northern

Self-funded political newcomer Eric Jones has edged out longtime Rep. Mike Thompson in the Democrat-on-Democrat race for Northern California’s 4th District.

Ten days after the Nov. 3 election, the Associated Press called the race for Jones, who spent millions on his race and led Thompson 52.5% to 47.5% as of Friday evening.

Jones, a venture capitalist and nonprofit executive who grew up in a working-class household, will now lead a district that was redrawn under Proposition 50 to stretch from the vast wineries of Napa County to the rice fields of Sutter County.

He ran against Thompson (D-St. Helena), who was first elected in 1998, while calling for a new generation of leadership. He campaigned on keeping corporate money out of politics, lowering the cost of living and protecting “our future” by facilitating a government that lives within its means.

Jones poured $14.8 million of his own funds into the race and ran an active campaign. He said that he held more than 200 town halls and that his campaign knocked on half a million doors.

“I answered every email myself personally. We offered a coffee chat with every single voter we met, and that’s the message that people heard,” he said in an interview Friday after his race was called. “I do think we need to make a lot of progress on campaign reform. It’s something we’re already working on with the freshman class right now in D.C.”

The 36-year-old father of two also backed progressive measures to expand Medicare and cut taxes for low- and middle-income Americans.

“It’s been really fantastic to see just how impactful our message was because we knew from Day One that we were speaking to voters and Americans who were pretty left behind in the political system,” he said.

Thompson acknowledged the election results in a statement Friday evening.

“I’m proud of my service,” he said before listing his work on water issues, wildfires, gun violence and conservation. “My team and I have always lived by one principle: We’re here to do the people’s work serving our district, and that job is never too big nor too small.”

Supporters of Jones’ campaign included Saikat Chakrabarti, former chief of staff to U.S. Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.); Duolingo Chief Executive and co-founder Luis von Ahn; and Our Revolution, an independent grassroots organization founded by Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.).

Thompson spent 14 terms in Congress, initially elected to California’s 1st District. Prior to that, he was a two-term state senator.

He sits on the influential Ways and Means Committee and is the top Democrat on its tax policy subcommittee. He had been endorsed by Gov. Gavin Newsom, Sens. Alex Padilla and Adam Schiff and the California Democratic Party.

At 21-years-old, Norwich City’s McConville is the more senior of the pair.

Having been given his debut off the bench at home to Belarus two years ago this week, among the former Brighton man’s early international assignments was trying to keep a rampant Alexander Isak in check during a 5-1 defeat by Sweden.

In the short time since he has looked an increasingly commanding figure, leading this Nations League group in clearances made with both head and boot.

“It would be unbelievable to keep that record for these last two games and go the whole of the campaign,” he said of what is Northern Ireland’s longest run without conceding a goal since 2017.

McConville notes that the streak is a team effort and product of collective work-rate, rather than just the defensive three alone.

“We’re a team that works hard, a team that doesn’t want to give anything up.

“We’re confident in ourselves and we know that we’re a good side.”

It is McConville who has taken on the Ballard role in the middle of the defence for the past three games, with Atcheson on the right and Oxford United’s Ciaron Brown, himself superb through the campaign so far, playing from the left.

On the developing understanding between an emerging unit, McConville added: “We’re enjoying playing together.

“It’s still early days together and we have to keep taking it game by game and doing what the gaffer tells us and the work on the training pitch.

“We don’t have much time together when we’re here [in international camp] so it’s important to do all we can.”

On the gable walls of the tough, working-class streets of east Belfast, the mystical beasts of Narnia vie for brick space with balaclava-wearing loyalists. The murals of the city have long projected the power of paramilitaries, but in recent years they have also begun to reflect the more positive contributions made by other local people, including the author CS Lewis.

Lewis was born in Dundela in 1898 in an attractive terrace house that has sadly since been demolished to be replaced by rather unattractive flats. But elsewhere in this part of the city, the Lewis connection is being built on and celebrated. CS Lewis Square is in the Holywood Arches neighbourhood and has a short walking trail featuring metal sculptures of Mr and Mrs Beaver, Mr Tumnus and other beloved characters from The Chronicles of Narnia. The centrepiece is a gigantic Aslan, towering over all from atop a circular mound.

About 15 minutes’ walk away, St Mark’s church on the Holywood Road is the proud custodian of a much smaller lion that may have inspired Lewis’s creation of Aslan. His grandfather, the Rev Thomas Hamilton, ministered here, living in the rectory for 13 years, and his front door was decorated with a beautiful brass lion’s head doorknob. The original has been removed for safekeeping, but an exact replica attracts thousands of Lewis pilgrims each year.

Leafy Circular Road, half a mile away, is where the Lewis family moved in 1905 to a large, redbrick house that, back then, was on the outskirts of the city. The road has since been subsumed by the growth of the town, but remains the realm of the prosperous. The house, called Little Lea, is privately owned, but can be seen from the iron gates at the end of the drive.

“To a child, it seemed less like a house than a city,” Lewis wrote of the family home in his autobiography, Surprised By Joy. “I am a product of long corridors, empty sunlit rooms, upstairs indoor silences, attics explored in solitude.”

Little Lea appears in the opening two Narnia books, first when a boy exploring a large attic in The Magician’s Nephew finds a way into another world, and then in The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe when a game of hide and seek leads a group of inquisitive children to that same magical world a generation later.

Although it was close to east Belfast’s industrial heartland, it was also just a fence clamber away from the fields, hills and woodland glens that fringed the city like a vast adventure playground. As children, Lewis and his elder brother Warnie seem to have had a freedom to wander that would terrify modern parents. They would trek for hours up into the hills between Belfast and Strangford Lough, and travelling that way today still evokes a sense of romantic escapism.

The Belmont Road takes you up, climbing dramatically out of the city and into the expansive high ground that towers over Belfast, Bangor and Newtownards. There are many viewpoints up here. Lewis didn’t record the exact spot that inspired the following ethereal description of the views he loved, but for this writer, the crags of the Whitespots country park on the hill above Newtownards are a pretty good bet, especially as this place also chimes loudly with his descriptions of the stone table on which Aslan was sacrificed in The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe.

“Looking south with a little east in it, a different world,” he writes in Surprised By Joy. “And having seen it, blame me if you can for being a romantic. For here is the thing itself, utterly irresistible, the way to the world’s end, the land of longing, the breaking and blessing of hearts. You are looking across … the plain of Down, and seeing beyond it the Mourne Mountains.”

Lewis once told Warnie that the view from the Mournes above Rostrevor looking down over Carlingford Lough was his idea of Narnia. The statement is now stencilled on a bench at a viewpoint in the town’s Kilbroney forest park. Sitting there, in the majesty of this area, it is easy to imagine, as Lewis later wrote in an essay, that a “giant might raise his head over the next ridge”.

Rostrevor is an hour’s drive south of Belfast, and an hour’s drive in the other direction will take you to the equally spectacular north coast, where Lewis holidayed with his mother as a young child. There’s an ongoing debate among Lewis scholars and his many passionate fans about whether it was Dunluce Castle or Downhill Demesne that inspired Cair Paravel, the castle capital of Narnia.

The ruins of Dunluce perch precipitously on the coast east of Portrush, while Downhill Demesne, near Castlerock, contains what remains of the old Downhill House but also the iconic Mussenden Temple, which much better fits the description of Cair Paravel looking “like a great star resting on the seashore”.

Lewis was writing his autobiography at the same time he was producing the seven Chronicles of Narnia. The experiences and landscapes he was remembering for his memoir very likely bled into the creation of his magical kingdom. And so the heavenly, pastoral landscapes of Narnia on the murals of east Belfast might feel familiar even to those locals who haven’t read the books or watched the screen adaptations. The wholesome images of his imagination being sandwiched between paintings glorifying terrorism is an unusual setting for a tribute to the world’s most famous Christian apologist, but perhaps in Belfast, as in Narnia, good will win in the end.

The first of Netflix’s new The Chronicles Of Narnia adaptations, Narnia: The Magician’s Nephew, will be released in cinemas on 12 February 2027 and on Netflix on 2 April. Surprised by Joy by CS Lewis © 1955 CS Lewis Pte Ltd, The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe by CS Lewis © 1950 CS Lewis Pte Ltd

Storms Boelo and Austen kill a man in Scotland and cut power to thousands of homes in the UK, France and Germany.

A pair of storms battering northern Europe have killed one man, cut power to more than 150,000 homes, and disrupted flights and phone networks.

More than 82,000 homes in the United Kingdom, nearly 60,000 in France, and at least 10,000 in Germany had no electricity on Sunday after storms Boelo and Austen passed through the region within 24 hours, according to authorities in the countries.

A falling tree killed a man, 60, in southwestern Scotland on Sunday, while another falling tree injured two women in central Scotland, the Press Association reported.

Winds of up to 135 km/h (84 mph) were recorded in the Argyll and Bute regions of western Scotland. Trees and power cables brought down by the storm blocked roads and rail lines across Scotland and northern England.

In Brighton, on England’s southern coast, Austen blew away an unused pier on Friday.

Authorities have warned of flood risk in regions of both Scotland and England.

The Met Office, the UK’s national forecaster, warned that Boelo would bring a danger to life from flying debris and crashing waves and said people should stay indoors as much as possible.

From France to Germany

Across the English Channel, Europe battled its first big storm of the autumn, with strong winds inflicting widespread power cuts.

French energy company Enedis said that at Austen’s peak on Saturday, some 288,000 homes had no electricity. Some 59,000 remained without power at midday Sunday, mainly in Normandy and Brittany.

A marathon runner in the midst of a race in northern France was lightly injured by a tree knocked over in strong winds.

In Germany, Austen cut power to 10,000 homes in and around the southwestern town of Freiburg-Breisgau on Sunday. The town’s main hospital said it had to limit service to emergency cases because of the blackout, which also cut the mobile phone network.

German police said two people were seriously hurt on Saturday by scaffolding blown away by Austen’s strong winds at a market in the town of Nastatten.

The storms also hit the Netherlands and Belgium, where falling trees injured four people in Brussels on Saturday.

In the Netherlands, north of the island of Schiermonnikoog, three crew members on board a freight ship were injured in the storms, according to the country’s coastguard. Two of them were winched off and taken by helicopter to a hospital on the mainland.

The storms caused hundreds of flights to be cancelled or diverted across northern Europe, including at Amsterdam’s Schiphol airport, one of the continent’s busiest hubs.

Experts have warned of more extreme weather events due to climate change.

Former Northern Ireland Open champions Kyren Wilson and Mark Williams remain on course for a potential meeting in the final of this year’s tournament in Belfast after winning their respective quarter-finals on Friday.

World number nine Wilson ran out a convincing 6-1 winner over Anthony McGill in the afternoon session at the Waterfront Hall, while Williams, who sits one place higher in the rankings, defeated David Gilbert 6-4 during the evening’s play.

Wilson, who claimed both the world title and the NI Open crown in 2024, established a 4-0 lead over his Scottish opponent with the help of breaks of 77, 75 and 122.

McGill took the next with a run of 66 but the Englishman eased home to progress and secure a first semi-final appearance at a ranking event since March 2025, with compatriot Sam Craigie his next opponent.

Craigie advanced to only his second-ever ranking event semi-final by beating Elliot Slessor 6-2.

Slessor took an early lead after compiling an 82 but Craigie reeled off five frames in a row and ultimately clinched a comfortable passage to the last four.

Gilbert built a 3-1 lead over Williams with the help of breaks of 62, 95 and 60, but after they shared the next two, Williams scored three centuries in consecutive frames as he took the next four to seal victory.

The 51-year-old three-time world champion and 2017 NI Open winner will take on fellow Welshman Jak Jones in Saturday’s second semi-final.

Jones, who has already collected the British Open and Championship League titles this season, edged out Scott Donaldson 6-5 in a late-night thriller, a break of 84 in the decider proving decisive in booking his berth in the last four.