchestrations will spark a family reunion. Then there’s the lonely, disaffected expatriate bachelor on the hunt for a quiet, traditional wife. Through their perspectives, black humor flows freely, as the motivations and experiences that brought this motley crew together rise to the surface.

Context is crucial in “Endling.” These characters cross paths early in 2022, when mass violence threatens to overwhelm every other concern. But despite the amassing of Russian troops on the border, the military invasion of Ukraine seems so surreal that no one knows what to believe or how much to fear. So these quests march on even as the crack of explosions grows louder.

The stories that emerge about our three key players are evocative, provocative and absurd — a contrast to looming darkness. Between those narratives, there are commentaries about the history and politics of Ukraine and on publishing and writing about Ukraine, plus the author’s family and its plight at the time of the book’s writing. As Reva, a native of Ukraine, writes in an early, epistolary section, in response to a magazine editor’s critique of the irreverence of her solicited essay about the war: “You’d asked for the type of reporting/response that would differ from that of a non-Ukrainian. In Ukraine, dark humor dates back to the Soviet days, giving people who live in uncontrollable circumstances a sense of power. If you can laugh about a dark reality, you rise above it, etc.”

No story better exemplifies that ethos than that of the teenage fake bride turned kidnapper who aches for her mother. Young, beautiful Nastia (a.k.a. Anastasia) — just 18 years old and six months past high school graduation — brings the group together. Ostensibly to stop the exploitation of women, this daughter of a fierce feminist activist who has long protested the tourist marriage market resolves to make an unforgettable public statement by kidnapping 100 male clients of the matchmaking service “Romeo and Yulia” at the start of one of its romance tours. Though the stunt is nominally aimed at exposing and ending degrading matchmaking practices, what Nastia really yearns for is her missing parent’s attention. When Nastia decides that a mobile trailer van in the guise of an escape room would be the perfect means of the men’s abduction, she begs Yeva, a fellow bride in possession of an RV, to rent it to her.

Like Nastia, Yeva is a “bride” with an agenda. A scientist who’s lost her grant funding, Yeva uses the marriage mart grift to sustain her life’s work. Her story exemplifies the mercenary nature of the international marriage market. While Romeo and Yulia’s “brides,” as the women are called, aren’t paid a salary, they regularly receive gifts from suitors. In exchange for allowing the agency to use her as “shimmering bait” on the website, women like Yeva “could also return tour after tour and, without bending any rules, make decent money. In fact, the agency endorsed the practice: any gifts ordered by bachelors through the agency — gym membership, cooking class, customizable charm bracelet — could be redeemed by the brides for cash from the agency office.”

Yeva’s story gives the novel a melancholy moral center. And it’s from Yeva’s quest that the book derives its title: An “endling” is the last individual in a dying species, the kind she is dedicated to protecting. After losing access to institutional support, Yeva equipped the trailer as a roaming laboratory and storage site where (at the peak) she sustained over 270 species of rare gastropods. Though she prefers mollusks to men, it’s Yeva who insists on reducing the kidnapping target from 100 to 12, a number that the trailer could humanely accommodate.

Pasha, one of the men Nastia lures to the trailer, has his own ambitions. Born in Ukraine and raised in Canada, Pasha’s secret is that he doesn’t plan to return to the West with his bride like the other clients. Instead, he fantasizes about resettling in the Ukraine and forging a life that might command the respect he craves from his parents. Pasha is the sympathetic face of Western men beguiled by nostalgia for “traditional” wives unsullied by feminism and high expectations. His motives are sincere even if his relationship with women and his family might be better served through therapy.

“Endling” isn’t an easy read, but it is brilliant and heart-stopping. Authorial interludes can feel like interruptions, but by breaking the fourth wall, Reva forces us to pay attention to the ongoing devastation behind the narrative while unpacking the compromises of storytelling. Plus, Yeva, Nastia and Pasha and the merchants of romance spin their own fictions: They have trouble telling the difference between truth and make-believe even as the sounds of war grow near and even when bullets penetrate flesh.

This building up and breaking down of artifice forces reflection on how we use fiction to explore and bend reality while undermining the comforts of distance. As the author confesses, “I need to keep fact and fiction straight, but they keep blurring together.”

Bell is a critic and media researcher exploring culture, politics and identity in art.

Benfica winger Angel di Maria will return to his boyhood club Rosario Central – 10 months after death threats forced him to backtrack on the same move.

The 37-year-old began his career at Rosario in 2005 and the Argentine top-flight club announced his return on Thursday.

“Our history together has more pages to write. Welcome home,” the Rosario-based club said alongside a video posted on X.

The 2022 World Cup winner spent two seasons with Rosario before moving to Europe with Benfica.

He went on to play more than 700 games in Europe for Benfica, Real Madrid, Manchester United, Paris St-Germain and Juventus.

Di Maria was close to rejoining Rosario as a free agent last summer but increasing drug-related violence in the region and a number of threats against him and his family ended his plans.

Speaking last July, Di Maria said: “There was a threat at my sister’s business, a box with a pig’s head and a bullet in the forehead, and a note that said that if I returned to [Rosario] Central, the next head was that of my daughter Pia.

“Those months were horrible. We could only sit there and cry each night over not being able to carry out that dream return.”

Di Maria has won 30 trophies in Europe – including league titles in three countries and the 2013-14 Champions League with Real – as well as the World Cup and two Copa America trophies with Argentina.

He rejoined Benfica for a second spell in 2023 and will leave the club after next month’s Club World Cup campaign in the United States.