Meet

Former L.A. mayor and current candidate for governor Antonio Villaraigosa wants voters to know that he navigated billion-dollar budgets, cracked down on violent crime and championed the expansion of bus and rail lines.

The onetime state Assembly speaker argues he’s the only Democratic candidate with the experience to do the complicated job of running California.

But Villaraigosa left City Hall in 2013 — eons ago in the world of politics. President Obama was still in office, singer Robin Thicke’s “Blurred Lines” was atop the charts and Apple Watches weren’t yet a thing.

Because of his distance from elected office, combined with a decent but overshadowed fundraising effort, Villaraigosa lacks a high-profile platform to attract attention in today’s fractured media universe, an essential ingredient he needs to remind voters about his experience and accomplishments as mayor and a state lawmaker.

Antonio Villaraigosa gets his photo taken with students from Hazeltine Avenue Elementary School while visiting Placita Olvera in 2013.

(Irfan Khan / Los Angeles Times)

Recent polls show Villaraigosa, 73, wallowing at the bottom of the field, though none of the major Democratic candidates have an overwhelming edge.

Villaraigosa also ran for governor in 2018, coming in third in the primary election behind Democratic rival Gavin Newsom, who went on to win and is now serving his second term, and little-known Republican businessman John Cox.

Political strategist Mike Madrid, who worked for Villaraigosa on that campaign, said the former mayor’s absence from politics in recent years is a major liability in this race.

“He’s a dogged, determined candidate,” Madrid said. “But there are pretty stiff headwinds.”

Villaraigosa got a boost last week when the State Building and Construction Trades Council of California pledged $1 million to an outside committee supporting him.

His allies argue voters aren’t paying attention to the governor’s race because eyes are on President Trump, immigration raids and the Iran war.

But the new funding is a pittance compared to some of his rivals. Billionaire Tom Steyer is tapping tens of millions of his own money to pump out ads. Tech companies and billionaire Rick Caruso are supporting Matt Mahan, the mayor of San José, with millions.

Another contender, Rep. Eric Swalwell (D-Dublin), has the power of incumbency. Swalwell launched his campaign on “Jimmy Kimmel Live!” and is a regular on cable news shows, while former Orange County Rep. Katie Porter, who is also running, recently served in Congress and campaigned for the U.S. Senate two years ago.

With the June primary looming, Villaraigosa’s campaign risks sputtering out.

Angeleno Celine Mares holds a copy of Newsweek featuring newly elected Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa as he is sworn into office on the steps of City Hall July 1, 2005.

(David McNew / Getty Images)

Leaving a Compton church earlier this month, he reacted to Mahan’s support from technology companies, and the billionaire money in the race.

“When you have overwhelming sums of money influencing elections, there’s a great deal of concern for those of us who care about our democracy,” said Villaraigosa. “As much as they say it’s about free speech, it actually drowns out speech.”

(During his 2018 bid for governor, though, Villaraigosa was a major beneficiary of Californians using their wealth to wield political influence. Charter school backers, including Netflix co-founder Reed Hastings and philanthropist Eli Broad, spent around $23 million on efforts to boost his campaign. )

Earlier in the morning, he rallied runners at a 10K road race in L.A.’s Chinatown, lighting firecrackers, posing for photos and looking as energetic as when he was mayor and would dart into the street to personally fill potholes.

Villaraigosa flitted around the racers’ VIP tent, spotted a bowl of fortune cookies and made a beeline. “You have an active mind and a keen imagination,” he read aloud.

“Antonio V.!” a middle-aged man called out as the former mayor passed.

Minutes later, Villaraigosa swapped his black and white Veja sneakers and jeans for dress shoes and a suit for the church service in Compton, at which an overwhelmingly Black audience gave him a warm reception.

Building a coalition of Black and Latino voters helped him win the 2005 L.A. mayor’s race in a dramatic upset of then-Mayor Jim Hahn, and brought wide attention to the one-time high school dropout, who was raised by a single mother on Los Angeles’ eastside.

Newsweek magazine featured Villaraigosa on its cover with the headline, “Latino Power: L.A.’s New Mayor and How Hispanics will change American Politics.”

But national acclaim can be fleeting. Today, voters aren’t as interested in identity-based politics, said Fernando Guerra, a professor of political science at Loyola Marymount University who has known Villaraigosa for decades.

Guerra said Villaraigosa is struggling to differentiate himself in the race because his pitch to voters is not unlike the moderate path taken by Mahan. Another contender, former Health and Human Services Secretary Xavier Becerra, overlaps with Villaraigosa when it comes to biographical details: Both are from the L.A. area, Latino and relatively close in age.

“What’s made it so difficult is that [Villaraigosa said], ‘Here’s my path,’” said Guerra. “Well, guess what, there are one to two more candidates who are also on that path.”

Strategist Madrid questioned whether voters even want to hear about a candidate’s experience at a time when anti-Trump messages rally Californians. “They want a fighter,” he said.

Since leaving the mayor’s office, Villaraigosa has enjoyed success in the lucrative private sector. He purchased a $3.3 million home in the L.A. neighborhood of Beverly Hills Post Office in 2020. . A recent campaign filing shows he’s spent the last few years advising companies including the health company AltaMed, financial lender Change Company and crypto currency exchange Coinbase Global.

Then mayor Antonio Villaraigosa holds a news conference at the Department of Water and Power on Hope Street July 22, 2005, urging all of Los Angeles to conserve energy in an effort to ensure Southern California avoids blackouts.

(Ken Hively / Los Angeles Times)

He also worked for a few years for consulting firm Actum and briefly advised the Newsom administration on infrastructure projects.

“It’s not that I didn’t like the public sector,” said Villaraigosa, explaining his decision to run again. As he talked about his desire to serve, he cast a gauzy image of the aughts in Los Angeles, taking credit for the downtown resurgence, skyline full of construction cranes and fewer homeless people on the streets during that period.

“Most people look back on those years and say they were some of the best years we’ve had in the last 25 — at least,” said Villaraigosa.

Stuart Waldman, president of the business group Valley Industry and Commerce Assn., argues Villaraigosa’s experience in the private sector and distance from elected office is a good thing.

“Look at what the economy was like, look at what the city was like” under Villaraigosa, said Waldman. “That’s what he’s going to be judged on.”

Villaraigosa started his career working for labor and civil rights groups before entering politics. Elected to the state Assembly in 1994, he pushed legislation that banned assault weapons and created healthcare coverage for children. His outgoing personality established him as a coveted fundraiser for Democrats in Sacramento and paved the way for him to be chosen as Assembly speaker.

As L.A. mayor, he brought down gang crime through a program that used former gang members to broker truces. Voters backed his ballot measure to expand L.A.’s transit system through new sales tax money in the middle of the Great Recession. He drove down pension costs after a bruising battle with city unions. At the same time, he established himself as a national leader on climate issues and education.

His reputation took a hit after an affair with a television reporter led to the breakup of his marriage.

The media scene that covered Villaraigosa back then is vastly diminished, with young people now getting news from TikTok videos, message boards or Instagram posts.

Weighing in on recent TV news layoffs in Los Angeles, Villaraigosa called himself “lucky” that there were plenty of newspaper and television reporters covering him as mayor, recalling that he’d get a dozen cameras to his press conferences.

Asked to compare his 2018 campaign for governor with this one, he said, “I didn’t have to reintroduce myself last time in quite the way I’ve had to this time.”

Villaraigosa spent a significant time in Mexico in recent years to see his now ex-wife Patricia Govea, a clothing designer. “She was in Mexico 80% of the time, the last six years. So I` went to Mexico a lot.” The pair’s divorce was finalized last year.

During a debate in front of Jewish voters on L.A.’s westside last month, Villaraigosa appeared to seize on the fact that he was the sole Angeleno on the stage, introducing himself by saying, “It’s good to be home.”

He told the crowd about his work as president of the American Civil Liberties Union of Southern California and criticized UCLA — his alma matter — for its handling of incidents targeting Jewish students on its campus.

It remains to be seen if he’ll have a hometown advantage. In the 2018 race for governor, Newsom won more votes than Villaraigosa in Los Angeles County. While Villaraigosa did well in Latino communities in central L.A. and on the Eastside, Newsom captured more votes in wealthier, whiter areas.

But at the Compton church, a security guard approached Villaraigosa and told him she’d worked on his 2005 campaign, while others promised to vote for him.

“I know he has a track record,” said Valerie Bland, a 63-year-old former port worker from Long Beach, as she watched Villaraigosa work the pews. “I haven’t even looked at anyone else.”

Former Assembly speaker Fabian Núñez, a longtime friend of Villaraigosa and managing partner at Actum, hopes voters dig into Villaraigosa’s record.

“We have short-term memories in this country,” said Núñez.

Satellite imagery from Vantor shows at least two, and more likely three, swing-wing F-14 Tomcat fighters, as well as at least 10 other aircraft destroyed on the ground following strikes on an Iranian airbase in Isfahan. Iran’s Tomcats, the only ones left in service anywhere after the U.S. Navy retired the type back in 2006, have been a hot topic of interest for decades now. The fleet’s fate may now be sealed for good as U.S. and Israeli strikes continue to pummel Iran’s Air Force, along with the rest of the country’s military and security forces.

Vantor has provided an image of Iran’s 8th Tactical Air Base in Isfahan taken on March 9, following strikes, as well as one from February 22 for comparison. The Israel Defense Forces (IDF) said explicitly on March 8 that it had targeted F-14s at Isfahan, the home base for Iran’s Tomcat fleet, but no imagery of those strikes looks to have been released. IDF videos of Iranian F-14s being struck that have been circulating online recently all look to be old.

The Vantor image from February 22 shows five F-14s. One is seen on what looks to be an alert pad, with another on a taxiway nearby. Two more are seen sitting outside a pair of aircraft hangars, while another is seen next to a separate set of hangars. The March 9 image shows the Tomcat on the pad and the lone example by the shelters to have been hit. There is also a huge scorch mark where the F-14 had been previously seen on the taxiway, pointing to its total destruction, though it is hard to tell for certain from the remaining wreckage. The other two jets appear to have been moved in the intervening weeks, and their status is unclear.

The post-strike image also shows at least 10 other aircraft destroyed along various taxiways. Vantor has assessed these to be members of the Iranian Air Force’s fleet of Chinese-made F-7 fighters. F-7 is the nomenclature for export variants of the Chengdu J-7, itself derived from the Soviet MiG-21 Fishbed.

Vantor also shared imagery of a row of four hardened aircraft shelters at Isfahan, three of which have a single hole in the top following the strikes. A structure next to the shelters, which had already been damaged prior to the current conflict, has now been flattened, as well.

Whether or not any of the F-14s that were struck at Isfahan were operational at the time is unknown. Estimates of how many Iranian Tomcats are even still airworthy have ranged widely in recent years, from just a handful to maybe as many as 25. As noted earlier, the 8th Tactical Air Base is the main station for Iran’s F-14s, though examples have also been positioned to provide quick reaction alert (QRA) coverage for Tehran in the past.

A total of 79 F-14As were delivered to Iran before the fall of the Shah in 1979. Iran’s air arm and the U.S. Navy are the only ones to have ever operated the Tomcat, and Iran has been the only one still flying them since 2006. While the current regime in Tehran has been able to keep a small portion of its original F-14 fleet flyable, sustaining the jets has been an immense challenge requiring the cannibalization of airframes.

The capabilities of the remaining jets can only have steadily degraded, as TWZ has written in the past:

“In particular, the F-14’s once-state-of-the-art AN/AWG-9 fire control radar has suffered from low serviceability, with the Tomcat fleet effectively being divided between those with fully functioning radars and those with more diminished capabilities. The current status of any surviving AIM-54 Phoenix and AIM-7 Sparrow air-to-air missiles is also a matter of debate, and Iranian programs to introduce alternative weaponry for the F-14 have had only very mixed results, as you can read more about here.“

The total number of F-14s in Iran, flyable or not, had already been reduced to some degree during the 12 Day War with Israel last year. Strike footage the IDF released during that conflict showed at least five Tomcats being struck. Satellite imagery had confirmed that at least two of those jets had been sitting idle for some time beforehand, as well.

The Israeli Air Force has conducted additional precision strikes targeting IRIAF F-14s, continuing its focused effort to systematically degrade Iran’s remaining air combat capabilities. pic.twitter.com/vT6JJ4D1x7

— GMI (@Global_Mil_Info) June 21, 2025

תקיפת זוג מטוסי F 14 בשדה תעופה בטהראן | את”צ

The overall intensity of the current U.S.-Israeli air campaign against Iran has been far greater than what was seen during the 12 Day War last year. The Iranian Air Force does not appear to have mustered any kind of major response, even in the first few days of what the U.S. military has dubbed Operation Epic Fury and that the Israelis are calling Operation Roaring Lion. Qatari F-15 fighters shot down two Iranian swing-wing Su-24 Fencer combat jets attempting to carry out a strike mission on Al Udeid Air Base on March 2. An Israeli F-35I Adir also shot down a Yak-130 armed jet trainer over Iran on March 4.

Other airbases across Iran beyond Isfahan have also been targeted in U.S. and Israeli strikes. Satellite imagery has previously confirmed the loss of one Il-76 cargo plane, two C-130 airlifters, and two swing-wing Su-22 Fitter combat jets in Shiraz.

U.S. Central Command has also previously released video footage in the past showing strikes targeting Su-22s at Shiraz, as well as some of Iran’s remaining U.S.-made F-5s at Qasem Soleimani International Airport (formerly Ahvaz International Airport) in Khuzestan.

Geolocation of destruction of F-27s and F-5s:
31.33563, 48.76275
Ahvaz International Airport, Khuzestan Province, Iran

Google Earth imagery taken 11/19/2025 for reference (F-5s not present). Aircraft were in current placement on 2/28/26. Runway was seen cratered by 3/05/26. https://t.co/XRMx7NZxWH pic.twitter.com/iZGnxPp4mO

— Evergreen Intel (@vcdgf555) March 6, 2026

Overall, Iran’s already dilapidated air arm looks to be even more severely degraded now, and seems likely doomed, at least in its present guise. U.S. officials have said that neutralizing the Iranian government’s ability to project military power beyond its borders is a core objective of the current campaign.

When it comes to the F-14s, regardless of whether any of them were still operational to any real degree when the current conflict erupted, the story of the country’s Tomcats looks to be increasingly approaching a definitive end.

Contact the author: joe@twz.com

International Energy Agency chief says talks aim to assess conditions as US-Israel war on Iran fuels global uncertainty.

The International Energy Agency (IEA) is set to hold an emergency meeting to assess the situation in the Middle East as the US-Israeli war on Iran continues to roil global energy markets.

Fatih Birol, the agency’s executive director, said representatives of IEA member states would meet on Tuesday to assess “the current security of supply and market conditions” amid the conflict.

“I have convened an extraordinary meeting of IEA member governments, which will take place later today to assess the current security of supply and market conditions to inform a subsequent decision on whether to make emergency stocks of IEA countries available to the market,” Birol said.

This week, oil prices hit their highest levels since mid‑2022 amid concerns of prolonged shipping disruptions linked to the war and reduced output from some key producers in countries that have been targeted by retaliatory Iranian strikes.

While the market reversed late in the day on Monday, with benchmarks falling below $90 a barrel, uncertainty persists around how long the United States-Israel war will drag on.

The Strait of Hormuz, a critical Gulf waterway through which about one-fifth of the world’s oil supplies passes, has effectively been shut down as a result of the war.

“If this drags on, it is not just going to be energy prices” that are affected, Al Jazeera’s Osama Bin Javaid explained. “It is going to have an impact on global economies.”

Bin Javaid noted that the extraordinary IEA meeting comes after Group of Seven (G7) countries met to discuss possible actions to help stabilise global energy markets.

European governments have been on edge about the prospect of a repeat of the energy crisis they faced in 2022, when prices surged to record peaks after Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine.

“The IEA will ⁠be presenting an ⁠in-depth analysis of the pros and ⁠cons of releasing stocks ⁠now,” the European Union’s Energy Commissioner ‌Dan Jorgensen said before the agency’s meeting.

Earlier on Tuesday, G7 energy ministers stopped short of deciding on the release of strategic oil reserves in a call, instead asking the IEA to assess the situation before acting.

“Everyone is willing to take measures to stabilise the market, including the United States,” French Finance Minister Roland Lescure told reporters after the latest talks.

“We have asked the IEA to elaborate scenarios for a potential oil stock release; we need to be ready to act at any moment,” he added.

EU leaders also will discuss competitiveness, including energy prices, on a call later in the day with German Chancellor Friedrich Merz, Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni, Belgian Prime Minister Bart De Wever, and others.

March 9 (UPI) — G7 finance ministers were set to hold an emergency meeting first thing Monday to discuss oil prices after Brent crude surged above $100 per barrel, with an option to release strategic reserves to calm the market on the table.

The virtual meeting, due to get underway at 8.30 EST, comes amid fears that disruption to oil and gas shipments from the Gulf via the Strait of Hormuz, which Iran has closed, could continue for some time, sending energy prices soaring and rattling financial markets.

The joint release of “emergency reserves,” if agreed, would be coordinated by the International Energy Agency, according to the Financial Times.

If G7 nations do release oil reserves, it would be the first time in four years since a crisis triggered by Russia’s full scale invasion of Ukraine triggered similar price shocks, although gas was hit the worst.

Exacerbated by escalating attacks on Gulf countries’ oil fields, refineries and storage plants — impacting their ability to produce and store product, as well as export it — Bent crude jumped more than 25% in Asian trade Monday, hitting a $119.50 per barrel high, before falling back with the price of West Texas Intermediate making similar moves.

Investors also reacted to fears that the crisis will push inflation and borrowing costs higher, with negative impacts for the global economy.

The key Nikkei 225 index in Japan slumped by more than 5% to end Monday down 2,892 points lower, with the jitters spilling over into Europe when the markets there opened.

At lunchtime Monday, the FTSE 100 in London was down 1.4%, Germany’s DAX was down 1.6% and the CAC 40 in Paris was off by more than 2.2%.

Former IEA head Neil Atkinson warned that unless there was a resolution to the situation in the Gulf and flows of oil resumed “very soon” the world faced a “potentially game-changing and unprecedented energy crisis,” even if the reserves were made available.

“Though there are oil stocks around the world, the point is that if this closure of the Strait persists, those oil stocks if they are deployed will be depleted and we are going to be in a situation where, with the oil production actually shut in, in Iraq and possibly in Kuwait and maybe even in time in Saudi Arabia, that we are going to be in a crisis the likes of which we have never seen before,” Atkinson told CNBC.

All times GMT

Round 1

Ireland v England – Friday 5 February (20:10)

Scotland v Italy – Saturday 6 February (14:10)

France v Wales – Saturday 6 February (16:40)

Round 2

Italy v Ireland – Saturday 13 February (14:10)

Scotland v Wales – Saturday 13 February (16:40)

England v France – Sunday 14 February (15:10)

Round 3

Wales v Ireland – Saturday 20 February (14:10)

England v Italy – Saturday 20 February (16:40)

France v Scotland – Sunday 21 February (15:10)

Round 4

Scotland v Ireland – Friday 5 March (20:10)

Italy v France – Saturday 6 March (14:10)

Wales v England – Saturday 6 March (16:40)

Round 5

Italy v Wales – Saturday 13 March (14:10)

England v Scotland – Saturday 13 March (16:40)

Ireland v France – Saturday 13 March (20:10)

Four hours before Sienna Spiro is due to launch her first U.S. headlining tour, the 20-year-old singer and songwriter from London sits upstairs in the Troubadour’s empty balcony, peering down as several crew members wheel a grand piano onstage.

“The fact that I’m 11-and-a-half hours from home and that this room is gonna be filled with people that have never met me and that I’ve never seen before — that’s just crazy,” she says. “I’m kind of scared.”

The song that brought Spiro to West Hollywood this past Tuesday is “Die on This Hill,” a showstopping pop-soul ballad about staying in a toxic relationship — “I’ll take my pride, stand here for you,” she sings, “I’m not blind, just seeing it through” — that’s been streamed more than 300 million times on YouTube and Spotify since it came out in October. Built around tolling piano chords and Spiro’s titanic vocal, the song hit No. 9 in the U.K. and broke into the Top 20 of Billboard’s Hot 100; last month, Spiro — whose famous admirers include SZA, Mark Ronson and Alex Warren — was nominated for the Critics’ Choice prize at England’s annual BRIT Awards.

With its unabashed emotion and its throwback feel, “Die on This Hill” can be heard as the latest in a long line of melodramatic ballads by young Brits such as Amy Winehouse, Duffy, Lewis Capaldi and Olivia Dean, the last of whom was just named best new artist at the Grammys. Yet Spiro’s voice stands out: Rich and pulpy, with a crack she knows how to deploy for maximum heartbreak, it might be the most impressive instrument to come out of England since Adele emerged nearly two decades ago.

“Sienna is a true artist with the voice of a generation,” says Sam Smith, one more English singer (and former best new artist winner) with a flair for ugly-cry theatrics. Late last year, Smith, who identifies as nonbinary, invited Spiro to join them onstage in New York for a performance of Smith’s song “Lay Me Down.” Spiro, Smith recalls, “blew the room away” — one reason they brought her out again Wednesday night at San Francisco’s Castro Theatre, this time to sing “Die on This Hill” together.

Says Smith of the younger artist: “The world is at her feet.”

At the Troubadour, where she’ll follow Tuesday’s sold-out concert with an encore appearance Friday night, Spiro describes singing as a life calling. “I’ve known what I wanted to do since — honestly, since I’ve been a conscious human being,” she says. Dressed in a black-and-white-striped turtleneck, she has her legs folded beneath her on a wooden bench; her dark hair hangs loose around her face, yet to be styled into the ’60s-inspired do she’ll wear come showtime.

“I always felt a bit invisible,” she adds, whether at school with friends or at home as a middle child. “Not in a victimized way. But I always struggled with that existentialism. Music is the only thing that’s made me feel real.”

Are we to believe that one of pop’s bright new stars was once … kind of a bummer?

“In my own way, yeah,” she says with a laugh. “It’s OK. It happened. Character building.”

Spiro grew up privileged in London, one of four children of Glenn Spiro, a prominent jeweler who counts Jay-Z as a client and pal. Her dad turned her onto Frank Sinatra and Nina Simone and the Italian film “Profumo di donna” when she was little; by age 10 she’d written her first song (“Lady in the Mirror,” it was called) and played her first gig (at a pub not far from Heathrow Airport).

At 16 she enrolled at East London Arts and Music, a performing arts academy she describes as “the up-and-coming version” of London’s prestigious BRIT School, whose alumni include Adele and Winehouse. Her academic career didn’t last long, though: On her first day of classes she posted a TikTok of herself covering Finneas’ song “Break My Heart Again” that triggered a wave of interest from various record-industry types; soon she dropped out and began regularly traveling to Los Angeles to work on music.

Today Spiro says she has a “love-hate relationship” with the town where she estimates she spends half her time. “I’m very English, and I think something about English people is our honesty — you don’t really have to guess what people are saying. What was shocking to me when I came here was that people didn’t say what they meant.

“I was very, very lonely, and it was hard to make music when you feel that,” she adds. “I make sad music, but it’s hard to be a teenager and be away from your family and your friends and be in a place where you kind of have to play pretend being an adult.”

Did suffering among the two-faced liars of L.A. ever lead her to question her commitment to music?

“No. It just made me question how I was doing it. And not everyone’s a two-faced liar. There are some good ones out there.”

Was she ever at risk of becoming a two-faced liar herself?

“Oh, I’m too English for that,” she says. “If I did that, I’d get a slap.”

Sienna Spiro performs this week at the Troubadour in West Hollywood.

(Ariana Drehsler / For The Times)

Spiro started releasing singles in 2024 and quickly signed a deal with Capitol Records; last year she opened for Teddy Swims on the road and turned heads with “You Stole the Show,” a luxuriously gloomy slow jam with echoes of Adele’s “Skyfall.”

For “Die on This Hill,” which she wrote with Michael Pollack and Omer Fedi (both of whom went on to produce the song with Blake Slatkin), Spiro wanted to capture the feeling of “when you go above and beyond just to feel something reciprocated back from someone,” she says. But if the writing came quickly, the recording didn’t: Spiro jokes that she cut “900 different versions” of the song, including one she says sounded like Silk Sonic and another that sounded like Lauryn Hill.

“I was desperate for something up-tempo,” she says, given that virtually everything she’d dropped so far had been a ballad. Yet Fedi pushed her to cut the tune live with just her on vocals and Pollack on piano. They did four takes, according to the producer, one of which forms the basis of the record that eventually came out.

“Very old-school, very human,” Fedi says of the process. “Maybe I’m corny but with Sienna, less is really more. Her voice is so special, so big and upfront, that you just want to put a giant flashlight on it and let it shine.”

In early January, Spiro gave a bravura performance of “Die on This Hill” on Jimmy Fallon’s late-night show; one clip on TikTok has been viewed more than 70 million times. For that appearance, she wore a retro mini dress printed with an old photo of Johnny Carson behind his desk; for a recent performance in the BBC’s Live Lounge, she wore a different dress showing the faces of the four Beatles.

On stage at the Troubadour, her dress features images of the Chateau Marmont and the Capitol Records tower — a bit of setup, she says, for her next single, “The Visitor,” which is due March 13. Spiro has been slowly assembling her debut album for the past two years, but with headlining concerts to play, she’s reaching back for some of her oldies from 2024.

Some, not all.

“To be real with you, some of my early stuff wasn’t the most authentic,” she says as her drummer starts thwacking a snare during sound check . “I was trying to be someone else because I really wasn’t comfortable with myself.”

Can she point to an example?

“‘Back to Blonde,’” she says, referring to a vaguely Lana Del Rey-ish number about a woman who dyes her hair after killing a no-good lover. “I put it out for all the wrong reasons. It was a mistake — an inauthentic move that I regret making.”

What were the wrong reasons?

“It’s a long story, and it’s not very interesting. I didn’t do it because I loved the song — that’s what I’ll say. But at the end of the day it’s my name and I have to stand by it.”

Which is why she’s taking her time on the LP. Some artists her age don’t care much about the album format but Spiro is a true believer. Among her faves: Sinatra’s “In the Wee Small Hours,” Stevie Wonder’s “Songs in the Key of Life,” Adele’s “21” — “a perfect album,” she says — and Billie Eilish’s “Hit Me Hard and Soft.”

“I love an album where you don’t ever question why a song’s on there,” she says. “Where everything feels intentional.”

She doesn’t want to divulge too much about the work in progress. “The problem with me is I have a huge mouth and I give everything away,” she says, which — hey, great.

“No, I know it is for you,” she adds with a laugh. “But not for me, because then when I actually want to do the big reveal, I’ve got nothing because I’ve said it all.”

She will allow one detail: “It won’t be 12 ballads, I’ll tell you that.” She looks toward the ceiling, jiggling her head slightly, as though she’s doing some mental math regarding the track list.

“I mean, there’s a lot of ballads,” she says. “I just love a ballad — I can’t help it.”

Coming into her senior year, Ciena Alipio wanted to be as present as humanly possible and learn how to trust herself going into every competition.

She set forth goals for herself and a bigger one for the UCLA gymnastics team. With the first box checked after clinching their second consecutive Big Ten title, the work toward meeting each of her standards is just beginning.

“You’re seeing the result of every hard practice that we’re having,” Alipio said after Friday’s victory over Maryland. “We’re putting in work and we’re doing what we absolutely have to every single day in the gym and I think it’s just putting it all together on the same day.”

After an unbeaten conference season, Alipio has not only transformed herself into a three-event staple in the lineup, she was among the 45 nominees for the 2026 AAI Award along with her teammate Jordan Chiles — an NCAA honor that is given to the most outstanding senior female gymnast of the season.

“She’s just one of those athletes that’s really willing to do whatever it takes to be at her best for the team, and she’s an incredibly hard worker,” coach Janelle McDonald said. “She puts her heart into everything she does and she really has a growth mentality that she takes into every aspect of her life.”

During the first three years of her college career, Alipio was known as a balance beam expert. That fact hasn’t changed, except now she added success on the uneven bars and the floor exercise.

She’s currently ranked No. 4 in the nation on beam and leads the team with six individual titles in the event. Against Nebraska in January, Alipio led the meet in the floor exercise. On her way to another Big Ten title, she has shown consistency by hitting all 23 of her routines without a fall.

Alipio is averaging a mark above 9.800 on beam, bars and floor exercise. The two-time first-team All-American on beam has been named Big Ten event specialist of the week three times this season for her high performances on multiple apparatuses.

McDonald describes the Big Ten balance beam champion as a steady leader who leads by example, someone who’s willing to put her head down and go through the grind to get better — a valuable asset to any team.

“To see somebody always trying to show up and get better with that growth mindset is so great,” she said. “Ciena really has leveled up in her leadership in that she’s somebody that continually checks in on people.”

When Alipio notices someone needs a little pick-me-up, she’s there to support them, McDonald added.

“She’s also just become a really great messenger of our team culture and just [continues] to build and tighten our culture where it’s needed and to step up in those moments when the team needs a leader.”

UCLA gymnast Ciena Alipio celebrates with teammate Jordan Chiles after completing a balance beam routine.

(Jesus Ramirez / UCLA Athletics)

With two meets left in the regular season — against Stanford on Saturday and Utah on March 14, senior night at Pauley Pavilion — Alipio is just going to have fun competing.

“Coming in as a freshman I was like, ‘Oh, I have so much time,’ and now it has gone by in a blink of an eye,” she said. “… But I’m really, really trying to just stay present for the next few weeks and just enjoy every single moment with this team.”

Rosen update

McDonald and the coaching staff will take a conservative approach to dealing with Katelyn Rosen’s foot injury from Friday’s meet. Resting her and making sure she is 100% to go for the Big Ten championships is the priority. Replacing her at the top of rotations is an ongoing conversation.

“We really look for that lead-off to be very steady,” she said. “Somebody that doesn’t kind of go with the ups and downs of their emotions. They can show up, be really steady, kick off the event really aggressively, confidently and so those things we’re gonna be looking for this weekend [against Stanford].”

The House of Pies, a Los Feliz institution, is bustling on a chilly January morning.

It wouldn’t be shocking if some of the patrons here for breakfast were casually chit-chatting about the cultural behemoth that “KPop Demon Hunters” has become. After all, the 2025 animated saga about three music stars fighting otherworldly foes is now the most-watched movie ever on Netflix; “Golden,” its showstopping track, has since become the first Korean pop song to ever win a Grammy.

But for Danya Jimenez, 29, who sits across from me sipping coffee, the reception to the movie she began writing on back in 2020 isn’t entirely surprising, but certainly delayed.

“When we first started working on it, I was like, ‘People are going to be obsessed with this. It’s going to be the best thing ever,’” she recalls. But as several years passed, and she and her writing partner and best friend Hannah McMechan, 30, moved on to other projects. They weren’t sure if “KPop” would ever see the light of day. Production for animation takes time.

It wasn’t until she learned that her Mexican parents were organically aware of the movie that Jimenez considered it could actually live up to the potential she initially had hoped for.

“Without me saying anything, my parents were like, ‘People are talking about this’ — like my dad’s co-workers or my aunt’s friends — that’s when I started to realize, ‘This might be something big,’” she says.

“But never in my life did I think it would be at this scale.”

“KPop Demon Hunters” is now nominated for two Academy Awards: animated feature and original song. And that’s on top of how ubiquitous the characters — Rumi, Mira and Zoey — already are.

“Everyone sends me photos of knockoff ‘KPop Demon Hunters’ dolls from across the border,” Jimenez says laughing. “My friend got me a shirt from Mexicali with the three girls, but they do not look anything like themselves. She even got my name on it, which was awesome.”

After graduating from Loyola Marymount University in 2018, Jimenez and McMechan quickly found their footing in the industry, as well as representation. But it was their still unproduced screenplay, “Luna Likes,” about a Mexican American teenage girl obsessed with the late chef and author Anthony Bourdain, that tangentially put them on the “KPop” path.

“Luna Likes” earned the pair a spot at the prestigious Sundance Screenwriters Lab, where Nicole Perlman, who co-wrote “Guardians of the Galaxy,” served as one of their advisors. Perlman, credited as a production consultant on “KPop,” thought they would be a good fit.

Jimenez didn’t see the connection between her R-rated comedy about a moody Mexican American teen and a PG animated feature set in the world of K-pop music, but the duo still pitched. Their idea more closely resembled an indie dramedy than an epic action flick.

“If [our version of ‘KPop’] were live-action, it would’ve been a million-dollar budget. It was the smallest movie ever. Our big finale was a pool party,” Jimenez says. “We had all of the girls and the boys with instruments, which obviously is not a thing in K-pop, and everyone was making out.”

Even though their original pitch wouldn’t work for the film, Maggie Kang, the co-director and also a co-writer, believed their voices as two young women who were best friends, roommates and creative collaborators could help the movie’s heroines feel more authentic.

“Maggie had already interviewed all of the more established writers, especially older men,” Jimenez says. “She knows the culture. She knew K-pop, she’s an animator. She just needed the girls’ voices to come through, so I think that’s why we got hired.”

Kang confirms this via email: “It’s always great to collaborate with writers who are the actual age of your characters! Hannah and Danya were exactly that,” she says. “They were very helpful in bringing a fresh, young voice to HUNTR/X.”

Neither Jimenez nor McMechan were K-pop fans at the time. As part of their research, they both started watching K-pop videos, but it was McMechan who got “sucked into the K-hole” first. Still, it didn’t take long until the video for BTS’ “Life Goes On” entranced Jimenez.

“K-pop is a river that you fall into, and it just takes you,” Jimenez says. BTS and Got7 are her favorite groups. For McMechan, the ensemble that captivates her most is Stray Kids.

In writing the trio of demon hunters, the co-writers modeled them after themselves. The characters’ propensity for ugly faces, silliness and a bit of grossness too, stems from the portrayals of girlhood and young womanhood that appeal to them. Jimenez, who says she was an angsty teen, most closely identifies with the rebellious Mira.

“I have a monotone vibe,” says Jimenez. “People always think that I’m a bitch just because I have a resting bitch face,” she says. “But as you can see in the movie, Mira cares so much about having everyone be really close. I feel like that’s how I’m with all my friends.”

Characters with strong personalities that are not simplistically likable feel the truest to Jimenez. In “Luna Likes,” the prickly protagonist is directly inspired by her experiences growing up, as well as the bond she shared with her dad over Bourdain’s “Parts Unknown” show.

“There’s a pressure to show that Mexicans are nice people and we’re hard workers. I was like, ‘Let’s make her kind of bitchy and very flawed,’” Jimenez says about Luna. “She’s a teenager in America and she should be given all the same opportunities — and also the forgiveness for being an ass— and [as] selfish at that age as anybody else.”

Hannah McMechan, left, and Danya Jimenez, co-writers of “KPop Demon Hunters,” met in college.

(Carlin Stiehl / For The Times)

Though their upbringings were markedly different, it was their shared comedic sensibilities that connected Jimenez and McMechan when they met in college. The two were close long before deciding to pen stories together. “Having a writing partner is the best. I feel bad for people who don’t have a writing partner, no offense to them,” says Jimenez.

McMechan explains that their writing partnership works because it’s grounded on true friendship. And she believes they would not have gotten this far without each other. While McMechan’s strong suit is looking at the bigger picture, Jimenez finds humor in the details.

“Danya is definitely funnier than me,” says McMechan. “It’s really hard to write comedy in dialogue versus comedy in a situation because if you’re putting the comedy in the dialogue, it can sound so forced and cringey. But she’s really good at making it sound natural but still really funny.”

Though she had been writing stories for herself as a teen, Jimenez didn’t consider it a career path until as a high schooler she watched the romantic comedy “No Strings Attached,” in which Ashton Kutcher plays a production assistant for a TV series.

“He is having a horrible time. But I was so obsessed with movies and TV, and I was like, ‘That looks incredible. I want to be doing what he’s doing,’” she recalls. “And my dad was like, ‘That’s a job.’”

Danya Jimenez grew up in Orange County.

(Carlin Stiehl / For The Times)

As an infant, Jimenez spent some time living in Tijuana, where her parents are from, until the family settled back in San Diego, where she was born. And when she was around 5 years old, Jimenez, an only child, and her parents relocated to Orange County. Until then, Jimenez mostly spoke Spanish, which made for a tricky transition when starting school.

“I knew English, but it just wasn’t a habit,” she recalls. “I would raise my hand and accidentally speak Spanish in class. My teachers would be like, ‘We’re worried about her vocabulary.’ That was always an issue, so it’s really funny that I turned out to be a writer.”

As she points out in her professional bio, it was movies and TV that helped with her English vocabulary, especially the Disney sitcom “Lizzie McGuire.”

Jimenez describes growing up in Orange County with few Latinos around outside of her family as an alienating experience. She admits to feeling great shame for some of her behaviors as a teenager afraid of being treated differently and desperate to fit in.

“I would speak Spanish to my mom like in a corner because I didn’t want everyone else to hear me speak Spanish,” Jimenez confesses. “If my mom pulled up to school to drop me off playing Spanish hits from the ‘80s or banda, I was like, ‘Can you turn it down please?’”

Like a lot of young Latinos, she’s now taking steps to connect with her heritage, and, in a way, atone for those moments where she let what others might think rob her of her pride.

“During the pandemic I cornered my grandma to make all of her recipes again so I could write them down,” she recalls. “Now I have them all written down on a website. Or if my mom corrects me for something that I’m saying in Spanish, I now listen.”

At the risk of angering her, Jimenez describes her mother as a “cool mom,” and compares her to Amy Poehler’s character in “Mean Girls.” Raised in a household without financial struggles, Jimenez doesn’t often relate to stories about Latinos in the U.S. that make it to film and TV. Her hope is to expand Latino storytelling beyond the tropes.

“That’s very important to me, to just tell Latino stories or Mexican stories in a way that’s just authentic to me and hopefully someone else is like, ‘Yes, that’s me,’” she says. “A lot of people have certain expectations for Latino stories that I’m not willing to compromise on.”

Though they still would like to make “Luna Likes” if given the chance, for now, Jimenez and McMechan will continue their rapid ascent.

They’re “goin’ up, up, up” because it is their “moment.” They recently wrapped the Apple TV show “Brothers” starring Matthew McConaughey and Woody Harrelson that filmed in Texas. They are also writing the feature “Attack of the Fifty Foot Woman” for Tim Burton to direct, with Margot Robbie in talks to star.

“I feel like I’ve just been operating in a state of shock for the past, I don’t know how many months since June,” says Jimenez in her signature deadpan affect. “But if I think about it too much, I’d be a nervous wreck.”

It started as a gift for their daughter’s 9th birthday. Jennifer and Michael Reese wanted to surprise their gymnast-in-training with a trip to Westwood to see the UCLA women’s gymnastics team.

From that moment on, they became fans. They were captivated by the choreography on the floor and the balance on the beam, by the work each gymnast puts into their routine and by the thrills of the best show in Los Angeles.

Ten years later, while their daughter cheers from a distance at Oregon State, the couple remain loyal to the Bruins and are a staple of Section 103 at Pauley Pavilion as season-ticket holders. And their devotion isn’t grounded in Southern California. When the team travels for meets away from home, the Reeses often follow to cheer on the Bruins.

“They just welcomed us with open arms just as if we were a part of them just because we became so faithful and true fans,” Jennifer said. “They called us their super fans.”

Michael and Jennifer Reese, from Victorville, join parents and friends of the gymnastics team at a rally before the Bruins’ meet against Michigan at Pauley Pavilion on Feb. 14.

(Genaro Molina/Los Angeles Times)

That sense of belonging has been their favorite part of supporting UCLA women’s gymnastics. The Bruin Bubble — an affectionate term for the close-knit, insulated community, culture and social scene among UCLA students, alumni and sports fans — added them to their email chains, inviting them to banquets and fundraisers.

“We just love it,” Jennifer said.

With every pike in midair, every perfect landing, every Yurchenko off the vault, the Reeses’ connection with each gymnast grows and their commitment to the team becomes deeper.

Watching it from the comfort of their Victorville home is an option, but the energy in Pauley is unmatched, Michael said.

“You have tons of people doing the same thing and being on the same accord for that one athlete,” he said. “Whether it’s Jordan [Chiles] or whether it’s freshman Ashlee Sullivan or whether it’s, back in the day, Kyla Ross, it’s just amazing to feel that thrill there.”

But if they must watch from their living room, they make sure to bring the same energy as if they were watching in person.

UCLA super fan Michael Reese gives high-fives to members of the Bruins gymnastics team at a send-off before a meet against Michigan at Pauley Pavilion on Feb. 14.

(Genaro Molina/Los Angeles Times)

“We’re hopping and hollering in our living rooms,” Michael said, “but it’s nothing like being in person.”

Before every meet, the Bruins and their family members convene outside the arena a few hours early for a send-off. Think of it as a pep rally where family members hype the gymnasts. They cheer as the team makes its way to the arena.

“It lets us go into competition with a lot of energy,” coach Janelle McDonald said.

In 2018, during a meet in Michigan, their Bruins’ previous coach, Valorie Kondos Field, started chanting “We’re ready,” which Michael gravitated toward. As a former military man, he picked up the cadence of the cheer and started to hype the team with the chant. Now, anytime he’s available, he makes sure to be there and send off his favorite team.

Throughout the years, he’s added his own flavor to it by adding the acronym W.I.N. to the end of the rallying cry — Work, Intensity and Never quit.

“We just have fun with it, whatever pops at the time,” he said.

When the Bruin Bubble gets together to send off the team, whether it’s with the UCLA eight-clap, silly wigs or pom-poms, the energy passed sets the gymnasts up to be the best they can be, junior Katelyn Rosen said.

“Gymnastics is really hard to make it go perfect every single time,” she said. “So if you can kind of get similar pieces of each day to anchor to, to make you feel calm, to remind yourself that it’s still you, and you’re still in your own body, and you still have control over it, is something really helpful.”

Having familiar faces of friends and family in the crowd, even when they are competing away from Pauley Pavilion, means a lot to the gymnasts, McDonald said. Fans like Jennifer and “Big Mike,” as the team calls him, are part of the consistency they have throughout the season.

With the help of the Reeses, UCLA is breaking records. So far, the Bruins have been a part of four meets with record attendances in Illinois, Michigan, Minnesota and Washington. Their Feb. 22 meet at Illinois had to be moved to State Farm Center to accommodate the larger crowd.

Bruins fans don’t see the travel as a sacrifice.

It’s “the thrill of your life,” Jennifer Reese said.

Kyiv hopes progress in talks in Geneva will pave the way for a direct meeting between Russian and Ukrainian leaders.

Russia pounded Ukraine with a barrage of missile and drone attacks across the country overnight, wounding at least eight people, in advance of the latest high-level meeting between Kyiv and Washington aimed at ending the war, now in its fifth year.

Kyiv Mayor Vitali Klitschko said the latest attacks on the capital in the early hours of Wednesday caused damage to a nine-storey residential building in the Darnytskyi district, and resulted in fires in a home and garages elsewhere in the city.

The strikes on the capital prompted the activation of air defence systems to counter the attack, Tymur Tkachenko, head of the city’s military administration, said, advising residents to remain in shelters until the assault was over. No casualties were reported in the capital.

Ukraine has faced regular overnight barrages as Russia targets cities with missiles and drones in harsh winter conditions in recent months, also targeting civilian energy infrastructure, even amid an ongoing push by Washington to try to negotiate an end to Europe’s deadliest conflict since World War II.

Attacks also took place in the regions of Kharkiv, Zaporizhia and Dnipropetrovsk, with officials reporting seven wounded in Kharkiv and another in Kryvyi Rih in Dnipropetrovsk, the AFP news agency reported.

US, Ukrainian delegations to meet

The strikes came before a scheduled meeting in the Swiss city of Geneva between Ukraine’s lead negotiator Rustem Umerov and US envoys Steve Witkoff and Jared Kushner, being held in advance of a full session of talks involving Moscow, Kyiv and Washington expected in early March.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said on Wednesday he had spoken with US President Donald Trump before the talks, with Witkoff and Kushner part of the 30-minute call, to discuss the issues that their representatives would cover in Geneva, “as well as preparations for the next meeting of the full negotiating teams in a trilateral format at the very beginning of March”.

Zelenskyy, who has repeatedly sought face-to-face meetings with his Russian counterpart, Vladimir Putin, to resolve the most challenging issues, said he expected the meeting in Geneva would “create an opportunity to move talks to the leaders’ level”.

“President Trump supports this sequence of steps,” he said. “This is the only way to resolve all the complex and sensitive issues and finally end the war.”

Putin has dismissed such a meeting repeatedly in the past, calling into question Zelenskyy’s legitimacy as Ukraine’s leader.

Meanwhile, Russian state news agency TASS reported the Kremlin’s economic affairs envoy, Kirill Dmitriev, was also due to be in Geneva on Thursday, where he would “pursue negotiations with the Americans on economic issues”.

Negotiations stalled

Despite Trump’s desire to bring an end to the conflict, one he claimed he could end in 24 hours after he retook office, the talks so far have failed to bear fruit.

Negotiations, based on a US plan unveiled late last year, have hit a roadblock over the thorniest territorial issues, such as control of the eastern Donbas, an industrial region in eastern Ukraine that has been at the heart of the fiercest fighting.

Russia is pushing for full control of Ukraine’s eastern Donetsk region, in the Donbas, and has threatened to take it by force if Kyiv does not cave in at the negotiating table.

But Ukraine has rejected the demand and signalled it would not sign a deal without security guarantees that deter Russia from invading again. The Ukrainian constitution also forbids the ceding of territory.

Hundreds of thousands of people on both sides are believed to have been killed in Russia’s war in Ukraine.

India’s PM Modi will mark his second visit to Israel with the two countries having deepened ties under the Hindu nationalist PM.

Scotland and Ireland will face hosts England at the Women’s T20 World Cup after the draw for this summer’s tournament was finalised.

Scotland and Ireland booked their place at the World Cup in the qualifying tournament in Nepal earlier this month.

They join England in Group Two, alongside West Indies, New Zealand and Sri Lanka.

The game between England and Scotland at Headingley on 20 June will mark the first occasion the two countries have met in any kind of cricket World Cup fixture, men or women, in the UK.

Ireland meet England in Southampton on 16 June, while Ireland and Scotland start their campaigns against each other at Old Trafford on 13 June.

The tournament begins a day earlier when England take on Sri Lanka at Edgbaston.

Bangladesh and the Netherlands were the other two teams to come through the qualifier and join Australia, South Africa, India and Pakistan in Group One.

With the 12-team field confirmed – the largest in the 17-year history of the Women’s T20 World Cup – the full groups and fixtures have been published for the first time.

New Zealand will defend the title they won in the United Arab Emirates two years ago in the first Women’s T20 World Cup to be held in England since the inaugural tournament in 2009.

As well as Old Trafford, Headingley and Southampton, group matches will be played in Bristol. The semi-finals will be at The Oval on 30 June and 2 July, with the final at Lord’s on Sunday, 5 July.

Published on 23/02/2026 – 13:58 GMT+1•Updated
14:24

EU Trade Commissioner Maroš Šefčovič is set to meet G7 trade ministers on Monday after United States President Donald Trump upped the pressure on trading partners with a 15% across-the-board tariffs on imports entering the American market.

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Trump’s move came after a US Supreme Court ruling last week struck down several global duties he had imposed from the White House last year, overturning a central part of his trade policy.

Brussels is now demanding legal clarity. The EU is bound to Washington by a trade pact clinched in July 2025 by Commission President Ursula von der Leyen and Trump, setting tariffs on EU exports at 15% while committing the bloc to slash its own duties to zero.

“Full clarity on what these new developments mean for the EU-US trade relationship is the absolute minimum that is required in order for us the EU to make a clear-eyed assessment and decide on next steps,” Commission deputy spokesperson Olof Gill said on Monday.

Key Parliament vote expected

Šefčovič’s G7 talks come ahead of a closed-door meeting of EU ambassadors to assess the fallout from the latest developments in the US.

Some member states, including France, are prepared to deploy the bloc’s Anti-Coercion Instrument – the so-called “trade bazooka” that allows restrictions on public procurement, licenses and intellectual property rights if necessary to push back against external pressure.

Attention is now shifting to the European Parliament, which was set to vote Tuesday on implementing the EU-US agreement by cutting tariffs on US goods, as included in the deal. Instead, MEPs are meeting on Monday afternoon to decide on the future enforcement of the agreement.

The Parliament has led resistance to the US administration, arguing the deal signed in Scotland last summer was unbalanced.

German MEP Bernd Lange, who chairs the Parliament’s Committee on International Trade, said on Sunday that he will urge negotiators to suspend the agreement. But Zeljana Zovko, lead negotiator for the EPP – the Parliament’s largest group – struck a cooler tone, telling Euronews that MEPs “keep calm and do our [their] part.”

“No need to add any more fuel to an already existing fire,” she said.

USA meanwhile have stars of their own, but don’t have the attacking gifts of the Canadians.

“The Tkachuk brothers [Brady and Matthew], and Jack Eichel, that attacking line has worked well together,” Bennett said.

“What they have not had is much scoring from captain Auston Matthews, he has not yet taken any of the games by the horns. They are OK, but not more than that.”

However, the Americans have the best defenceman at the Games in Quinn Hughes, who scored the crucial winner against Sweden.

“He might be the best three-on-three player in the world,” said Bennett. “He loves to keep possession, and is always looking to make an exciting play.”

It sets up a mouth-watering finale of an Olympic ice hockey competition which has benefitted hugely from the return of National Hockey League (NHL) players for the first time since 2014.

The attendance of players from the top North American league was in doubt for a time over concerns about the ice quality at the unfinished Milano Santagiulia Ice Hockey Arena, but they have been a major boon for the Games.

“This is the highest level of hockey we have ever seen at an Olympics,” said Bennett. “The NHL players have made it a different world.

“At the last two Olympics, games have been good but have missed the quality in the final third, the big moments. Players didn’t have the skillset to break a game, so saw a lot of tight, dull games

“Some of what the players have been doing here has been mind-blowing. One of the goals scored for Canada, McDavid saucered this pass from the back door [behind the goal], it lands as McKinnon is shooting, on the half-volley. That’s when you recognise it.

“I have been getting phone calls from people in the hockey world, all they have been saying is, this is so good. There have been periods where Kent [Simpson, BBC co-commentator] and I have just been sat watching, smiling, laughing.”

Canada have won gold in three of the five Olympics when NHL players have featured and will fancy their chances in a game on Sunday which could be as fascinating in the stands as it is on the ice.

It is highly likely that Canadian prime minister Mark Carney will be in Milan for the game.

Not only is Canada as a country hockey-mad, but so is Carney – when working as governor of the Bank of England, he would play for a recreational team in Haringey, north London.

The big question is whether his American counterpart will also be in Italy.

UCLA senior Jordan Chiles remains unstoppable on the floor exercise.

A week after reviving her Prince routine to honor fans during a meet at Minnesota, Chiles seamlessly transitioned back at Pauley Pavilion to her energetic routine set to a medley of hits by icons Janet Jackson, Whitney Houston, Stevie Wonder and Tina Turner. The result was a crowd-pleasing perfect 10, firing up the Valentine’s Day home crowd and helping seal No. 4 UCLA’s 197.725-196.975 win over No. 9 Michigan.

It was Chiles’ fourth straight 10 on floor and fifth perfect score this season.

The Bruins (9-2, 5-0 Big Ten) entered the meet averaging a team score of 197.404 and remained consistent, delivering modest improvement that has proven hard for Big Ten opponents to beat.

UCLA opened the competition on the vault.

Tiana Sumanasekera tied a career-best with a 9.9. Katelyn Rosen scored a 9.875, Chiles a 9.825, Ashlee Sullivan a 9.850, Riley Jenkins a 9.775 and Madisyn Anyimi a 9.750.

The Wolverines (5-3, 2-3) led 49.325 to 49.225 after the first rotation.

The Bruins pulled ahead on the bars, taking a 98.725-98.250 lead.

Nola Matthews, Chiles and Sullivan all scored 9.925 marks, while Sumanasekera posted a 9.90 and Ciena Alipio and Sydney Barros both scored 9.850.

UCLA maintained a 148.075-147.725 lead after the beam rotation.

Alipio and Barros scored a 9.9, while Chiles scored a 9.875, Rosen a 9.850, Jordis Eichman a 9.825 and Sumanasekera a 9.775.

The Bruins closed with their showstoppers on the floor exercise.

Chiles notched her 10; Alipio scored a 9.950; Barros, Rosen and Sumanasekera earned 9.900 marks; and Sullivan scored a 9.875.

UCLA competes at unranked Illinois on Feb. 22 before returning home for a Big Fours meet on Feb. 27 against Ohio State, Iowa and Maryland — all ranked in the top 25.