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Yo-Yo Ma closed his eyes as he drew a bow slowly across his cello, playing the first notes of the Catalan lullaby “The Song of the Birds.” But this venue wasn’t like any vaulted concert hall he had toured globally.

At Maywood’s Riverfront Park, Ma was accompanied by the vroom of nearby traffic, cascade of a yucca rainstick and burbling hum of a water synth. An oblivious biker pushed past the world-renowned classical musician. The music flowed on.

Ma’s pop-up show in Southeast Los Angeles was part of his ongoing efforts to highlight people’s relationship to nature through music. He is among a new wave of artists who have been hosting shows along the L.A. River, a waterway with a complex history.

Yo-Yo Ma plays cello for a small group of artists and environmental advocates as part of the L.A. Phil Insight program, which aims to spark conversations around the arts.

(Halline Overby for InsightLA)

The river once terrorized Angelenos; its unconstrained flow was prone to flooding until most of its 51 miles were lined with concrete starting in the 1940s. While it’s been neglected, trashed and often forgotten over time, myriad governmental and nonprofit groups have been working for years to restore habitat, add park space and establish recreational elements (sometimes in conflict over the vision). And recently, creatives and activists, who dream of transforming it into a hospitable greenway, have been hosting arts events.

“Awareness around the river itself is changing,” said Maria Meija, executive director of L.A. River Arts, one of the organizations bringing attention to its history and cultural significance through public programming. She sees the serpentine stretch of the river as a natural highway that connects Angelenos from the San Fernando Valley to Long Beach. “We believe that if the river is properly activated as a green and cultural landscape, then Angelenos will fundamentally also get to experience Los Angeles in a different way.”

The River Solstice Festival was a family affair, with guests lounging on picnic blankets, watching puppet and opera performances and participating in birdwatching.

(Ariana Drehsler / For The Times)

Visions of those possibilities were realized on the summer solstice in mid-June at L.A. River Arts’ inaugural River Solstice Festival at an Elysian Valley park abutting a soft-bottomed area of the river known as the Glendale Narrows.

Children and parents applauded the performances by the Bob Baker Marionette Theater and opera singer San Cha at Lewis MacAdams Riverfront Park in what’s otherwise known as Frogtown. Attendees also gathered for guided bird-watching along the bike path by the water. Four-year-old Juni Wahab was entranced by the sight of the swallows and cormorants swooping low overhead and the rushing twists of water.

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1. Bob Baker Marionette Theater performs at the River Solstice Festival, clockwise from top left. Meanwhile, attendees enjoy the park and river as skateboarders roll down the bike path. (Ariana Drehsler / For The Times)

“It’s going so fast,” Wahab said, wiggling and pointing as her aunt held on tightly for safety. “There are so many waves.”

A quick stroll upstream, a group of DJs unaffiliated with the family-friendly festival hosted a day party aimed at Gen Z and millennial attendees, perched on one of the channel’s outcrops. Roughly a dozen people at the if-you-know-you-know event grooved and shuffled to EDM music while kayak enthusiasts paddled by and locals fished for carp.

Dominic Tsoi drove from Orange County to spin at the open decks hosted by the DJ collective Helipad Society. “This event really resonated with me, because it mixes two things that I really love, music and being a part of nature,” said Tsoi, adding the commute was worth it. An indoors club setting can feel stifling, but outdoors is where Tsoi feels free.

DJs have been putting on pop-up events like this one at the L.A. River and sharing videos of their sets on TikTok.

(Ariana Drehsler / For The Times)

Just up the sloped bank, Antonio Solano and Erick Torres were sweeping outside their tent, where they live under the Glendale Freeway. Torres started noticing events at the river increase over the last three years.

“It gets people together,” said Torres, who’s been living above the river for over a decade. The music is a source of pleasure even as Torres and Solano stay vigilant to avoid city encampment sweeps. “It’s good, we enjoy it.”

Social media has driven interest in these DIY events as artists playing ambient music against a backdrop of verdant green have gone viral on TikTok.

“The attention has expanded to people who otherwise wouldn’t have given the L.A. River a second thought,” said Noah Klein, a lifelong Angeleno who has hosted popular river jams over the last two years through his Living Earth public art series.

Erika Apelgren wears a flower crown that she made at the River Solstice Festival.

(Ariana Drehsler/For The Times)

People don’t need approval to host these impromptu gatherings, said Dash Stolarz, director of public affairs at the Mountains Recreation and Conservation Authority. The park agency oversees commercial use of the L.A. River recreation zones in Elysian Valley and the Sepulveda Basin, another section of soft-bottomed riverbed.

In her 25 years on the job, this was the first time Stolarz had heard of people using the riverfront for mini concerts. She was excited by the ingenuity of artists; as long as people aren’t charging for events, they don’t need permission.

“It’s exactly how we envisioned people enjoying the river,” Stolarz said. “We want people to use the river like a park.”

Though unlike a regular park, the L.A. River is primarily treated as a flood control channel, so park rangers carefully monitor for rain when the recreation zones open for leisure, like kayaking, during the summer.

While appreciating the L.A. River can be a good thing, social media algorithms can flatten the context around the waterway, particularly when it comes to demographic changes in nearby neighborhoods.

“The City of L.A.’s greatest skill is the erasure of its own history, and the L.A. River kind of feels like the perfect encapsulation of this,” Klein said.

Once home to mostly working-class Latino families, neighborhoods along the river in northeast L.A. have seen home prices surge for years. To preserve the history of these neighborhoods, Clockshop, an arts organization, has been collecting interviews with locals as part of a multimedia oral history project since 2023. The project includes everything from videos of an Indigenous musician performing a song about water in the Tongva language to brothers worrying about the future of their family’s 60-year-old pickle business in the face of gentrification.

Jon Christensen, director of the Laboratory for Environmental Narrative Strategies at UCLA, said river revitalization can be part of a “green gentrification cycle” as new development pushes out old communities. Like the chicken-and-egg paradox, it’s hard to tell which comes first: the amenities surrounding the L.A. River or the more affluent people seeking them.

Yo-Yo Ma, who hosts a podcast called “Our Common Nature,” chats with attendees at his intimate river concert. Human connection to the natural world is among his passions.

(Halline Overby for InsightLA)

Christensen hopes artists engaging with the river spurs conversation for more equitable green investments that benefit communities and the environment. “When people are more connected to nature, they want to support nature more,” Christensen said of his studies on how people connect to the outdoors. “It’s really kind of a virtuous cycle there.”

Cindy Donis, a water organizer with East Yard Communities for Environmental Justice, said artwork can also raise awareness around inequities. While there are aspirations to turn the river into a greenbelt, nightmarish pollution incidents have still haunted Southeast L.A. communities.

Ma’s performance was nearly canceled in May due to 25,000 gallons of crude oil that spilled into the L.A. River after a pipeline rupture in Boyle Heights. Weeks later, the Lineage warehouse fire sent even more debris and pollution downstream. Donis said multiple people reached out with complaints of a foul smell emanating from the river. Miles away, some at the River Solstice Festival wore masks due to poor air quality caused by the fire.

Charles Kelley with his daughter Zirah Kelley pose along the L.A. River bike path near the River Solstice Festival.

(Ariana Drehsler/For The Times)

Earlier this year, East Yard Communities for Environmental Justice held an exhibition at Art Space Huntington Park called “We Are Water” to uplift local Indigenous artists. “Art really allows and embraces healing,” Donis said. “It’s another tool that allows us to process these feelings and get closer to the solutions as a community.”

The L.A. River inspired Arturo Gonzalez to found his arts education nonprofit that focuses on gang intervention among young people in East L.A. As Ma performed in the park, Gonzalez stood in the river basin, spray-painting in neon-pink blockbuster letters the name of his organization, East Side of the River, onto pillars under Slauson Avenue.

As a teenager in the early 2000s, Gonzalez was involved in gangs that would tag the gray walls of the L.A. River, but his passion for graffiti and Chicano art eventually led him out of those circles.

“The river was a safe place to paint, where you could sit and spend the day learning colors, composition,” he said of illicit tagging as a teenager, which eventually led to his public art work. “There’s a thin line between vandalism and art.”

Arturo Gonzalez spray-paints the name of his organization, East Side of the River, which focuses on gang intervention.

(Halline Overby for InsightLA)

This time, Gonzalez arrived with permission from the county and painted on a detachable fabric in case the mural needs to be removed.

“The opportunity to get into the river and paint again was like a dream,” he said. He seeks the input of local residents in his planned projects so they can participate in beautifying their neighborhoods. “We call it wall medicine for the community.”

Croatia’s World Cup was seconds away from being over and Portugal was seconds away from the round of 16 when Ivan Perisic sent a long, desperate cross into the penalty area. The ball bounced off bodies like a pinball before magically, unbelievably, caroming into the net.

Gooooooallllllll!!!!

Fate had given Croatia a reprieve.

But as pandemonium broke out in the stands and on the pitch, Norwegian referee Espen Eskas stood in the middle of the celebration in Toronto, hand to his ear, listening to a voice half a continent away in Dallas.

The voice recommended a review, via the video assistant referee, or VAR.

So Eskas trotted over to a TV monitor, watched a video replay over and over again, and more than 2½ minutes after the goal was recorded, he took it off the board. Perisic’s cross had brushed the hair of teammate Igor Matanovic, leaving Mario Pasalic in an offside position when the ball reached him near the far post. The contact was imperceptible to the naked eye, but a space-age sensor in the ball had confirmed it.

A VAR review led a referee to overturn a Croatia goal during its 2-1 World Cup loss to Portugal in Toronto, eliminating Croatia from the tournament.

(Dan Mullan / Getty Images)

Croatia’s World Cup was over, another victim of VAR, which has had an outsized influence on this summer’s tournament.

It wasn’t supposed to be this way. When VAR was introduced to soccer nine years ago, its mission was clear: to alert the head referee to potential clear and obvious errors or serious missed incidents. At least that’s what Major League Soccer, one of the first leagues to use the system, wrote in the news release introducing it.

“It was really to stop the headlines,” said Mark Geiger, who helped implement VAR as an MLS referee. “These super-egregious errors in a game that impact the outcome. The mantra for VAR was always minimum interference but maximum benefit.”

Under the VAR system, officials sitting before a bank of monitors in a centralized control room review match footage in real time and advise the on-field referee of potential errors. If the video assistant referees believe a mistake has been made, they communicate that through an earpiece the match referee is wearing. If the match official agrees, they will stop play, signal a review by motioning their hands in the shape of a rectangular TV screen, then watch the play themselves on a pitch-side monitor before either confirming or reversing the original decision.

It is comparable to the Automated Ball-Strike review added this year in Major League Baseball, tennis’ Hawk-Eye line-calling system and long-standing centralized instant replay review in the National Football League and National Basketball Assn., systems that have both corrected errors and stoked debate.

But VAR has morphed into something far greater. In this World Cup, there have been more than 100 VAR interventions, encompassing both confirmed on-field calls and overturned decisions, through the end of the round of 16, according to Antonio Vuksanovic, a publication relations and communications professional at Sofascore, a Croatian technology company and sports statistics website.

“When it comes to actual overturned decisions, we’re looking at roughly 0.5 per match, which is higher than the last World Cup and higher than what we saw across the most recently completed club season,” Vuksanovic said.

Even though the officials have gotten most of those calls right, many of the infractions reviewed have been so imperceptible yet so consequential, it has raised a question: if human error on the part of players and coaches is part of the sport, is allowing a game to be decided by electronic evidence of a touch detectable only through NASA-level technology violating the spirit of the game?

Iran’s Shoja Khalilzadeh shoots past Egypt’s Mostafa Shobeir, but the goal was overturned after VAR review during a World Cup match in Seattle on June 26.

(Maddy Grassy / Associated Press)

Christina Unkel, a former FIFA referee, state referee administrator in Florida and a rules of the game analyst for multiple TV networks, believes it does.

“Football is an art. And that’s why we love it,” she said. “It truly isn’t the referee’s fault. We’re not the ones seeking more advanced technology. We don’t want to look like robots out there. But the stakeholders are like ‘more, more, more.’

“When you do pursue black and white — objectivity is what they’re trying to get to, and I get it; they want to eliminate as much subjectivity as possible — what everyone is hating is this perfection thing.”

FIFA, the major stakeholder in the World Cup, declined multiple requests to answer questions about the officiating, but it has clearly doubled down on the technology for this tournament, introducing the semi-automated offside system which uses player-tracking cameras, computer-generated offside lines and, in some cases, data from a measuring instrument inside the match ball, to identify everyone’s position on the pitch when the ball is played.

“The whole genesis of VAR was not to fix every mistake or to make the referees perfect,” said Geiger, the first American to officiate a World Cup knockout game and now general manager of the Professional Referees Organization (PRO), which oversees referees for MLS and the NWSL. “Is the referee correct? That’s not the right question. They should be asking themselves, ‘is the referee clearly and obviously wrong?’”

Geiger, however, remains a huge proponent of the system and was careful not to criticize how it’s been used in this World Cup.

Belgium’s Youri Tielemans on a penalty kick that sails by Senegal goalkeeper Mory Diaw during a World Cup round of 32 match in Seattle on July 1. The game-deciding penalty kick was awarded after VAR review.

(Manu Fernandez / Associated Press)

Still, the frequent use of VAR and other technologies has clearly robbed the World Cup of much as its drama, with spontaneous celebrations of game-winning goals turning to grief moments later when the referee steps away from the monitor and takes away a score.

Reviews not only ended Croatia’s tournament, but they showed Shoja Khalilzadeh was a toe offside when he scored the goal that would have sent Iran to the knockout stages, one of three goals Iran had disallowed by VAR in the tournament; it gave Belgium a late penalty, based on light contact, that Youri Tielemans converted to end Senegal’s World Cup; and it cost Egypt a goal for a perceived foul that took place nearly 100 yards away from the ball in its 3-2 loss to Argentina.

“What happened to us wasn’t fair,” Egypt coach Hossam Hassan said.

Unkel agreed with that sentiment too.

“Everyone hates it,” she said. “According to VAR, that’s correct to take that goal away. That’s not the spirit of the game. But it’s the correct decision by law.”

What Unkel would prefer — and she believes a majority of officials are on her side — is for referees to have discretion to ignore or even overrule VAR if common sense and their understanding of the game suggest they should, just as judges have discretion to use common sense in applying the law.

“A lot of our game, the majority of it, is very subjective,” she said. “When we’re all sitting there saying, ‘No, that doesn’t gain an unfair advantage,’ then that’s when we have to start reconsidering things back to the spirit of the law. That’s the catchall loophole for saying, ‘Do we want this to be part of our game?’

“And I think everyone’s universally saying there a lot of different kinds of decisions we do not want part of our game. Toenail offsides, hair follicle arguments.”

Without the use of video replays, its unlikely any of those calls would have been made and the World Cup quarterfinals would probably look quite different.

England players react as referee Alireza Faghani shows a red card to England’s Jarell Quansah during a World Cup match against Mexico on July 5.

(Natacha Pisarenko / Ap Photo/natacha Pisarenko)

England coach Thomas Tuchel, upset about a penalty call on captain Harry Kane and a red card given to defender Jarell Quansah, both following video reviews in his team’s round-of-16 win over Mexico, said rulings were being overturned in the tournament “in a very questionable way.”

“The referees can send any team out in any moment,” he added. “It’s just not good enough. It’s just erratic. It’s just unreliable.”

An apparent misuse of the technology also led to the most controversial incident in the tournament. In the second half of an elimination game between the U.S. and Bosnia-Herzegovina, American Folarin Balogun stomped on the ankle of Bosnia’s Tarik Muharemovic, something Brazilian referee Raphael Claus initially decided did not merit even a caution. But after VAR official Juan Soto of Venezuela urged him to watch a replay, Claus flashed a red card at Balogun, expelling him from the game and banning him from the next match in the round of 16.

Claus had watched the replay in slow motion, allowing him to see what wasn’t apparent at game speed. FIFA later intervened by lifting Balogun’s one-game suspension, igniting ever greater controversy because it was just the second time that has happened in a World Cup.

U.S. forward Folarin Balogun steps on Bosnia-Herzegovina defender Tarik Muharemovic’s foot and received a red card after VAR review during the World Cup.

(Robert Gauthier/Los Angeles Times)

The heavy use of VAR has also interrupted the flow of games by halting matches that weren’t meant to be halted, leaving everyone standing on the field while the referee goes off to watch TV, sometimes for minutes at a time.

“When calls are reviewed and when goals are reviewed, sometimes it could take away from the momentum,” U.S. defender Chris Richards said. “Look under anything with a microscope, you could probably find something. But ultimately it was meant to be helpful for the game.”

And it has been. Because if officials have become over-reliant on VAR to review decisions that were not, or could not, be seen in real time, at least they’re getting those decisions right.

“I wish we had it in the 2002 World Cup,” said Bruce Arena, who coached the U.S. in that tournament. “We might have made it to the semifinals.”

In the quarterfinals of that tournament, with Germany leading 1-0 in the 40th minute, an obvious handball by Germany’s Torsten Frings kept out a shot from American Gregg Berhalter. If VAR had been available, Scottish referee Hugh Dallas could have corrected the missed call, awarding a penalty and giving Frings a red card, expelling him for the final 40 minutes.

“Look at every sport now in the world,” said Arena, coach of the San José Earthquakes. “They have some version of VAR. Why not make decisions correct?”

“There are still plenty of opportunities for the referees to control the game and make mistakes and not make mistakes,” he continued in reference to the human element. “It’s not like every moment is evaluated. But key moments are.”

As for interrupting the flow of play, Arena says the three-minute hydration breaks FIFA has introduced each half — ostensibly for player welfare, but in practice to give the TV networks additional commercial breaks — have been more disruptive.

“You don’t want VAR to officiate the game completely,” Arena said. “You have to pick your spots. For the most part, I think VAR is good.”

A 26-year-old man has been arrested on suspicion of murder following the death of former MP and government minister Ann Widdecombe.

Devon and Cornwall Police confirmed the man, who is a white British national, was arrested at an address in Newton Abbot, Devon, on Friday and is in custody.

The body of the 78-year-old former Conservative minister and Reform UK spokesperson was found by police with serious injuries at her home in Haytor, a rural village on Dartmoor in Devon, at about 11:40 BST on Thursday.

The incident is not being treated as terrorism, after counter-terror policing was involved as part of “initial enquiries”.

Assistant Chief Constable Matt Longman told a news conference on Friday they currently have “no information to believe that that is a politically motivated crime” – and it was “too early” to comment on whether or not the suspect was known to Widdecombe.

He said the investigation was in the early stages and urged anyone with information to come forward.

Widdecombe’s next of kin have been informed and are being supported by specially trained officers.

The prime minister and other political leaders said they were stunned by the development on Friday afternoon.

Sir Keir Starmer said it was “really shocking”, while Conservative leader Kemi Badenoch said she was “stunned to hear this awful news”.

Reform UK leader Nigel Farage said he was “deeply, deeply upset by the nature of her death”.

Widdecombe’s political career spanned decades. She served as MP for Maidstone in Kent for 23 years, and worked as a Home Office and employment minister in Sir John Major’s government between 1994 to 1997.

After leaving Parliament she embarked on a showbiz career, appearing on Strictly Come Dancing in 2010 and Celebrity Big Brother in 2018.

A staunch supporter of the UK’s departure from the EU, she became an MEP for the Brexit Party, representing South West England in the European Parliament between 2019 and 2020.

In 2023, Widdecombe joined Farage’s Reform UK party, after it changed its name from the Brexit Party, and made a number of appearances as the party’s immigration and justice spokesperson.

WASHINGTON — Crews are again draining the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool as President Trump’s problem-plagued efforts to revamp the waterway pushes well past his initial goal of having it ready by July 4 to mark the nation’s 250th birthday.

The president at first suggested his renovations would last a century. But within weeks of the project originally reaching completion last month, the water was beset by an algae bloom and pieces of the new coating appeared to be peeling off the bottom.

Trump has blamed the peeling on vandals, though critics allege it’s from shoddy repair work.

Interior Secretary Doug Burgum, whose agency oversees the National Park Service, told conservative podcaster Katie Miller in an interview released earlier this week that the new round of draining was planned. He also said that the water might still contain debris from an extensive Independence Day fireworks display over the National Mall.

“Drain the water, clean up the fireworks stuff,” Burgum told Miller, who is the wife of deputy White House chief of staff Stephen Miller. “Repair the vandalism that was done. Fill it back up again.”

The work on the Reflecting Pool is just one of a number of projects Trump has spearheaded across the nation’s capital. Most prominently, he demolished the White House’s East Wing to build a $400-million ballroom and plans to build a towering arch between the Lincoln Memorial and Arlington National Cemetery.

He initially announced his intentions to beautify the Reflecting Pool this spring, saying he wanted it completed before the nation’s 250th birthday celebrations.

Water was drained and Trump directed that the bottom be painted what he called “American flag blue.” In May, the president posted on his social media site of the pool: “The goal is to have it done, at this higher level, prior to July 4th — We are ahead of schedule!”

But problems began quickly after the initial work was finished. Trump blamed vandals, and court documents later showed that the National Park Service reported to the U.S. Park Police a June 9 incident in which a sharp knife or razor cut the pool’s new liner.

On Thursday, former Olympic canoe racer David Hearn pleaded not guilty in D.C. Superior Court to deliberately damaging the Reflecting Pool. Hearn has said he reached inside the pool to examine the peeled sealant and let go of a chunk when he was told to by a park worker.

His attorneys and other Trump administration critics have derided the case as an abuse of prosecutorial power and maintain he is being scapegoated for the poor job done fixing up the Reflecting Pool.

At least three other people have been charged in the same court with misdemeanors for allegedly removing pieces of paint from the Reflecting Pool, according to online court records. All three pleaded not guilty during their initial court appearances Wednesday.

The pool was closed for the Independence Day celebration, which featured what Trump said was the largest fireworks display in the world. The president had said that the pool would have to be drained anew as part of the new round of repairs.

Burgum has also said that the Trump administration won’t seek bids for the new rounds of repairs. He told CNN’s “State of the Union” last weekend: “We’ll use the same company because they did a fantastic job.”

Ohio-based Green Water Solutions, also known as Greenwater Services, was given a $1.7-million contract to install a water-purification system in the Reflecting Pool, while Virginia-based Atlantic Industrial Coatings was awarded $14.7 million to repaint and waterproof the pool’s concrete floor.

Democratic senators and House members are investigating the pool project, including seeking answers about how much taxpayer funding is involved.

Weissert writes for the Associated Press.

CHRISTINE McGuinness has admitted she fears about her children’s future without her and is preparing them already for when she “goes to sleep”. 

The 38-year-old model is the proud mum to three autistic children – twins Penelope and Leo, 11, and Felicity, 8 – with ex Paddy McGuinness. 

But in a new tell-all parenting podcast, Parent Unplugged, Christine admitted that their special educational needs have left her fearing what the future will look like for them once she dies.

In a teaser clip for the upcoming episode with parenting coach and podcast host Charis Halsall, Christine took a deep breath when she was quizzed on what she found the hardest part of parenting. 

“Oh, this is quite deep to start with!” she said, before admitting: “It’s realising that I am preparing my three children to live without me when I can’t live without them.” 

When Charis asked why, Christine noted: “It’s our job, as a parent or a carer, anyway. Of course we want them to be happy, we want them to be successful, and all of that. 

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“But really, we want to know that when we do… go to sleep properly, that they’re going to be able to cope and manage.” 

“So I think that that was the biggest realisation: that I kind of can’t live without these three kids, and one day, they have to live without me, so I need to prepare them to be as independent as possible, especially with their additional needs as well.” 

While Christine and Paddy announced their split in 2022, the pair have continued to live together in order to maintain a regular pattern for their three children. 

After her children’s diagnosis, Christine was also diagnosed with autism and ADHD. 

However, last year they decided to take a new step and put their Cheshire mansion on the market for £6.5million – though they’re yet to find a buyer. 

A source close to the couple has told The Mail on Sunday that TV presenter Paddy – who bought the house with Christine for £2.1million back in 2020 – is behind the ‘overpriced’ property value and it’s suspected it’s due to him not wanting to move out of it. 

However, this has reportedly caused issues with his ex-wife, with the source noting: “Christine is getting really fed up now. She wants to move on but it seems with it being priced so high, Paddy doesn’t want her to.

“Paddy doesn’t want to downsize. He wants a big house to fit with his ego. It feels like a control thing. 

“He knows he will never get £6.5million for it. It feels like he’s playing silly games.”

Since her split from Paddy, Christine has tried getting back out into the dating world – and in June 2025 confirmed she was interested in both men and women, having dated both since she was a teenager. 

She’s since been seen locking lips with DJ Roxxxan, just days after it was revealed she was ‘growing close’ to Strictly star and Olympic boxer Nicola Adams, and had a fling with a high-profile soap actress. 

Joining the London Pride festivities last weekend, Christine shared that she wasn’t interested in labelling her sexuality, noting in her Instagram post: “More love, Less labels. Open hearts, Open doors. Happy Pride everyone!” 

Obsidian Entertainment, a subsidiary of Microsoft Corp.’s Xbox, has canceled multiple projects and will begin working on a new game in the popular Fallout franchise as part of the division’s broader restructuring, according to people familiar with the matter.

The video-game studio, based in Irvine, California, also laid off around a quarter of its workforce, said the people, who asked not to be identified because they were not authorized to speak to the press.

As part of the shake-up, Obsidian has canceled a planned sequel to the 2025 roleplaying game Avowed along with other unannounced projects.

Under the new plan, studio design director Josh Sawyer will lead a new title in the Fallout universe — a series of roleplaying games that take place in an alternate history in which the U.S. has been ravaged by nuclear war. The emerging strategy is still in flux, the people said, and could still change.

Previously, Sawyer had been directing a roleplaying game that was similar structurally and thematically to Fallout but was not part of the franchise.

An Xbox spokesperson declined to comment.

The shifts take place as Xbox Chief Executive Officer Asha Sharma executes what she has called a “reset” of the organization. On Monday, Sharma announced plans to cut 3,200 jobs and divest five studios. She’s said she’ll invest more in the company’s biggest franchises, including Fallout, which has sold tens of millions of copies and led to a hit show from Amazon.com Inc. that is currently filming its third season.

Despite its critical and commercial success, the Fallout video-game series has not seen a new entry since 2018’s online title Fallout 76 because its primary developer, Xbox’s Bethesda Game Studios, has been focused on other projects. Bethesda has also regularly updated and created new content for Fallout 76, which has reached more than 23 million players.

The only Fallout game in the last two decades to not come from Bethesda was 2010’s Fallout: New Vegas, developed by Obsidian and directed by Sawyer. Although New Vegas has become a fan favorite, Bethesda has maintained control over the franchise. The Rockville, Maryland-based studio will work with Obsidian on the new project, the people said.

Obsidian released three games last year, two of which did not meet sales expectations, including Avowed, the company told Bloomberg Businessweek. The studio had been hoping to build on Avowed by developing a sequel in a shorter timeframe using the world and technology that it had already created.

Progress on the sequel was going well, and it was on track to be announced within the next year. But in the end, it did not fit into Sharma’s overall strategy, according to people familiar with the game’s development.

Some Obsidian employees will continue working on the Avowed sequel as they wait for new projects such as Fallout to be ready, perhaps in hope of one day reviving the game, the people said.

Obsidian will also continue to develop downloadable content for last year’s The Outer Worlds 2, the people said, and will also still work on its live-service multiplayer survival game, Grounded 2.

Schreier writes for Bloomberg.

Justin Bieber better be a fast singer.

The World Cup final halftime show already was going to feature three superstar acts with 121 Billboard Hot 100 hits, 20 No. 1 singles and 12 Grammy Awards among them.

Somehow that must not have been enough star power, because another performer with 123 hits, eight chart toppers and two Grammys has been added to the lineup.

Bieber was announced Wednesday as the fourth co-headliner for the July 19 intermission extravaganza at MetLife Stadium in East Rutherford, N.J., joining South Korean boy band BTS, U.S. pop culture icon Madonna and Latin music superstar Shakira.

Four gigantic worldwide acts might seem like a lot to cram into an 11-minute (!) show, but apparently curator Chris Martin doesn’t see it that way. In addition to the quartet of headliners, Martin also has lined up Nigerian Afrobeats performer Burna Boy, soon-to-be-departing Los Angeles Philharmonic conductor Gustavo Dudamel and Staten Island elementary school choir the PS22 Chorus (which will be performing with Martin’s band Coldplay).

Oh yeah, the Muppets will be there, too. Bieber will be lucky if he gets a chance to sing a bar or two from a list of hits that includes “Peaches,” “Sorry,” “Love Yourself” and “Daisies.”

Nonetheless, he seems happy to be part of the festivities, which will support the FIFA Global Citizen Education Fund, weeks after attending the U.S.-Paraguay game at SoFi Stadium, where he gave a surprise performance of his song “Yukon” in a backstage area.

“The FIFA World Cup brings the world together in a way nothing else can,” Bieber said in a statement. “I’m grateful to be part of this Halftime Show, and even more grateful knowing it’s already helping expand access to education for children around the world.”

One song that is sure to be featured during the set is this year’s World Cup anthem, “Dai Dai,” by Shakira and Burna Boy. The two acts already performed the song during the tournament’s opening ceremony in Mexico City.

Speaking of hit collaborations, Madonna recently charted with “Bring Your Love,” a duet with Sabrina Carpenter. Not to start any rumors, but surely they can squeeze one more pop superstar onto that stage, right?

Storied norteño group Los Tigres del Norte announced Tuesday that they are teaming up with departing L.A. Philharmonic conductor Gustavo Dudamel for a special performance Aug. 21 at the Hollywood Bowl.

The show is part of a series titled “Celebrating Gustavo at the Bowl,” which looks to send off Dudamel in style as he transitions into his new role as the music and artistic director of the New York Philharmonic. The “Jaula de Oro” artist’s appearance is part of “Gustavo’s Fiesta,” which will also feature performances by other prominent Latino artists.

The norteño act has sold 37 million albums and recorded 500 songs over a career that’s spanned five decades. They have seven Grammy Awards, eight Latin Grammys and have had 66 songs land on Billboard’s Hot Latin Songs chart, the most of any Latin music act ever.

In 2018, Los Tigres del Norte became the first norteño act to headline at the Hollywood Bowl.

Recently, the “La Puerta Negra” hitmakers were immortalized in U.S. pop culture history when its members appeared in animated form in a December 2025 episode of “The Simpsons” and performed an original corrido about the escapades of Homer Simpson and Pedro Chespirito (also known as the Bumblebee Man).

Also featured on the Aug. 21 lineup are Grammy-winning singer Lila Downs, the all-female Mariachi Reyna de Los Ángeles, the explosive cumbia group La Sonora Dinamita and the legendary Mexican bolero trio Los Panchos.

The show will serve as Dudamel’s third-to-last performance as the music and artistic director of L.A. Philharmonic. On Aug. 22, he will be in concert with Foo Fighters. His farewell weekend will conclude Aug. 23 and will serve as a benefit for his homeland of Venezuela, which suffered catastrophic losses from twin earthquakes in late June.

Donations will benefit Dudamel’s Earthquake Recovery to Support Venezuelan Communities fund, in partnership with the United Nations Development Programme and the Development Bank of Latin America and the Caribbean fund.

Edwin Díaz insists he did nothing wrong.

After facing live batters for the first time Sunday since undergoing elbow surgery in April, the Dodgers’ reliever pushed back against allegations linking him to illegal cockfighting in Puerto Rico.

“I’ve been doing that before because, like the story said, that’s legal in Puerto Rico,” Díaz said.

USA Today published a story in May highlighting social media posts advertising cockfighting tournaments that picture Díaz in his Dodgers uniform. The story also referenced a story in El Nuevo Día, the largest circulating newspaper in Puerto Rico, quoting Díaz.

No one from Major League Baseball has reached out to Díaz about a possible suspension, he said.

“They didn’t reach out to me because I wasn’t doing anything illegal,” Díaz said.

In 2019, a federal law banning cockfighting took effect in Puerto Rico. Before the law, the blood sport had been made illegal in all 50 states, but not U.S. territories. Many Puerto Ricans saw the ban as an attack on their culture and vowed to defy the law.

Puerto Rico responded by passing a law saying that it’s legal to host cockfights as long as people don’t export or import the animals or any goods or services related to cockfighting. The U.S. Supreme Court in 2021 declined to hear a challenge to the federal law brought by a group that argued Congress exceeded its power by applying the ban to Puerto Rico.

Anyone found guilty of taking part in cockfighting faces up to five years in prison and a $250,000 fine. Spectators could receive a one-year prison sentence.

Still, some Puerto Ricans such as Díaz view the topic as part of the island’s history, initially brought to the Caribbean by 16th-century Spaniards when the island was first colonized.

“It’s a pastime I’ve followed since I was a child,” Díaz told El Nuevo Día in March. “It’s legal in Puerto Rico, thank God. Otherwise, I wouldn’t be here.”

Diaz is on track to return to the Dodgers after the All-Star break, although his exact return date remains unclear. His fastball felt good, so locating his slider was the next step toward his return.

Times staff writer Hannah Fry contributed to this report.

Donny Hathaway had already been expounding on the splendors and indignities of American life by the time he got to the Troubadour in West Hollywood in the last week of August 1971.

A classically trained pianist with a declamatory voice shaped by his years in the church, Hathaway closed Side 1 of his 1970 debut with an original called “Tryin’ Times” — “Maybe folks wouldn’t have to suffer,” he sang, “if there was more love for your brother” — and finished the LP with a stately rendition of Nina Simone’s “To Be Young, Gifted and Black.” Months after the album was released, he dropped a joy bomb of a holiday single, “This Christmas,” that unapologetically made space for a Black experience in the yuletide-industrial complex.

Donny Hathaway performs at Mister Kelly’s in Chicago in 1971.

(Val Mazzenga / Chicago Tribune / Tribune News Service via Getty Images)

Yet Hathaway captured something indelibly American during his week of shows at the Troubadour, which were recorded (along with a later gig at New York’s Bitter End) for the singer’s classic “Live” album that came out in February 1972. On an LP full of spine-tingling performances, the undeniable high point is Hathaway’s take on Carole King’s “You’ve Got a Friend” — a clear-eyed if optimistic portrait of resilience and cultural exchange.

King — who’d made her name in the 1960s as half of a prolific Brill Building songwriting duo with her husband, Gerry Goffin — wrote “You’ve Got a Friend” after leaving Goffin and moving to Los Angeles with her two young daughters. Here she remade herself as a low-key singer-songwriter dispensing wise yet unflashy tunes about love, home and family — part of a gentle resetting of pop’s mood after the turmoil of the previous decade.

Cut like the rest of the album at A&M Studios on La Brea Avenue, “You’ve Got a Friend” helped drive King’s 1971 “Tapestry” LP to sales of more than 10 million copies and to a boatload of trophies (including album, record and song of the year) at the Grammy Awards; the singer’s pal James Taylor, whom she’d performed with for the first time in late 1970 at the Troubadour, topped Billboard’s Hot 100 with his own cover of “Friend” featuring background vocals by Joni Mitchell.

On the advice of Atlantic Records’ Jerry Wexler, Hathaway also recorded “Friend” as a studio duet with Roberta Flack, a fellow Howard University alum; their take sat in the Top 20 of Billboard’s R&B chart as Hathaway began his run at the Troubadour — popular enough that the audience on “Live” erupts at the sound of Hathaway’s opening organ lick.

Carole King at A&M Studios in Los Angeles in 1970.

(Jim McCrary / Redferns via Getty Images)

Indeed, the crowd is really the thing in this live version of “You’ve Got a Friend.” Hathaway and his band — including guitarist Phil Upchurch, bassist Willie Weeks and 16-year-old Fred White (soon to be of Earth, Wind & Fire) on drums — are cooking, to be clear; the groove is funky and viscous, and Hathaway’s vocal is gorgeous, not least in his nimble ad-libs.

But it’s his interplay with the few hundred folks in the room that elevates the recording to a deeply moving piece of art.

For King (and Taylor), the song’s promise of unflagging support is an intimate one-to-one matter; their renditions use homey acoustic arrangements to create a picture of two people exchanging confidences. In Hathaway’s hands, “Friend” is about community: Before he even asks them to, the audience takes over for him on lead vocals in the song’s chorus, a congregation in all but name.

Given the proximity to the civil rights movement, it’s impossible to hear Hathaway’s “You’ve Got a Friend” as disconnected from the struggles of Black people. At the Troubadour (as in his and Flack’s duet), he nixes the song’s second verse to arrive more quickly at the bridge, in which he describes a cold world filled with those who’d “hurt you and try to desert you” — even “take your soul if you let them.”

As Emily J. Lordi notes in her 2016 book about “Donny Hathaway Live,” the crowd lays back during the bridge before rejoining Hathaway for the song’s second chorus; the decision, somehow spontaneous and collective at once, is an expert bit of record-making on the part of an audience that, according to legend, hadn’t been told the concert was being taped.

“From this perspective,” Lordi writes of Hathaway’s fans — some number of whom had surely availed themselves of the Troubadour’s bar, as she points out — “they are not stealing the show so much as they are holding him up, ensuring he won’t sing the duet alone.” Together, performer and audience are turning back (not that they necessarily had a choice) to the ugly truths that singer-songwriter music sometimes sought to move past.

In this way, Hathaway’s “Friend” becomes a reinvention of a reinvention — an act of moral imagination about as American as it gets.

This wasn’t the only instance of a Black soul singer interpreting a tune King had written as a single mom newly arrived in L.A.: In May 1972, the Isley Brothers released a sultry cover of “It’s Too Late”; a month after that, Aretha Franklin’s live “Amazing Grace” album mashed up “You’ve Got a Friend” with “Precious Lord, Take My Hand,” completing the gospel-ification that Hathaway had begun in a bastion of white rock culture temporarily remade as an African American church.

Yet in Hathaway’s “Friend” you can hear the whole story American music tells about identity and belonging (and about commercial ambition).

“This might be a record here,” Hathaway tells the crowd near the end of the song, and so it was — a document of adaptation, a testament to borrowing, a bulwark against pretty fictions.

LeBron leaving Lakers is a good thing

From Bill Plaschke: Of all the calculated maneuvers by LeBron James during his eight years with the Lakers, he saved his smartest for last.

He left before the door could hit him in the butt.

He knew the Lakers didn’t want him back, so he skipped out before they had a chance to say goodbye.

He leaked the news alone, before the Lakers could publicly confirm, because he wanted to sell that this was his decision, when it absolutely was not.

This was not his idea. This was not his call. This was the Lakers saying, enough is enough. This was the Lakers saying, we want our team back.

This was arguably the greatest player in basketball getting the message and getting out before they threw him out

Officially, on Tuesday, James informed the Lakers that he’s going to leave them as a free agent and finish his career elsewhere.

Unofficially, yay!

Continue reading here

LeBron James and Lakers share gratitude as he leaves team, look ahead to what’s next

Luke Kennard leaves Lakers for two-year deal with Phoenix Suns

Clippers send Kawhi Leonard to Toronto

From Joaquin Ruiz: The Kawhi Leonard era is over in Los Angeles.

A deal to send the seven-time NBA All-Star forward back to Toronto, where he won his second NBA title, has been finalized, according to a person with knowledge of the situation who is not authorized to speak publicly on the matter.

The trade — which will net the Clippers All-Star forward Brandon Ingram, shooting guard Gradey Dick, two first-round draft picks, a pick swap and two second-round picks — marks the end of another promising-but-empty chapter in the franchise’s ringless history.

Continue reading here

World Cup: Mexico advances to Round of 16

From Eduard Cauich: Mexico once again enjoyed a night of celebration with its fans, this time after defeating an old nemesis — the knockout stage of the World Cup.

El Tri won its first knockout match at a World Cup since 1986, beating Ecuador 2-0 on Tuesday night at the majestic Azteca Stadium packed with 80,824 fans.

From 1994 to 2018, Mexico failed to win a World Cup knockout game and, in 2022, failed to advance past the group stage — its worst showing at a World Cup since 1978.

“Bringing joy to the fans is the best thing that can happen to us,” Mexico coach Javier Aguirre said after the win. “Our duty is to give it our all on the field. Our duty is to defend our crest and represent our country with dignity.”

Thanks to an expanded 48-team World Cup format with a knockout round of 32 teams and a formidable home-field advantage, Mexico achieved a goal that had seemed impossible.

Continue reading here

For Sebastian Berhalter, a shot with the U.S. national team was well worth the wait

Tuesday’s World Cup results

Round of 32
Norway 2, Ivory Coast 1
France 3, Sweden 0
Mexico 2, Ecuador 0

Today’s World Cup TV schedule

All times Pacific
9 a.m., England vs. DR Congo, Fox, Telemundo
1 p.m., Belgium vs. Senegal, FS1, Telemundo
5 p.m., U.S. vs. Bosnia-Herzegovina, Fox, Telemundo

World Cup round of 32 schedule, results

Round of 32 results
Canada 1, South Africa 0
Brazil 2, Japan 1
Paraguay 1, Germany 1 (Paraguay wins on PK’s, 4-3)
Morocco 1, Netherlands 1 (Morocco wins on PK’s, 3-2)
Norway 2, Ivory Coast 1
France 3, Sweden 0
Mexico 2, Ecuador 0

All times Pacific
Wednesday
England vs. Congo DR, 9 a.m., Fox, Telemundo
Belgium vs. Senegal, 1 p.m., FS1, Telemundo
U.S. vs. Bosnia-Herzegovina, 5 p.m., Fox, Telemundo

Thursday
Spain vs. Austria, noon, Fox, Telemundo
Portugal vs. Croatia, 4 p.m., Fox, Telemundo
Switzerland vs. Algeria, 8 p.m., FS1, Telemundo

Friday
Australia vs. Egypt, 11 a.m., Fox, Telemundo
Argentina vs. Cape Verde, 3 p.m., Fox, Telemundo
Colombia vs. Ghana, 6:30 p.m., Fox, Telemundo

Round of 16 schedule

All times Pacific
All games on Fox and Telemundo

Saturday
Canada vs. Morocco, 10 a.m.
Paraguay vs. France, 2 p.m.

Sunday
Brazil vs. Norway, 1 p.m.,
Mexico vs. England or DR Congo, 5 p.m.

Monday
Portugal or Croatia vs. Spain or Austria, noon
U.S. or Bosnia-Herzegovina vs. Belgium or Senegal, 5 p.m.

Tuesday, July 7
Argentina or Cape Verde vs. Australia or Egypt, 9 a.m.
Switzerland or Algeria vs. Colombia or Ghana, 1 p.m.

Dave Roberts gets 1,000th win as manager

From Bill Shaikin: For Dave Roberts, it’s 1,000 down and Cooperstown to go.

Victory No. 1: 15-0 over the San Diego Padres in 2016, with vintage Clayton Kershaw on the mound and Adrián González in the cleanup spot. Amid the postgame handshakes, González showered Roberts with bubble gum.

“There was no stress,” Roberts said. “It was such a nice soft landing.”

Victory No. 1,000: 9-3 over the Athletics in Sacramento on Tuesday with home runs from Tommy Edman and Miguel Rojas, and with Justin Wrobleski striking out a career-high 11 to become the Dodgers’ first 10-game winner.

Pretty soft landing too, and well worth a celebration. Roberts doffed his cap in gratitude for a spirited postgame ovation from the fans here, almost all of them Dodgers fans. Inside the clubhouse, Rojas and Freddie Freeman led a champagne and tequila toast.

Continue reading here

Walter Alston, Dave Roberts and everyone in between: The 10 managers in L.A. Dodgers history

Dodgers box score

MLB standings

Angels lose to Mariners

Julio Rodriguez had three hits and scored twice, Bryan Woo took a shutout into the seventh inning and the Seattle Mariners put together a five-run sixth Tuesday night to beat the Angels 8-3.

Rodriguez and Colt Emerson both had three of Seattle’s 13 hits. Randy Arozarena and Cole Young scored two runs apiece.

Woo (7-6) gave up just four hits and struck out five in 6 1/3 innings. The Angels’ first two runs in their three-run seventh were charged to him after he gave way to reliever Eduard Bazardo. That ended Woo’s streak of home shutout innings at 32 1/3, which stretched over a span of five games dating to May 6 against Atlanta.

Continue reading here

‘He’s a friendly killer.’ How Angels’ José Soriano balances competitive fire, mentorship

Angels box score

MLB standings

Serena Williams loses at Wimbledon

From Chuck Schilken: Experience took on youth Tuesday morning at Wimbledon’s Centre Court as 44-year-old tennis legend Serena Williams played her first singles match in nearly four years, against 20-year-old Australian Maya Joint.

Advantage: youth, as Joint pulled out a 6-3, 6-7 (6), 6-3 win over the 23-time Grand Slam champion, and advances to play 29-seed Alexandra Eala of the Philippines — a 6-1, 6-2 winner over Renata Zarazúa of Mexico — on Thursday.

“She has such an aura. She’s such a legend,” Joint said of Williams during an on-court interview after her first-ever Wimbledon win. “And this court has so many huge names that have played on it. I’ve been dreaming about this moment since I was a little kid, so this is pretty crazy.”

Continue reading here

This day in sports history

1903 — Maurice Garin wins the first stage of the first Tour de France bicycle race. Garin finishes 55 seconds ahead of Emile Pagie. The first stage, from Paris to Lyon, is 467 kilometers long, and takes 17 hours and 45 minutes, riding both day and night. Only 37 riders of 60 are able to complete the day’s race.

1920 — Suzanne Lenglen of France becomes the first player to win three Wimbledon titles in one year, taking the singles, doubles and mixed doubles.

1932 — Helen Moody wins her fifth women’s singles title in six years at Wimbledon, defeating Helen Jacobs 6-3, 6-1.

1938 — Don Budge defeats Henry Austin 6-1, 6-0, 6-3 to win the men’s singles title and sweep the singles, doubles and mixed doubles titles at Wimbledon for the second straight year.

1947 — Basketball Assn. of America (BAA), which later became the National Basketball Assn. (NBA), holds its inaugural college player draft.

1951 — Beverly Hanson wins the Eastern Open by three strokes over Babe Zaharias in her first start on the LPGA Tour. Hanson is the only golfer to win a tournament in her first pro start.

1961 — Mickey Wright beats defending champion Betsy Rawls by six strokes to win the U.S. Women’s Open.

1977 — Britain’s Virginia Wade wins the singles title on the 100th anniversary of Wimbledon, defeating Betty Stove 4-6, 6-3, 6-1.

1990 — Cathy Johnston completes a wire-to-wire performance, beating Patty Sheehan by two strokes to win the LPGA du Maurier Classic.

1995 — The NBA locks out its players at 12:01 a.m., the first work stoppage in league history.

1997 — Nevada Athletic Commission suspends Mike Tyson indefinitely and withholds $20-million purse for biting Evander Holyfield’s ear during their heavyweight title fight on June 28.

2007 — Cristie Kerr wins the U.S. Women’s Open by making only two bogeys over her final 45 holes. Kerr finishes at 5-under 279 for her 10th career victory.

2011 — The NBA locks out its players, a long-expected move putting the 2011-12 season in jeopardy.

2012 — Spain wins its third straight major soccer title, beating Italy 4-0 in the European Championship final in Kiev, Ukraine. The Spanish, who won the Euro 2008 title and World Cup title in 2010, posts the largest score in a Euro final.

2012 — Tiger Woods wins the AT&T National at Congressional in Bethesda, Md. for the 74th win of his career. That moves him past Jack Nicklaus into second place on the tour list, eight short of Sam Snead.

2018 — NBA superstar LeBron James agrees to a 4-year, $154-million deal with the Lakers, moving from Cleveland Cavaliers.

2018 — Park Sung-hyun wins the PGA Women’s Championship at Kemper Lakes Golf Course in a playoff with Nasa Hataoka and Ryu So-yeon.

2018 — David Toms wins the Men’ US Senior Open at Broadmoor Golf Course by one stroke over Miguel Angel Jimenez, Jerry Kelly and Tim Petrovic.

Compiled by the Associated Press

This day in baseball history

1910 — Comiskey Park — then known as White Sox Park — held its first major league game, with the St. Louis Browns beating Chicago 2-0.

1917 — Fred Toney of the Cincinnati Reds pitched complete-game victories in a doubleheader against the Pittsburgh Pirates. Toney threw a three-hitter in each game for 4-1 and 5-1 wins, setting a record for the fewest hits given up in a doubleheader by a pitcher.

1920 — Walter Johnson of the Washington Senators defeated the Boston Red Sox 1-0 at Fenway Park with the season’s only no-hitter.

1925 — Hack Wilson of the New York Giants hit two home runs in the third inning of a 16-7 victory over the Philadelphia Phillies in the second game of a doubleheader. Wilson also doubled twice during the game.

1941 — Joe DiMaggio of the New York Yankees singled off Boston’s Jack Wilson in the fourth inning, tying Willie Keeler’s hitting streak of 44 games.

1951 — Bob Feller of the Indians pitched his third career no-hitter, beating the Detroit Tigers 2-1 in the first game of a doubleheader at Cleveland.

1990 — Andy Hawkins of the New York Yankees pitched the sixth no-hitter in the majors this season and the third in less than 48 hours, but lost 4-0 to the Chicago White Sox on two outfield errors in the eighth inning.

1997 — Detroit’s Bobby Higginson homered in the first inning against the New York Mets, tying a major league record by homering in four consecutive at-bats over two games. Higginson, who struck out looking in his next at-bat, became the 23rd player since 1900 to accomplish the feat and the fourth Tiger.

2009 — One run was enough for a victory for three National League teams, the first time in 33 years there were three 1-0 games in one league on the same day. The Mets, Dodgers and Reds came away with 1-0 victories. The last time there were three 1-0 games in one league was Sept. 1, 1976, in the NL.

2009 — Hanley Ramirez extended his RBI streak to 10 games in the Florida Marlins’ 5-3 victory over the Washington Nationals. Ramirez hit a two-run double in the third inning to become the first shortstop in NL history with an RBI streak of double-digit games.

2013 — Andy Pettitte passes Whitey Ford for the most strikeouts in New York Yankees history when he records his 1,957th in the Yankees’ 10-4 win over the Twins. The win goes to reliever Joba Chamberlain, his first of the year, as he benefits from a three-run outburst off reliever Jared Burton in the 8th. The Yankees then add four runs in the top of the 9th as they end a five-game losing streak.

2014 — The Cleveland Indians executed an unorthodox triple play in the fourth inning against the Dodgers that required two video replay reviews to sort out. With runners on first and third, Adrián González lifted a fly ball to left fielder Michael Brantley, who threw out Dee Gordon at the plate. Catcher Yan Gomes then fired to second baseman Jason Kipnis for the tag on Yasiel Puig as he slid headfirst. Cleveland manager Terry Francona challenged the original safe call at second and got the play overturned after a replay delay that lasted 1 minute, 29 seconds. Dodgers skipper Don Mattingly then challenged the call at the plate, but that call stood after another wait of 1 minute, 34 seconds. Cleveland went on to a 10-3 win.

2015 — Carlos Carrasco came within one strike of throwing the Cleveland Indians’ first no-hitter since 1981, giving up an RBI single to Joey Butler over leaping second baseman Jason Kipnis’ glove in an 8-1 victory over the Tampa Bay Rays.

2019 — Angels pitcher Tyler Skaggs is found dead in his hotel room a few hour before the team’s scheduled game with the Texas Rangers. Police confirm that no foul play is suspected.

Compiled by the Associated Press

Until next time…

That concludes today’s newsletter. If you have any feedback, ideas for improvement or things you’d like to see, email me at houston.mitchell@latimes.com. To get this newsletter in your inbox, click here.

Uncrewed systems will be at the heart of the UK Armed Forces in the future, under a more than $6.6-billion initiative that looks to transform all three services and the way they fight. Perhaps most dramatically, the new defense plan will see the Royal Navy sacrifice its future destroyer for a “hybrid,” distributed concept, with autonomous vessels being paired with crewed ones. But there are equally far-reaching measures set to reconfigure the British Army and Royal Air Force (RAF) around uncrewed and autonomous capabilities, some of which remain very high-risk as they are still deep or even early in development.

In a speech today, U.K. Prime Minister Keir Starmer set out his government’s long-awaited Defense Investment Plan. The aim of this is nothing less than “keeping the country safe for years to come,” the government said, and for this, the UK Armed Forces will lean heavily on autonomous systems. Most of these don’t currently exist in physical form, at least as far as we know. At the same time, the effort stresses the rapid fielding of capabilities. This illustrates just how ambitious, and risky, the plan is.

The Defense Investment Plan provides a budget of more than £5 billion ($6.6 billion) over four years just for drones and related capabilities. This is part of a much larger overall spend on defense, amounting to £298 billion ($395 billion) over the same period. This sum also includes £15 billion ($20 billion) of additional spending on top of last year’s Spending Review.

By the end of the decade, Starmer asserted, the proportion of U.K. GDP spent on defense will be higher than at any time during the last 30 years and is in line with NATO ambitions to reach a level of 3.5 percent of GDP.

The government points to the conflicts in Ukraine and Iran, specifically, as evidence of the need for a “drone transformation.”

“Drones are rapidly reshaping warfare, with cheap systems destroying high-value targets and innovation cycles measured in weeks, not years,” the government said, in announcing the plan. “Ukraine uses roughly 200,000 drones a month to defend itself from Russia’s barbaric invasion, while at the height of the Iran conflict, 700 offensive drones were being launched per day,” it adds.

Royal Navy

The changes forecast for the Royal Navy have so far garnered the most attention.

As part of a previously announced plan to create a so-called “Hybrid Navy,” the service will receive four new types of uncrewed vessels that will operate in conjunction with crewed warships and aircraft.

Of these new vessels, the Type 91 will be an uncrewed missile platform, serving as a ‘floating magazine’ to increase the overall firepower of the fleet. A combination of air defense, long-range land attack, and anti-ship missile capabilities seems likely, although any armament fit will likely be readily changeable and highly modular. The lessons of the conflict in the Red Sea provided dramatic evidence of how quickly missile cells can be depleted in an intense air-warfare environment.

Also uncrewed, the Type 92 vessels are described as “sense platforms” and will have a primary anti-submarine warfare (ASW) tasking. As such, they will ensure the Royal Navy’s sensor reach is extended further into the North Atlantic, where the Type 92s will support previously ordered frigates in the hunt for Russian submarines.

The Type 93 is defined as an extra-large uncrewed underwater vessel and is intended as an adjunct to crewed hunter-killer submarines. They will carry both sensors and weapons (presumably torpedoes) to help search and destroy enemy submarines. This is an area in which the Royal Navy has been struggling particularly, with significant gaps in its fast-attack submarine force due to limited availability.

Finally, the Type 94 is another uncrewed sense platform, but is optimized for air defense missions. It will use its sensors to look for aerial threats on behalf of both the fleet and in support of homeland missions.

The Types 91 and 94 will eventually be tied together by at least six Common Combat Vessels, which will form part of a networked Maritime Air Defense system. Arriving in service in the 2030s, the crewed Common Combat Vessels will serve as the “brains” behind this architecture, and the overall system will eventually take over the air defense tasking currently handled by the Type 45 destroyers.

The Maritime Air Defense system and the Common Combat Vessels, which are widely assumed to be roughly frigate-sized vessels, supersede earlier plans for the new Type 83 destroyer. This was previously expected to replace the Type 45 in the late 2030s, although for some time now its future had appeared threatened by increasing Admiralty interest in ‘arsenal ship’ concepts like the Type 91.

The Hybrid Carrier Air Wing outlined in the Defense Investment Plan is something we have discussed before.

In its last Strategic Defense Review, the U.K. Ministry of Defense introduced it as follows:

“The Royal Navy must continue to move towards a more powerful but cheaper and simpler fleet, developing a ‘high-low’ mix of equipment and weapons that exploits autonomy and digital integration. Carrier strike is already at the cutting edge of NATO capability, but much more rapid progress is needed in its evolution into ‘hybrid’ carrier air wings, whereby crewed combat aircraft (F-35B) are complemented by autonomous collaborative platforms in the air, and expendable, single-use drones. Plans for the hybrid carrier air wings should also include long-range precision missiles capable of being fired from the carrier deck.”

While there is no further mention of the deck-launched long-range precision missiles at this point, the Defense Investment Plan does note that Project Pantheon will serve as the development effort for the Hybrid Carrier Air Wing and will include trials of unnamed jet-powered drones alongside the F-35B.

While not referred to specifically, the Royal Navy has already outlined its ambition for ‘cat and trap’ drone operations aboard U.K. carriers, which is known as Project Ark Royal.

If realized, the project will see the two Queen Elizabeth class carriers start to operate drones that can undertake a variety of missions and then increasingly heavier, complex, and higher-performance ones. Later on, full catapult-assisted takeoff but arrested recovery (CATOBAR) capability could also add fixed-wing crewed aircraft, as we have explored in the past.

Larger fixed-wing drones are an aspiration that the Royal Navy is already working toward under Project Vixen, which you can read more about here.

As we have discussed in the past, there are many technological hurdles ahead as the Royal Navy looks to introduce carrier-capable drones. Beyond the launch and recovery systems, it will also need to develop control stations, datalinks, unique procedures, and much more to ensure the drones can be safely and effectively integrated within the carrier air group, for example. Even working out the intricacies of deck handling and flow integration involving drones combined with crewed fixed-wing jets and helicopters will be a considerable effort.

Project Pantheon certainly looks like it will move all of this ahead, although it should be noted that the size of the jet-powered drones for the program has not been stated. Already, the Royal Navy has conducted trials involving smaller, jet-powered drones, with the QinetiQ Banshee Jet 80+, best known as a target drone, being launched from HMS Prince of Wales in 2021. Even the Banshee could provide a suitable platform for a rapidly introduced decoy or one-way attack munition.

The Royal Navy’s elite amphibious and special operations-capable light infantry force, the Commandos, are also earmarked for further investment including “new high-speed boats and the latest drone and autonomous technology.”

Less surprising was the government’s commitment to strengthen the U.K.’s nuclear deterrent, including allocating more than £63 billion ($83 billion) over the next four years to fund the four Dreadnought class ballistic missile submarines and the SSN-AUKUS nuclear attack submarines, as well as a new warhead for British Trident submarine-launched ballistic missiles (SLBMs).

‘£64bn will be invested into renewing the UK’s nuclear deterrent’

The money will go into building new submarines, developing a new sovereign warhead, and buying 12 F-35A fighter jets, to guarantee “British and European security”, Starmer says
https://t.co/vzwgATWaj2 pic.twitter.com/9tf0Wc2mFG

— Sky News (@SkyNews) June 30, 2026

British Army

Moving on to the British Army, this service will benefit from more investment into “inexpensive expendable autonomous systems and loitering munitions.” This will include around $66 million boost over the next 12 months for the Army’s Rapstone program, which will pay for additional first-person view (FPV) and interceptor drones.

The British Army gets a new uncrewed ground vehicle (UGV) program, as yet unnamed, which plans to rapidly develop and produce uncrewed vehicles and associated mission systems via U.K. industry.

In the air, Project Nyx will provide the British Army with up to 24 autonomous armed drones that will operate in a crewed-uncrewed teaming arrangement with the service’s recently upgraded Apache attack helicopters. Planned to be operational by 2030, the drones will be outfitted for reconnaissance, precision strike, and electronic warfare.

Lastly, under Project Corvus, up to 24 surveillance drones will replace the British Army’s much-troubled Watchkeeper drone system, carrying out intelligence, surveillance, target acquisition, and reconnaissance (ISTAR).

Royal Air Force

While standout announcements for the Royal Air Force are fewer than for the other services, the flying branch does secure around $10.6 billion for the Global Combat Air Program (GCAP) over the next four years. This should drive forward the effort to a next-generation stealth fighter for the Royal Air Force, alongside Japan and Italy. 

More intriguingly, the Defense Investment Plan mentions a “new, national Collaborative Combat Air program,” which would appear to supersede various earlier ‘loyal wingman’-type programs. The Collaborative Combat Air program aims to develop “new autonomous fighter jets which will fly alongside crewed jets,” and a demonstrator is expected to be in the air by at least 2030.

As part of the nuclear deterrence budget, the Royal Air Force will also receive the 12 F-35As that will be armed with U.S.-owned B61-12 tactical nuclear bombs, allowing them to join NATO’s nuclear mission. You can read more about that plan — and questions about its feasibility — here.

Finally, the Storm Shroud system will provide the Royal Air Force with a new uncrewed electronic warfare drone, which will enter service this year. The Storm Shroud has already been trialed in exercises and is equipped with the Leonardo BriteStorm stand-in jammer, which you can read more about here.

All three services will benefit from an initiative to boost munitions and weapons stockpiles, a growing concern for militaries across the board, which has been highlighted by depletions through transfers to Ukraine and conflict in the Middle East.

The United Kingdom will spend £11 billion ($14.5 billion) to increase U.K. stockpiles, including long-range strike weapons, low-cost cruise missiles, and one-way effectors. Conceivably, a lot of these efforts will be kickstarted by separate projects originally launched to provide Ukraine with U.K.-made weapons. By 2030, there is a plan to build at least six new energetics factories as part of an overall increase in national munitions production capacity. 

Less obvious are the cuts that the British Armed Forces will face in some areas.

The government says it will phase out its Storm Shadow air-launched cruise missiles, many of which have already been transferred to Ukraine. The plan says that “We are now pivoting to the next generation of low-cost cruise missiles,” without providing further details.

Also facing the axe are more than 30 Wildcat and the oldest (Mk 6A variant) Chinook helicopters, as well as plans to upgrade a satellite communications system.

A drone-based defense plan

By putting drones squarely at the forefront, Starmer’s long-delayed Defense Investment Plan is certainly eye-catching. It also comes with immense developmental risk, involving many concepts that remain unproven in the real world.

However, there are still plenty of stress factors, not least the demands of senior officers from all three services for additional funding.

Tensions around the Defense Investment Plan have already led to fierce discussions between the Ministry of Defense and the Treasury. These came to a head when John Healey resigned as defense secretary earlier this month.

In an effort to placate criticisms, Starmer added another £1 billion ($1.3 billion) to the defense budget after Healey walked. However, Healey had reportedly been pushing the Treasury for a total rise closer to £18 billion ($23.8 billion).

I want the Defence Investment Plan to be a success. And I thank the MOD officials who’ve worked so hard over many months on it. I welcome the extra funding and focus the Treasury has ceded over the last couple of weeks. (1/6)

— John Healey (@JohnHealey_MP) June 30, 2026

The government has also responded to criticism that it is moving too slowly to address emerging threats and changing security demands.

“The Defense Secretary [Dan Jarvis] has spent the last two weeks refocusing the Defense Investment Plan so that it prioritizes getting the latest kit into the hands of military personnel,” the MoD said.

So, there we have it. The U.K. government has injected $6.6 billion into a defense plan that aims to do no less than reconfigure the British Armed Forces as “a flexible, integrated force with attack drones flying alongside Army helicopters, RAF jets made invisible from enemy detection with new drones, and a hybrid Royal Navy made up of crewed and uncrewed vessels.”

It is a bold vision and one that will face further challenges, not just in terms of cost and technological hurdles, but also from senior officers who will still question whether traditional crewed platforms — as well as all other military requirements — are adequately funded.

Contact the author: thomas@thewarzone.com

June 30 (UPI) — Security forces across South Africa were braced Tuesday for demonstrations coinciding with anti-immigrant and vigilante groups’ self-declared deadline for undocumented migrants to leave the country, amid fears that the protests could turn violent.

Tuesday’s events follow weeks of rallies that have been blamed for inciting violence against migrants in the country, both illegally and legally, by people who believe they are taking jobs from South Africans, carrying out criminal offenses and overburdening schools, hospitals and other essential services.

March and March, one of the anti-migrant organizations, had used the threat of the protests to try to force the “immediate massive deportation of all illegal foreigners currently in the country” by June 30.

However, President Cyril Ramaphosa’s direct appeals for cool heads and for demonstrators not to engage in “intimidation, threats or ultimatums” appeared to have been heard with the Police Ministry reporting that, apart from some looting, the protests went off mostly without incident.

In Johannesburg, five people were arrested for allegedly looting a foreign-owned store in Soweto township while windows of apartments in Yeoville, home to many migrants from other African countries, were smashed by brick-hurling protesters, police said.

Five people were also arrested in Hammarsdale in KwaZulu-Natal province after they allegedly broke into a shop there.

Ramaphosa met leaders of the protests on Monday, ordering them not to resort to violence while acknowledging that the immigration system needed fixing.

“Some foreign nationals who live in South Africa are here lawfully. They work, study, raise families, invest in our economy and contribute positively to our society. They too are entitled to the protection of our laws and our Constitution. The right to protest and freedom of expression does not allow people to threaten or intimidate others, or to engage in acts of vandalism or violence,” he wrote in his weekly blog.

Ramaphosa’s intervention came too late for many immigrants, frightened into leaving by the violence and anti-migrant sentiment in the country.

At least three foreign nationals have been killed in violent attacks in the past month: two Mozambicans when a mob razed a shanty settlement in the Western Cape and a Malawian man at another encampment near Durban during a march against undocumented immigrants that forced hundreds of migrants to flee to the safety of churches and mosques.

Nigeria evacuated 269 of its citizens on Monday — taking the number it has flown home to date to about 600 — with more flights planned over the next few days.

Gardener Kauga Nyirenda told CNN two men turned up at his home threatening to kill him if he didn’t go back to his native Malawi.

“They asked me: ‘When are you going to leave the country? We want to fix our country. If you don’t leave now, you’re going to leave in a coffin because we don’t need anyone after 30th of June,'” said Nyirenda.

In the run-up to Tuesday, about 25,000 others have been sent back to their home countries, mostly elsewhere in Africa, with about 50,000 people detained as illegal migrants since January, according to government agencies, with many of those in temporary camps for their own safety, pending repatriation processing.

Malawi has repatriated about 7,000 of its citizens. Ghana, Mozambique and Zimbabwe have also been laying on air and road repatriation transport for their nationals.

Official figures show there are at least three million documented foreign nationals in South Africa.

Here we go again: Twenty-five years after “Mamma Mia!” premiered on Broadway, the national tour returns to Los Angeles at the Ahmanson Theatre with show-stopping set pieces and a crew that knows the show inside and out.

The beloved jukebox musical, which chronicles a Greek wedding with three potential fathers of the bride, has taken over the Ahmanson through July 19 as part of its 25th anniversary tour, and audience members should expect a full-on ABBA sing-along dance party.

“People come dressed up,” said associate choreographer Janet Rothermel. “There’s a lot of boas, and there’s a lot of spandex, and platform shoes.”

Rothermel is one of many people on the creative team who have worked on the show since its original Broadway run in 2001. Associate director Martha Banta and associate music supervisor David Holcenberg have also seen the musical through its nearly 14-year original Broadway run, national tours and numerous international iterations (Holcenberg was its original music director).

“When we were all back together again in rehearsal, it was an extraordinary feeling,” Banta said. “Not with the same cast, but Janet, David and I and others that have done it for years. With everything that’s been going on in the world in the last three years, it was just a soothing thing to do.”

“We’ve just been embraced beyond what we were used to, which was pretty great,” she added.

Everyone involved in the production echoed a similar sentiment: that the “ultimate feel-good musical” is exactly what audiences want to see during painful or overwhelming times. The show’s traveling costume supervisor and associate designer Eva Maciek put it most bluntly: “I love working on it because nobody dies.”

Rehearsals for the original Broadway run coincided with the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, Holcenberg explained, and he was struck by audience members’ emotional responses to the first shows.

“I’d have people coming down to the pit after the show with tears streaming down their faces saying, ‘Thank you for letting us forget the world for a couple hours and just have joy,’” he said. “Because this show is joy. It’s full of joy.”

Beyond the absurdly catchy music and the rom-com story, part of the show’s joyfulness comes from its colorful costumes and beachy aesthetic. The onstage set is relatively sparse, consisting only of a pair of rotating “taverna” walls, but backstage, hundreds of moving parts, including stage mechanics, hand props and costume changes, propel the story forward and keep the production looking effortlessly glamorous.

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Blingy microphones backstage for the “Mamma Mia!” production at the Ahmanson Theatre in downtown Los Angeles.  (Christina House / Los Angeles Times)

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Eva Maciek, the travel costume supervisor of the show, shares some wardrobe pieces backstage.  (Christina House / Los Angeles Times)

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Ryan Sander, assistant choreographer, left, and Eva Maciek, travel costume supervisor of the show, show off Sander’s “Voulez-Vous” costume.  (Christina House / Los Angeles Times)

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Life jackets backstage for a musical number.  (Christina House / Los Angeles Times)

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Shelves full of hats are seen during a backstage tour.  (Christina House / Los Angeles Times)

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The show‘s stage is seen during a backstage tour of the “Mamma Mia!” theater production at the Ahmanson Theatre.  (Christina House / Los Angeles Times)

The obvious choice for coolest costumes, according to Maciek, are the bejeweled jumpsuits worn by titular mamma Donna Sheridan (played by Jessica Crouch) and her Dynamos, Tanya (Jalynn Steele) and Rosie (Carly Sakolove). Each one has hundreds of glittering silver stars attached.

“I’m glad I’m not the one who had to sew them on originally!” Maciek joked. The costumes all originated in London or New York, but they’ve been traveling from city to city in storage “gondolas” since the current tour started in 2023, requiring constant repairs and touch-ups from local stitchers.

Thematically, Maciek said, the costumes’ evolving colors tell their own story throughout the show.

“When everybody arrives at the island, they’re all in beige with a little hint of blue,” she explained. More blue gets added by “Voulez Vous,” and then they transition into jewel tones. “When you get into the wedding scene, everybody is in pinks, soft reds, oranges and yellows,” Maciek said. “So there’s a real color story that goes throughout.”

Ryan Sander, the show’s assistant choreographer, dance captain and current “swing” (an actor covering multiple ensemble roles), has a special relationship to his “Voulez-Vous” costume. He originally wore it as a performer on the national tour more than 20 years ago, and when he was called to come back onstage, he found that it still fit like a glove. The costume, a denim vest and pants set with extremely Y2K lace-up details, is representative of the show’s approach to fashion trends.

“There is something timeless about these pieces that’s just so interesting,” he said. “It is a period piece and we stick to that, but there is something timeless about the costumes.”

Besides the costume racks, another crucial backstage element are the vocal booths, where the ensemble contributes to the musical soundscape from behind the curtain.

“One of the main things about the ‘ABBA sound’ is how they layered the vocals, and we do that all live in our show,” Holcenberg said. “The ensemble works really, really hard, because when they’re not on stage, they don’t get any time off. They’re just singing their little faces off.”

Even though the show has been running for decades, the creative team said each cast brings a new energy and tone.

“Our new Donna, Jess, brings a real rock chick energy to it,” Holcenberg said. “Even though the notes on the page stay the same, the casting and the way they perform it still changes from person to person and night to night.”

According to stage manager Andrew Volzer, the most “unique” aspects of the show are its long history with a tight crew and its multigenerational appeal — “Not only from the audience perspective, but also for the people working on the show. People are always coming and going,” he said.

“We always say, you never leave the island.”

The embattled Los Angeles Homeless Services Authority sued the Trump administration on Monday to stop it from depriving the region of hundreds of millions of dollars in funding, saying the effort is unwarranted and violates federal laws.

The authority, better known as LAHSA, said in its Monday filing that cutting off the funds would put more than 11,000 people — 1,900 of them children — at risk of losing housing or other services.

LAHSA, a joint city-county agency overseen by political appointees, is seeking a temporary restraining order to bar the federal Housing and Urban Development Department from suspending the funds.

“The people who will be harmed by this decision are not bureaucrats,” said Gita O’Neill, LAHSA’s interim chief executive officer, in a statement Monday. “They are families, veterans, seniors, and formerly homeless Angelenos who rely on these resources to remain housed.”

The filing in federal court comes nearly three weeks after HUD officials said they were suspending LAHSA from applying for or receiving federal funds, citing financial mismanagement, fraud and a lack of safeguards to prevent conflicts of interest.

In its 46-page lawsuit, LAHSA pushed back on HUD’s allegations, saying they were not supported by the evidence. Lawyers for LAHSA portrayed HUD’s actions as part of a larger political agenda — elimination of the federally approved “Continuum of Care” system, which makes LAHSA the overarching applicant for most federal homelessness funding across Los Angeles County.

The Trump administration “has made clear it wants to scrap the program entirely in favor of a homelessness policy favoring criminal enforcement, drug treatment, institutionalization and civil commitment of the mentally ill,” the lawsuit states.

HUD officials have said they are barring LAHSA from applying for funds on behalf of the Continuum of Care, which covers 85 cities, including Los Angeles. LAHSA secured $220 million in federal funds for various agencies in 2024 and $944 million since 2021, according to the June 11 letter from HUD Deputy Secretary Andrew D. Hughes.

HUD did not immediately respond to a request for comment. In the letter, Hughes said his agency had received information that LAHSA “may have committed violations of federal law” while carrying out its obligations as part of its HUD grant agreements.

“HUD has evidence that LAHSA’s repeated false statements and its irresponsible actions and failures, including its lack of financial management, internal controls, and safeguards against conflicts of interest, pose a threat to HUD, the public, and those living on the streets of Los Angeles,” he wrote.

In the letter, Hughes said that HUD’s inspector general had opened an investigation. Depending on the outcome, the money could be restored or LAHSA could be permanently barred from receiving funds.

LAHSA, in its lawsuit, said HUD has not provided any investigative findings to show violations of the funding agreements. Instead, agency lawyers said, federal officials relied on “a mash-up of old news articles, comments from public officials taken out of context, and findings from routine public audits that included recommendations that were all appropriately actioned.”

Lawyers for LAHSA contend that HUD’s actions violate the U.S. Constitution and override the dictates of Congress, which established many of the processes for distributing federal homeless funds.

The vast majority of the federal funds secured by LAHSA as a grant applicant goes toward permanent housing, agency officials said.

LAHSA, created in 1993, is overseen by a 10-member commission, half from the city and half from the county. Among those commissioners is L.A. Mayor Karen Bass, who has made homelessness a central part of her agenda. Each of the five county supervisors has an appointee.

At stake in the battle between HUD and LAHSA is an array of services affecting some of the region’s most vulnerable residents.

LAHSA oversees the Homeless Management Information System, the federally-mandated software that tracks homeless people across the county. It has 8,000 individual users and is used by more than 300 agencies, according to the lawsuit.

HUD’s plan to suspend the funding would prevent LAHSA from using the system to match Angelenos — those on the street and in shelters — with housing and services, the lawsuit said.

LAHSA also oversees the annual “point in time” homelessness count across the county. Agency officials have pointed to the results from those counts as evidence that they have been making steady headway, with homelessness decreasing 4.3% countywide and 5.5% within Los Angeles between 2023 and 2025.

Unsheltered homelessness, which tallies the people living outside or in their vehicles, fell by a larger margin, declining 14% across the county and 17.5% within L.A. during that period.

Despite those numbers, LAHSA’s reputation has been battered by some highly critical assessments.

Last year, a global consulting firm retained as part of a federal lawsuit over the city of L.A.’s response to homelessness found that homeless services provided by LAHSA and the city lacked adequate financial controls, leaving the system vulnerable to waste and fraud.

Several months earlier, county auditors identified lax accounting procedures that resulted in LAHSA’s failure to pay its contractors on time. Even after that report was issued, nonprofit groups with LAHSA contracts continued to report that payments were behind schedule.

Last year, the county Board of Supervisors reached a breaking point, pulling more than $300 million — the vast majority of its funds — out of LAHSA and creating its own homelessness department. City officials have been weighing a similar move in recent months.

Riverside-based radio station, 99.1 KGGI, has lost its last local on-air host.

Longtime radio personalities Evelyn Erives, Nick Nack and Garrison King were all cut from the Inland Empire station last week as part of iHeartMedia’s latest round of national layoffs. In an internal memo, the media giant said it would restructure its radio programming to better “leverage” the company’s technology.

iHeartMedia declined to comment on how many people lost their jobs, but dozens of on-air and other staff positions have reportedly been cut across the country.

The memo — attributed to Chief Programming Officer Tom Poleman and Ann Marie Licata, the chief executive of the company’s multiplatform group — framed the changes as a way to “move faster and operate with greater precision across markets,” and to “position us not just to adapt to the future, but to lead it.”

The cuts are part of a broader push to reduce costs. In May, iHeartMedia launched a new savings program, set to begin in the second half of 2026, aimed at trimming an additional $50 million on top of the $100 million in savings the company had already announced.

iHeartMedia is the nation’s largest radio operator, with more than 850 stations across 160 markets and a sizable presence in Burbank. Its Los Angeles–area stations include KFI-AM 640, KLAC-AM 570, KOST-FM 103.5 and KIIS-FM 102.7.

As the media landscape continues to evolve, the company has leaned harder into podcasting, home to hallmark shows like “Stuff You Should Know,” “Questlove Supreme” and “Las Culturistas.”

Last year, iHeartMedia introduced its “Guaranteed Human” campaign, an ongoing pledge that no iHeartMedia station or podcast will feature an AI-generated personality or AI-generated music.

How that promise squares with the layoffs is unclear. With stations like Riverside’s 99.1 now stripped of their local hosts, the company has said nothing about who — or what — will replace them.

MANCHESTER, England — Andy Burnham, likely the next U.K. prime minister, pledged Monday to give away a chunk of his power by handing greater autonomy to local leaders in a “circuit-breaker” for the sclerotic British state.

The former mayor of Greater Manchester also said he would move part of the prime minister’s office from London’s 10 Downing St. to northwest England as part of “the biggest rebalancing of power our country has seen.”

“Growth cannot be ordered from the top down. Instead, it can only be nurtured from the bottom up,” Burnham said in a speech aimed at bringing voters, Labour Party colleagues and financial markets up to speed with his economic vision.

Burnham is the strong favorite to replace Prime Minister Keir Starmer, who announced his resignation last week.

“If councils can’t fix potholes, what chance do they have of bringing forward major regeneration schemes to get growth going?” Burnham said. He set out a 10-year plan to get “good growth in every postcode,” in a country where wealth and power are concentrated in London and the south of England.

He said he would reverse almost two decades of low growth since the 2008 financial crisis through an approach dubbed “Manchesterism” — harnessing private and public money to invest in areas like transport, housing and infrastructure. He also pledged to create new industrial jobs and better educational opportunities, and to reform the U.K.’s inefficient and expensive privatized water and energy utilities.

Moving the new ‘No. 10 North’ to Manchester

During the speech at the People’s History Museum in the city where he spent nine years as mayor, Burnham said a new government office in Manchester – dubbed “No. 10 North” — would oversee regional development and become “the nerve center of a rewired Britain,” tasked with equalizing living standards across the country. Regional mayors would get more power over housing, welfare and education as part of his planned reforms.

Burnham’s rousing speech was short on specifics about where the government would find more money, and he didn’t take questions from journalists.

Burnham won praise for his role in revitalizing and regenerating Manchester, but he has not served in a U.K. government for almost two decades, and may struggle to replicate “Manchesterism” on a U.K.-wide scale.

The Institute for Public Policy Research, a left-leaning think tank, said Burnham is right to focus on “rebalancing Britain.”

“The U.K.’s concentration of power and opportunity in Westminster has held back growth, productivity and living standards for too long,” said IPPR Executive Director Harry Quilter-Pinner. “The real test now is delivery.”

Matthew Flinders, a politics professor at the University of Sheffield, said replicating Burnham’s Manchester approach on a national level would require “a fundamental shift” in the way politics is done in Britain.

“And at the heart of that would be moving from a very traditional, elitist, centralized model of politics toward something that is in many ways far more European, far more based on power-sharing in order to develop long-term policymaking capacity,” he said.

Burnham is likely to inherit Starmer’s challenges

Burnham will be aware that Starmer also announced a 10-year mission — the equivalent of two full terms in government —- to transform Britain soon after he was elected in a landslide in July 2024. Starmer is leaving after two years in office marred by missteps and judgment errors that eroded his standing with his party and the public.

Burnham won a special election for a seat in Parliament on June 18 and was sworn in as a lawmaker on June 22, the same day Starmer announced that he will resign as soon as a successor is chosen.

Burnham is so far the only contender in the Labour Party leadership contest. If no one challenges him, he will become prime minister by July 20.

While Burnham is considered more charismatic than the stolid Starmer, he will face many of the same political and economic challenges, including a sluggish economy, tattered public services and a cost-of-living squeeze. He will also be constrained by the platform the center-left Labour Party was elected on in 2024, with its pledges not to increase taxes on working people.

And like other NATO countries, the U.K. is under pressure to dramatically increase defense spending to counter a more aggressive Russia and less reliable United States.

The government’s long-awaited defense investment plan — which sparked the resignation of Defense Secretary John Healey on June 11 — is expected to be published before a NATO summit in Turkey on July 7 and 8. Starmer’s successor will be expected to stick to the commitments in the plan.

“Andy Burnham’s big idea is to shuffle power between politicians,” said opposition Conservative Party Chairman Kevin Hollinrake. “Not fix the welfare system. Not cut the taxes strangling working families and British business. Not fund the defense our country desperately needs.”

Grant and Lawless write for the Associated Press. Lawless reported from London. AP writer Brian Melley contributed to this report.

In 2015, musician Roberto Carlos launched Boleros de Noche, an annual concert series held in Los Angeles that aimed at preserving and showcasing the Latin American bolero music genre.

This year, the event is celebrating its 10th anniversary with performances at the Ford on Aug. 1 by Puerto Rican singer and former Calle 13 member iLe and L.A.-based bolero trio Voz Bohemia

On Friday, the city of L.A. honored the series’ decade-long run and legacy of uplifting bolero music by declaring Aug.1 “Día del Bolero.”

Boleros are ballads noted for their slow tempo and romantic lyrics accompanied by a crooning vocal style. Though the genre originated in Cuba, it quickly gained popularity across Latin America, with each culture putting their own spin on it. In the early 20th century, the evolving sound of boleros was shaped by the Cuban group Trio Matamoros, Mexican composer Agustín Lara, Puerto Rican artist Rafael Hernández and Ecuadorian singer Julio Jaramillo.

The genre saw a resurgence in popularity in the 1980s and ‘90s when famed Mexican artists Juan Gabriel and Luis Miguel embraced the bolero sound. In recent years, the bolero movement has been modernized and electrified by artists such as Mon Laferte, Romeo Santos, Adrian Quesada and Kali Uchis. In the last five years, Quesada has released two bolero albums, “Boleros Psicodélicos” and “Boleros Psicodélicos II,” that mix the genre’s classic sounds with elements of psychedelic rock.

“Over the past decade, Boleros de Noche has presented numerous concerts featuring both local and international artists, has brought together thousands of people across the city to bask in the lush orchestration of this music,” said City Councilmember Nithya Raman, who presented Carlos with the honor. “For so many in the Latino community and beyond, this isn’t just music, it’s memory, it’s home, and perhaps most importantly, it’s heritage being carried forward.”

Raised in L.A. County by parents who immigrated from the Mexican state of Oaxaca, Carlos says he first fell in love with live performance and bolero music in his midteens, when he would frequent the now-defunct Teatro los Pinos in South Gate.

He yearned for that same level of comfort and awe at music and wanted to share that with a larger audience. The first iteration of Boleros de Noche took place in 2015 at an art gallery in Echo Park.

“Over the years, I have heard countless stories from audience members who tell me how this music reminds them of their parents, grandparents, first loves and family traditions,” Carlos said Friday at City Hall. “Ten years ago, bolero was rarely part of our city’s cultural conversation, and today bolero programming can be found across Los Angeles, and I’m honored that Boleros de Noche has been a driving force behind its growth.”

Boleros de Noche has sold out shows at the Ford over the last few years and has featured artists such as Gaby Moreno, Marisoul and the legendary trio Los Panchos. In 2025, the event made its debut at Chicago’s historic Symphony Center.

The bolero genre’s popularity and cultural significance has been spotlighted outside of L.A. in recent years as well.

On Dec. 5, 2023, UNESCO, the United Nation’s agency aimed at safeguarding social and cultural foundations, recognized the musical genre as an Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity.

As part of Friday’s ceremony, Carlos and his bolero group Los Rebeldes Románticos performed several tunes, including the Mexican bolero classic “Sabor a Mí.”

Last year, Carlos spoke with The Times about his ambitions for Boleros de Noche and the mentality that drives the event series.

“At Boleros de Noche, [I want] for us to speak in Spanish, to feel recognized, to do this music as a celebration for all these artists that unfortunately became background music for a lot of like weddings and quinceañeras,” he said. “How about if we celebrate them and give them recognition? How about if, through my events, I can take people back to the 1940s to my experience at Teatro los Pinos?”

Given recent attacks on Latinos on the local and national levels, Carlos said he hoped his events would create a safe and welcoming gathering place.

“It’s about bolero music. It’s about community. It’s about people. It’s about the musicians,” he said. “Many of the musicians were undocumented. They brought this music to L.A. through their hometowns.”

In the last decade or so, Angelina Jolie has been on screen less frequently. So when she is — and not in forgettable tentpoles like “Eternals” — it’s worth paying attention. There seems to be a thoughtful intentionality to the roles she now chooses, almost as if this astoundingly famous woman wants to tell us something vital about herself, offering clues into her understandably guarded personal life.

Take 2015’s “By the Sea,” which she wrote and directed. Coincidentally or not, that pained study of marital dissolution, co-starring Jolie’s then-husband Brad Pitt, intersected with the couple’s real-life breakup — not to mention Jolie’s grief over the death of her mother, Marcheline Bertrand. Two years ago, Jolie portrayed a version of the elusive, emotionally closed-off opera singer Maria Callas in “Maria.” The conception of the role, marked by a dim view of stardom’s suffocating alienation, was something Jolie clearly understood. Moviegoers should be careful not to read too much autobiography into an actor’s creative choices, but Jolie makes such speculation tantalizing, adding additional layers of drama to her films.

The intermittently affecting “Couture” feels similarly close to her heart, depicting a filmmaker whose life is interrupted by a cancer diagnosis — a reality Jolie knows all too well. In 2013, she underwent a preventive double mastectomy over concerns of her likelihood to develop breast or ovarian cancer. (Bertrand died of cancer in 2007.) Knowledge of Jolie’s circumstance will inform a viewer’s reaction to her wounded, resilient performance, but our inherent sympathies can only take French writer-director Alice Winocour’s ensemble piece so far.

Jolie plays Maxine, an American indie director hired to create a flashy opening film for Paris Fashion Week. Newly arrived in the City of Light, she has only a few days to put together the short, assisted by her trusted cinematographer Anton (Louis Garrel). As we deduce from the phone calls Maxine makes back home, she’s also going through an acrimonious divorce and has trouble connecting with her blasé teenage daughter. At least this Paris paycheck gig will bolster her finances — and get her ready for the feature film she’s been wanting to make for years.

Just then, though, Maxine’s future gets a rewrite. A French doctor (Vincent London) tells her she has breast cancer and needs a double mastectomy immediately. Maybe she can finish the Fashion Week film, but her passion project must wait. An artist and mother who has spent her adulthood in constant motion will have to learn what it means to stop everything and be still.

The film’s title would appear to be a reference to the story’s setting, but in French, “coutures” can also mean “stitches,” and indeed Winocour sews together three thematically linked story strands. As Maxine wrestles with her cancer diagnosis, an inexperienced South Sudanese model named Ada (Anyier Anei) works Fashion Week so she can send money home to her family. (Ada has no interest in modeling, hoping instead to become a pharmacist.) Meanwhile a makeup artist, Angèle (Ella Rumpf), longs to be an author, although she cannot get anyone interested in her writing. Each one becomes a part of the fabric of Fashion Week, but their disparate problems are a far cry from the glitzy event’s self-importance.

Winocour has often made films about women balancing their public-facing life with their private selves In 2019’s “Proxima,” Eva Green played an astronaut missing her young daughter. In 2022’s “Paris Memories,” Virginie Efira starred as an interpreter recovering from the shock of surviving a terrorist attack. Winocour shows us the intimate, vulnerable spaces within her characters that those on the outside don’t have access to.

“Couture’s” three principals rarely interact with one another, but those meaningful exchanges argue that, amid the mad clatter of the everyday, a brief, unguarded moment with a stranger can be supremely restorative. Unfortunately, the juggling of storylines ends up being more schematic than insightful. Angèle’s narrative never catches fire and while Anei is striking as Ada, that section of the film feels slightly patronizing, reducing this immigrant tale to yet another strained salute to perseverance.

This leaves Jolie as the movie’s magnetic center, with Maxine drifting through despair as she ponders what to do. Her doctor insists that the surgery cannot wait, but putting her ambitions on hold means losing a part of herself — a different kind of death sentence than the one she’s now facing.

The character is underwritten but Jolie picks up much of the slack through her silently shattered expression. As she’s gotten older, the Oscar winner has become more comfortable doing less in her performances, allowing for a fragile serenity that is belied by the anguish and anxiety roiling underneath. It’s not just our recognition of the real-life parallels that make Jolie so touching in “Couture” — it’s that ineffable star power she’s possessed for so long. In a story about a potential tragedy, what’s saddest is that Winocour’s film cannot match its lead’s effortless command.

June 25 (UPI) — The European Union released $3.6 billion in funds of the Ukraine Support Loan for budget and defense needs, the bloc said Thursday.

The funds were released at the Ukraine Recovery Conference, where European Commission President Ursula Von der Leyen announced the funding, which is the first instalment of the new macro-financial assistance. The MFA is a segment of the Ukraine Support Loan, under which $102 billion will be offered to Ukraine in 2026 and 2027.

“As a country at war, Ukraine’s capaicty to defend its territory depends on the rapid availability of critical products in the required quantities and within very short timeframes,” a press release said. “The first instalment of the [$6.8] billion defense package to support drone procurement will be disbursed in the coming days.”

“This is indeed solidarity in action,” Von der Leyen said. “It shows Europe’s support for Ukraine is here to stay.”

The original plan in December was to use Russia’s frozen assets to fund the loan, but the Russian Central Bank sued a Belgian bank over the plan, so the EU had to find a new way to finance the loan.

Instead, they agreed to create the loan through joint debt. Hungary, Slovakia and the Czech Republic negotiated an exemption.

The payments are conditional on Kyiv’s reforms. If Ukraine reverses its ongoing fight against corruption, the EU could suspend the funds, Euro News reported.

The loan also requires Ukraine to buy weapons and ammunition made in Europe, with some exceptions depending on availability.

“Ukraine has the opportunity to analyze the situation on the battlefield and identify the range of products that they need, and then they have to inform us in the form of product schedules,” a Commission spokesperson told Euro News. “The priority remains to make purchases within the EU and Ukraine.”

“We continue to call on all our partners to maintain their support, because a strong and independent Ukraine is in all our interests,” Von der Leyen said Thursday. “Our ambition is not only to help Ukraine endure, it is also to help Ukraine grow and prosper as a free and European country.”

The United States is not expected to contribute funds to the loan.

MINNEAPOLIS — The series finale between the Dodgers and Minnesota Twins featured a marquee pitching matchup between Shohei Ohtani and Joe Ryan. But the Dodgers’ 4-3 win on Wednesday wasn’t quite the pitcher’s duel it was advertised to be, in front of the Twins’ first sellout crowd of the season at Target Field.

The Dodgers offense had eight hits against Ryan, tied for the second-most he’s allowed in a start this season, and four runs in six innings. And Ohtani gave up three runs (two earned) and five hits.

Ryan won the first battle — the one against Ohtani the hitter to lead off the first inning.

Ohtani roped a first-pitch fastball to right field, clocking an exit velocity of 110.7-mph, into the glove of Twins outfielder Kody Clemens. That was part of a three-up, three-down first inning for Ryan. Ohtani countered with a hitless first inning of his own on the mound, but with a walk.

In the top of the second, Mookie Betts’ solo homer gave the Dodgers (52-29) an early lead. The 300th home run of Betts’ career was part of a three-hit day for the shortstop, a triple shy of the cycle.

The Twins’ offense responded.

Their first run was the result of a passed ball. Ohtani gave up singles to three of the first four batters he faced in the second inning, to load the bases. Then, Ohtani threw a first-pitch fastball inside to Ryan Kreidler. It got past catcher Dalton Rushing, who seemed to expect a different pitch, and the ball rolled out of play to tie the score.

Rushing, in his first game back in the lineup after being removed Monday to rule out a concussion, huddled with Ohtani and pitching coach Mark Prior on the mound to debrief.

Ohtani then gave up a two-run single to Kreidler before striking out Trevor Larnach to end the inning.

It was a good thing Ohtani, who went 2-for-5 on Wednesday, had lobbied to hit and pitch. Dodgers No. 9 hitter Alex Freeland led off the third with a double. Then Ohtani sent a ground ball up the middle to give himself some run support.

That started a three-run rally for the Dodgers. Max Muncy later drove in Ohtani, and Alex Call contributed a sacrifice fly to give the Dodgers a lead again.

Twins left-hander Anthony Banda, who received his World Series ring Monday from a gaggle of his former teammates, took over for Ryan in the seventh.

Ohtani was the first hitter he faced. And Banda struck him out on a fastball that barely clipped the outside corner — and was initially called a ball, before a successful ABS challenge by Twins catcher Victor Caratini.

Banda then hit Andy Pages with a pitch and gave up a single to Freeman. But he escaped unscathed, stranding them at the corners.

The Twins threatened in the seventh and eighth, but Dodgers right-hander Kyle Hurt overcame a pair of walks, and left-hander Alex Vesia navigated a pair of singles to hold the score. Closer Tanner Scott secured the save.

Julius Randle is headed back to New York, although he will be playing in a different borough this time around.

The Brooklyn Nets acquired the 12-year veteran after he spent the past two seasons with the Minnesota Timberwolves, multiple media outlets reported Monday night.

As part of the three-team deal, Minnesota will send Randle and the 28th pick in Tuesday’s draft to Brooklyn in exchange for the Nets’ No. 33 overall pick. In addition, Brooklyn will send veteran center Nic Claxton to the Chicago Bulls. The Timberwolves will receive Mo Gueye from Chicago but are expected to waive the third-year forward.

For Minnesota, the trade creates a $33 million trade exception as well as financial flexibility to seek free agents to play alongside superstar Anthony Edwards. Later on Monday, the Timberwolves came to terms with guard Ayo Dosunmu on a five-year, $112 million deal to remain with the team after being acquired from Chicago at the trade deadline.

Randle goes from a team that won 49 games in each of the last two seasons and three playoff series during that stretch to one that won just 20 games last year and a combined 78 over the last three seasons.

The Nets, who haven’t had a representative in the All-Star Game since Kevin Durant in 2022, will continue rebuilding with the No. 6 overall pick in the 2026 draft to go with the first-rounder they received from Minnesota.

The Lakers drafted Randle at No. 7 overall in 2014, with his first two NBA seasons coinciding with the final two of Lakers legend Kobe Bryant. After becoming a free agent in 2018, Randle played one season with the New Orleans Pelicans before becoming a three-time All-Star during five seasons with the New York Knicks.

In October 2024, Randle went to Minnesota as part of the deal that brought Karl-Anthony Towns to New York. Towns was a key member of the Knicks team that defeated the San Antonio Spurs in the NBA Finals and celebrated with a championship parade in Lower Manhattan last week.

During the 2025 postseason, Randle shook his reputation for fading in the playoffs, crediting his perseverance to a mentality instilled in him many years earlier by Bryant.

“I had a great mentor in Kobe that didn’t necessarily let me pout or get down on myself,” Randle said after scoring a career playoff high of 31 points during a conference semifinal game against Golden State. “His thing was always, ‘All right, what’s next? How can you get better? How can you improve?’ So I always just kind of took that mentality with me.”

While Randle hasn’t publicly commented on the trade, his wife Kendra posted a video to her Instagram Story of 9-year-old son Kyden, the oldest of their three children, stating that he’s “so excited” and “so happy” to be returning to New York.

“@brooklynnets fans he really wanted to make this,” Kendra Randle wrote as a caption to the video.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.