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VIENNA — Vienna’s famed coffeehouses have embraced the Eurovision Song Contest. They have also been touched by tensions over Israel’s inclusion in the sequin-drenched pop music competition.

When officials announced a list of “Eurofan Cafes” — Vienna coffee shops offering food and music from competing countries — Israel was initially left out.

MQ Kantine, a modern café in the city’s arty museums quarter, offered to step in. Now it has falafel, bagels with lox and kosher wine on the menu, a string of small Israeli flags hanging from the ceiling — and a police officer outside the door.

Security is tight across Vienna during the international music contest, whose “United by Music” slogan rings sightly hollow this year. Five countries are boycotting because Israel is taking part. Pro-Palestinian activists are planning a protest concert — one of several Eurovision alternatives across Europe — and an anti-Israel march before Saturday’s grand final.

At MQ Kantine, volunteers take turns to monitor for potential trouble. But so far the mood has been supportive, said Daniel Kapp, a PR consultant and pro-Israel campaigner.

“It’s beautiful,” he said, as people drank coffee and beer on the café terrace in the spring sunshine, though he noted that the police officer on duty showed that all is “not entirely normal.”

“My feeling is that Austria to a certain degree has learned from its history,” Kapp said, referring to the deadly antisemitism under the Nazis before and during World War II. “Which is why the support for Israel is a lot more normal than it is in other countries.”

Israel has competed in Eurovision for more than 50 years, and won four times. But its participation has been contested since it launched a war in Gaza after 1,200 people were killed in a Hamas-led cross-border attack on Oct. 7, 2023. More than 73,000 Palestinians have been killed since the war began, according to the territory’s Health Ministry, which operates under the Hamas-run government and whose detailed records are viewed as generally reliable by the international community.

Israel’s government has repeatedly defended its campaign as a response to the Oct. 7 attack. But a number of experts, including those commissioned by a United Nations body, have said that Israel’s offensive in Gaza amounts to genocide. Israel, home to many Holocaust survivors and their relatives, has vigorously denied the claim.

The latest Israel-Hezbollah war in Lebanon and the U.S.-Israeli war on Iran have driven tensions still higher.

The 2024 Eurovision contest in Malmo, Sweden, and last year’s event in Basel, Switzerland, saw pro-Palestinian protests that called for Israel to be expelled. Five countries — Iceland, Ireland, the Netherlands, Slovenia and Spain — pulled out of the 2026 contest after organizers allowed Israel to compete.

Partying amid tight security

The tensions have produced a Eurovision of two halves. An upbeat party atmosphere prevails inside the Wiener Stadthalle arena and in the separate Eurovision Village fan zone. But getting in means passing through a ring of steel, with searches, scanners and a ban on all bags inside the arena. Armed police are a very visible presence on the streets.

Awareness of risk from terror plots is high in the city after a 21-year-old Austrian man accused of pledging allegiance to the Islamic State group pleaded guilty to plotting to attack a Taylor Swift concert in Vienna in 2024.

Israeli singer Noam Bettan told Israeli media that, like last year’s Israeli competitor Yuval Raphael, he practiced performing while being booed. There were scattered shouts amid the cheers when he performed in the first Eurovision semifinal on Tuesday. He secured a spot in Saturday’s final by being one of the top 10 finishers in voting by viewers and national juries.

Organizers said four people were removed from the 10,000-strong audience for disruptive behavior.

Austrian Eurovision fan Ivo Herzl, who attended the semifinal, said “the vibe was incredibly positive.” He is showing support for Israel by making and selling Mazel Lov T-shirts — a play on “mazel tov,” a Hebrew and Yiddish phrase of congratulations.

“Vienna has always been a city of tolerance,” Herzl said. “It’s the city of music and we’ll always do everything possible for everyone to enjoy a musical event.”

Some Israeli fans said they were reassured by the tight security. Oz Yona, attending his first Eurovision, said he had experienced “no hate” and felt Austria took antisemitism seriously.

He came with friends to cheer for Israel, though he was not optimistic about Bettan’s chances — for musical rather than political reasons.

“I don’t think he will win,” Yona said. “Finland is better this year. Greece is better this year. We have a good song, but not a winning song.”

Birgitta Peterson and Kristina Nilsson, who wear matching pink bomber jackets and call themselves the Swedish Ladies, love to explore new cities and meet up each year with their “Eurovision family” of fellow fans. They plan to wave Israeli flags at Saturday’s final, after Swedish contestant Felicia said earlier this year that she didn’t think Israel should be in the contest.

They say tensions over Israel have divided a fan community long known for its friendliness and embrace of diversity.

“The wounds are very deep at the moment,” Nilsson said.

“This event should really be about ‘united by music’ and happiness,” she added. “That’s what Eurovision is all about.”

Lawless writes for the Associated Press.

SACRAMENTO — Hours before Gov. Gavin Newsom is expected to present his budget plan on Thursday, his office released new projections of a $16.5-billion state revenue windfall over three years and offered a rosy outlook on California’s fiscal position during his final year in office and the year after.

Newsom’s office provided few details about his plan to reduce spending or other adjustments that he would need to propose in combination with the increase in revenue to eliminate projected deficits from 2026-27 through 2027-28.

The unusual early look at his budget proposal comes as Newsom begins to wind down his time at the state Capitol and considers a run for president in 2028.

Two weeks ago, the Legislative Analyst’s Office issued an analysis of state spending that said California could not, in the long term, afford to pay for existing services and the new programs that Newsom and Democratic lawmakers have enacted since he took office in 2019. State spending has outpaced California’s strong revenue growth by about 10%, creating a perennial budget shortfall, defined as a structural deficit.

California’s spending problem threatens to define Newsom’s fiscal legacy and could provide ripe fodder for his critics. If projections of the unexpected tax windfall, which analysts attribute to stock market interest in artificial intelligence companies, bear out, the upswing could mark a lucky break for Newsom.

The governor has largely resisted adopting new across-the-board tax increases or sharply curtailing his expensive policy proposals in order to align state spending with revenue.

His budget proposal includes a call to increase taxes on corporations by limiting state tax credits to no more than $5 million, or 50% of a company’s tax liability, beginning in the tax year 2027. No estimates were offered to explain how much revenue the new cap would bring in to support the state budget.

The preview of his budget has several new spending proposals, including providing $300 million to help low-income Californians keep $0 monthly premiums on healthcare coverage through the Affordable Care Act in response to cuts by the federal government, as well as $100 million to help wildfire victims afford construction loans to rebuild their homes. Two days before Mother’s Day, Newsom also introduced a plan to provide 400 free diapers for every California newborn at select hospitals beginning this summer.

Newsom is expected to present his budget in more detail late Thursday morning in Sacramento.

Amid an oil blockade against the island, the US blames Cuba’s communist leadership for ‘standing in the way’ of aid.

The United States has offered $100m in humanitarian assistance to Cuba on the condition that the island’s communist government agrees to “meaningful reforms”.

The sum was made public in a statement from the US State Department on Wednesday, though the administration of President Donald Trump underscored it had made the offer privately in the past.

But the $100m comes with strings: namely, that Cuba’s government commits to Trump-approved changes.

“Today, the Department of State is publicly restating the United States’ generous offer to provide an additional $100 million in direct humanitarian assistance to the Cuban people,” the statement said.

“The decision rests with the Cuban regime to accept our offer of assistance or deny critical living-saving aid and ultimately be accountable to the Cuban people for standing in the way of critical assistance.”

The statement marks the latest chapter in an ongoing pressure campaign designed to destabilise Cuba’s communist leadership.

Since Cold War tensions in the 1960s, the US has placed a comprehensive trade embargo on the Caribbean island, in part as a reaction to the Cuban Revolution.

It has become the longest-running trade embargo in modern history, and the US has justified its continuation by pointing to systematic repression under Cuba’s communist government.

But critics have denounced the trade embargo as worsening humanitarian conditions on the island.

The crisis reached a tipping point in January, after Trump abducted Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro, a close ally of Cuba.

In the following weeks, Trump cut off Venezuelan funds and oil supplies to Cuba. He then threatened economic penalties against any country that supplied Cuba with fuel, implementing a de facto oil blockade on the island.

Since then, only one Russian oil tanker has reached Cuba in late March. That month alone, the island suffered two island-wide blackouts.

Cuba relies heavily on foreign imports of oil to power its ageing energy grid. Only 40 percent of its oil supply is produced domestically, according to the International Energy Agency.

The United Nations warned earlier this year that Cuba faces the possibility of humanitarian “collapse”, with public transportation grinding to a halt, food prices soaring and public services like hospitals struggling to keep the lights on.

Trump, meanwhile, has repeatedly threatened to shift his focus to Cuba after the US-Israeli war on Iran ends, saying the island is “next” on his list of countries where he would like to see regime change.

“As we achieve a historic transformation in Venezuela, we’re also looking forward to the great change that will soon be coming to Cuba,” Trump told Latin American leaders at a summit in March.

“Cuba’s in its last moments of life as it was. It’ll have a great new life, but it’s in its last moments of life the way it is.”

Earlier this month, the US president issued a fresh wave of sanctions against the Cuban government, accusing the island of posing “an unusual and extraordinary threat to US national security and foreign policy”.

Media reports have also indicated that the Trump administration has stepped up its surveillance flights around Cuba, possibly in preparation for a surge of military assets to the Caribbean.

In Wednesday’s statement, the State Department blamed the communist system for having “only served to enrich the elites and condemn the Cuban people to poverty”.

It did not mention the US role in the humanitarian crisis on the island but instead described Cuba’s government as a hurdle to delivering much-needed aid.

“The regime refuses to allow the United States to provide this assistance to the Cuban people, who are in desperate need of assistance due to the failures of Cuba’s corrupt regime,” the State Department wrote.

It added that, should Cuba accept its terms, the $100m would be distributed through the Catholic Church and “other reliable independent humanitarian organizations”, rather than through the island’s government.

Ticket prices are just the start of the soaring expenses many fans will face while trying to watch World Cup games this summer.

NJ Transit is charging $150 for round-trip tickets from Manhattan to the Meadowlands (the regular price is $12.60) for the World Cup final, while host committee shuttle buses will cost $80.

The Massachusetts Bay Transportation Authority is demanding $80 to ride one of the 14 express trains on the 30-mile trip from downtown Boston to Foxborough for games at Gillette Stadium. That’s more than three times the normal price.

Parking in Kansas City, meanwhile, will set you back by as much as $900, depending on the game and lot.

In Southern California, however, it will cost $1.75 to get to SoFi Stadium on a combination of buses or trains from as far away as Claremont and Simi Valley. That’s also what it costs to get to the Inglewood venue on any other day of the year; only two of the 11 World Cup cities in the U.S. are offering less expensive public transportation.

“We’re trying to make things convenient,” said Conan Cheung, the chief operations officer for the Los Angeles County Metropolitan Transportation Authority, or LA Metro, the second-largest transit agency in the country, servicing more than 305 million riders in 2025.

That’s a marked departure from the experience fans have reported ahead of this summer’s World Cup, which was marked by complaints over difficulty getting access to buy tickets, high ticket prices, shifts in seat locations after they were purchased, high fees and expensive game-day transportation.

“There’s no standardized fare set across the board,” Cheung said of World Cup transportation. “We’ve made a commitment to keep our system accessible. The way we’re planning the entire program is to ensure that we support people from the minute they decide to come to L.A. for the World Cup.

Workers are getting SoFi Stadium ready to host World Cup matches this summer.

(Eduard Cauich / Los Angeles Times )

“We also want to make sure that your excitement and your experience for the World Cup starts and ends on Metro.”

LA Metro has been able to hold costs down in part because it received $9.6 million in funding from the $100 million Congress gave the Federal Transit Administration to support transportation to and from World Cup stadiums. LA Metro is adding about 300 buses to its regular fleet to handle the additional demand, with shuttles servicing nine direct routes to SoFi and various fan zones.

Roughly 200 of those buses will lent to LA Metro from 11 regional transit agencies. Additional security officers also will be added.

“I feel prepared,” Cheung said, “but you never know what’s going to happen. We’ve done enough major special events to know that you can do all the planning in the world, but you need to make sure that you have contingencies in place and you’re prepared to pivot at a moment’s notice.”

A case in point: when Game 3 of last fall’s World Series went into extra innings, LA Metro immediately extended the operating hours for Metro buses and trains, ensuring people had rides home when the game ended just shy of midnight.

“Part of our preparedness is going through tabletop exercises,” he said. “The point is to ensure that the flow from the parking, from the transit connection and walking up made sense and was intuitive and easy to follow.”

Since Metro trains don’t run directly to SoFi, Cheung has added shuttle buses to take fans from the stations to the stadium. Portable restrooms and hydration stations will be available. And nine park-and-ride sites will be set up around L.A. and Orange counties. Reserve and pay for a parking space and everyone in your car can ride to the stadium for free. (Be sure to bring a lot of friends since the parking fees range from $59 to $102 for the June 12 opening match.)

A pair of visitors from Japan rush to catch a Metro bus in March.

(Genaro Molina / Los Angeles Times)

Cheung said LA Metro has been preparing for the World Cup almost as long as some of the players. When Taylor Swift brought her Eras tour to SoFi in the summer of 2023, LA Metro used that as something of a dress rehearsal for the World Cup, expanding late service and adding free shuttles from nearby train stations.

That increased ridership by 25%, which meant less traffic on the roads and freeways leading to the stadium. A repeat of that could be crucial during the World Cup since five of the eight games played at SoFi are scheduled to start at noon local time.

And just as the Taylor Swift concerts prepared LA Metro for the World Cup, now the World Cup will help inform preparations for the 2028 Olympics.

“A lot of the strategies that we’re doing now — the process for working with not only local jurisdictions, state and federal agencies, as well as the other transit agencies in the regions — we’re setting up ways that are going to help not only for the Olympics and Paralympics, but anytime we need to pull together to support our communities for special events [or] natural disasters.”

For more information on LA Metro services in and around the World Cup, go to www.metro.net/riding/world-cup

⚽ You have read the latest installment of On Soccer with Kevin Baxter. The weekly column takes you behind the scenes and shines a spotlight on unique stories. Listen to Baxter on this week’s episode of the “Corner of the Galaxy” podcast.

Meta will lay off 8,000 workers while Microsoft is offering buyouts to 8,750 people, a first for the Windows maker.

Meta is laying off about 8,000 workers, or about 10 percent of its workforce, the company has said as it continues to ramp up spending on artificial intelligence infrastructure and highly paid AI-expert hires.

On Thursday, the company said it was making the cuts for the sake of efficiency and to allow new investments in parts of its business, as first reported by Bloomberg, which also said the company will leave about 6,000 jobs unfilled.

Also on Thursday, Microsoft said it was offering voluntary buyouts to thousands of its US employees.

The software giant plans to make the offers in early May to about 8,750 people, or 7 percent of its US workforce, according to two people familiar with the plan who were not authorised to speak about it publicly.

While an alternative to the sudden layoffs removing tech workers from peers like Meta and Oracle, the savings are likely tied to a similar industry upheaval that is requiring huge spending on the costs of artificial intelligence.

Meta has already warned investors that its 2026 expenses will grow significantly — to the range of $162bn to $169bn — driven by infrastructure costs and employee compensation, particularly for the AI experts it has been hiring at eye-popping pay levels.

This week, Meta also said it was breaking ground on an AI-optimised data centre in Tulsa, Oklahoma, a $1bn investment and its 28th data centre in the US.

Wedbush analyst Dan Ives welcomed Meta’s cuts in a note to investors on Thursday.

He said he sees it as part of a strategy of using AI tools to “automate tasks that once required large teams, allowing the company to streamline operations and reduce costs while maintaining productivity, driving an increased need for a leaner operating structure”.

Microsoft, based in Redmond, Washington state, has spent billions of dollars on operating an ever-expanding global network of data centres that power cloud computing services, AI systems and its own suite of productivity tools, including the AI assistant Copilot.

CNBC reported earlier on Thursday on a memo from Microsoft’s chief people officer, Amy Coleman, announcing the voluntary retirement plan.

“Our hope is that this program gives those eligible the choice to take that next step on their own terms, with generous company support,” Coleman wrote, according to CNBC.

Meta stock fell 2.3 percent on Thursday, while Microsoft stock ended the day down 3.97 percent.

England’s new head coach Brian McDermott has offered Man of Steel Jake Connor a path back into the national squad for this autumn’s Rugby League World Cup.

McDermott, confirmed in the role on Thursday, has described the Leeds Rhinos half-back as a “game-breaker”.

Connor, 31, was controversially left out of Shaun Wane’s squad for last autumn’s Ashes home series against Australia, which England lost 3-0.

At the time, Wane said the decision to omit Connor was “not really difficult” and that he had made it based on the player’s form, adding that: “When picking a squad, the thing you will never hear from me is: ‘He’s won the Man of Steel.’ I don’t pay attention to stuff like that.”

Wane stepped down in January, with former Leeds head coach McDermott taking over until the end of the World Cup, to be staged in Australia, New Zealand and Papua New Guinea this October and November.

McDermott played down questions over Connor’s temperament and said the half-back is part of England’s World Cup plans, saying: “Yeah, he is for sure. Absolutely.

“I think the rhetoric and the narrative around Jake was tremendously unfair.

“I understand where Jake Connor comes from in that he’s liked by some and disliked by others. OK, that comes in the nature of the game.

“We could sit around a table and debate whether he’s a nice person or not.

“I just don’t think that’s a fair narrative to be made public and that was the rhetoric around him.

“What nobody can argue is that he’s a tremendous player. He’s a fantastic player. He’s a game-breaker.”

McDermott won four Super League Grand Finals, two Challenge Cups, the World Club Challenge and the League Leaders’ Shield in eight years as Leeds head coach.

The 56-year-old, currently working as an assistant coach at NRL club Gold Coast Titans, has taken the England role on a part-time basis, in contrast to his full-time predecessor Wane.

“I would be interested in taking the job beyond the World Cup,” McDermott said.

The Yorkshireman was selected by the Rugby Football League from a five-man shortlist, which also included current Leeds head coach Brad Arthur, Warrington’s Sam Burgess, St Helens’ Paul Rowley and former England head coach Steve McNamara.

England’s World Cup campaign in Australia begins against Tonga in Perth on 17 October, with games against France and Papua New Guinea to follow.