Channel 4 is reportedly gearing up to axe The Inheritance, which was fronted by Liz Hurley and Rob Rinder and saw 13 players attempt to win money from a will, after just one series
Liz Hurley starred as The Deceased in the Channel 4 game show (Image: Channel 4)
Elizabeth Hurley‘s reality show could be about to be axed after just one series. The Hollywood star, 60, teamed up with Good Morning Britain presenter Rob Rinder to front the game show, which aired on Channel 4 earlier this year.
The Bedazzled actress played the The Deceased, with Rob working as The Executor, and 13 contestants battled it out in a series of challenges to unlock money from the will as they try to convince each other that only they should be trusted with the money pot. Whilst no official decision has bene made on the programme’s future, insiders have claimed that it is not expected to come back for a second run of episodes.
A source told The Sun: “The Inheritance has been widely viewed as a flop, despite all the publicity and having a big star at its heart.
“Channel 4 maintains no decision has been made on its future, but many people involved in the debut series are working on the basis that it isn’t returning. Of course there may be some huge changes of mind and the show enjoys a stay of execution, but all the signs are that this is another expensive flop and they’re likely to quit while they’re behind.”
The Mirror has contacted Channel 4 representatives for comment.
The first episode of The Inheritance pulled in just half a million viewers, although this grew once catch up figures were taken into account. However, over the course of two weeks, overall, the programme averaged just 1.5 million. In the end, it was 28-year-old Yorkshire scaffolder Cam who emerged victorious, winning the vote amongst his fellow finalists to be the ultimate Prime Beneficiary, receiving a whopping £100,000 fortune from The Deceased’s estate.
Cam then had the option of keeping the prize money to himself, which would add to the already huge £10,000 he had accumulated throughout the game. However, in a nail biting final decision, he chose to share his winnings with Emma, Hafsah, Hannah and Jesse, who each took home £20,000 each, along with what they had already banked throughout.
In total, Cam walked away with £30,000 with the rest of the finalists trailing closely behind. Hannah and Jesse received £28,200 each Hafsah taking home £27,700 and paramedic Emma walking away with a modest £23,800.
During the tense moment, host Rob Rinder was seen standing with the finalists during the tense moment, as he revealed that Cam had chosen to split the money with all four players. “You arrived at the final at the final stages of this game together, and you now leave with an equal slice of the inheritance,” Rob announced, as the contestants broke down in tears.
“You arrived at the final at the final stages of this game together, and you now leave with an equal slice of the inheritance,” Rob announced, as the contestants broke down in tears.
“The inheritance is now concluded, please collect your money from the safe boxes and leave the estate immediately,” he concluded.
While the players were left shocked at Cam’s generous decision, it was a no brainer for him, as he announced: “I’ve had debt hanging over my head for years, I can’t describe the feeling of a fresh start.
“My dad taught me integrity and in that strong room it is literally a battle between your head and your heart. To be able to change the lives of four other people too, I am so happy and proud.” Of course, he’s only human, and he did have second thoughts when the money was right in front of his eyes.
“We all spoke about it in the final division ceremony, dividing all the money up, and I think it’s easy to say you would,” he said. “However, when you get down into that room, and you’ve got a hundred thousand pounds in front of your face, you start thinking about everything back at home and how much it could change your life.
“It really is a tough decision but at the end of the day I’m a team player, and I’m just so happy that I did make the decision I made.”
THE once chart-topping boyband is said to have cut all final ties following a long-running secret divide, years of silence and bitter behind-the-scenes fallouts.
The Wanted shocked fans after they split in January 2014 to ‘pursue personal endeavours’Credit: GettyThey briefly reunited in 2021 for a charity concert in Tom’s honour, but old wounds have reopenedCredit: GettyNow, only some of them are on speaking terms, and one band member reveals why they will never sing together againCredit: Getty Images – Getty
The platinum-selling group were behind hit songs such as “Glad You Came”, “All Time Low” and “Chasing the Sun” before they disbanded.
They briefly reunited in 2021 for a charity concert in Tom’s honour, but old wounds have reopened – and some members are said to no longer be on speaking terms.
Insiders claimed friendships “never fully healed” after the band’s initial breakup, with egos, solo projects and clashing personalities driving a deeper wedge between the lads.
The break up
The Wanted announced they were to split in January 2014 to “pursue personal endeavours” after completing their upcoming ‘Word of Mouth Tour’.
In a statement posted on their website, the band said: “The Wanted are pleased to announce the release of their new video and single ‘Glow In The Dark’ taken from their November release ‘Word of Mouth’.
“They are very excited to perform ‘Glow In The Dark’ along with their smash singles ‘I Found You’, ‘Chasing The Sun’, and ‘Glad You Came’, amongst others for their fans on their upcoming ‘Word of Mouth Tour’.
“This tour will be their last for a while as Tom, Max, Jay, Siva and Nathan have collectively decided to take time to pursue personal endeavours following the tour’s conclusion.
“The band wants to stress to their fans that they will continue on as The Wanted and look forward to many successful projects together in the future.
“They thank their fans for their continued love and support and look forward to seeing them on tour.”
‘Very difficult conversations’
Although their official statement claimed they’d “continue on as The Wanted,” Max later revealed that simmering tensions and clashing ambitions had secretly driven the group apart.
Max admitted: “Over the past year, there has been a lot of tension. Our personal lives drove us apart – things started to happen and we were drifting. We used to be such a brotherly pact, but it started to feel like it wasn’t The Wanted anymore.”
He went on to confess that he and bandmate Nathan were the ones who pushed for the split – despite protests from the others.
“We had a very difficult conversation,” Max said. “Our manager Scooter Braun asked us who would want to take a step out after and try to do their own thing. Me and Nathan both said we have other ambitions.”
Both singers went on to be represented by Braun – with Nathan briefly finding solo success (and headlines) thanks to a short-lived PR romance with Ariana Grande, while Max landed a role on Glee.
But behind the scenes, the duo’s diverging paths reportedly caused even more tension within the group.
Siva hits out at Max
Siva hit back at bandmate Max after The Wanted split, slamming his comments about “personal relationships causing issues” as “untrue and very unfair.”
Speaking out in an interview, Siva instead blamed their E! reality show The Wanted Life for sparking tension within the group.
He said: “I think from doing the TV show we all kind of knew where we stood and from that I felt like there was some sense of… I felt like it was every man for himself looking back on when the show aired.
“I’ve never been that way and I’d never actually seen it before until I looked back at the show. I think that is where we lost the team element and from there it kind of just went.”
The boys gave fans an insight into their golden years in the E! reality show The Wanted LifeCredit: YouTubeThe Wanted Life saw the boyband living it up on tourCredit: YouTubeNathan has openly talked about falling out with co-stars Siva and Max in the pastCredit: YouTube
Despite the rift, Siva said he wanted to find common ground with Max, adding: “Aside from the drama with Max, I’m going to talk to him to find a way forward and be adults about it.
“All of us boys are like brothers, it’s all I’ve ever known and we’re going on tour together.
“I think we’re just going to be professional with each other and give the fans a good show – because it’s all about the fans at the end of the day.”
Nathan cutting ties
In 2016, Nathan admitted he wasn’t talking to Siva or Max anymore.
Nathan told Yahoo: “I still class Jay [McGuiness] as a really good friend. He’s a really nice person. And Tom [Parker], I’m not so sure about where the others are at but I’m sure they are very busy and very happy.”
However, Nathan admitted that if everyone was on board with a reunion, he would be happy to have a “conversation” about it.
He said: “Obviously, I am very focused on my solo career at the moment, so I haven’t thought about the band ever getting back together, but you never know what is going to happen in the future.
“If there was an opportunity and everyone wanted to, it’s a conversation, but if everyone is still happy doing their own thing, then I think everyone will just be happy to continue as they are.”
Meanwhile, Siva was living in Los Angeles, attempting to crack Hollywood.
His illness brought the group back together, reuniting them publicly in October that year.
Reflecting on the reunion, Max said: “I think I speak on behalf of everyone, in the time away from it, it gave me time to reflect and appreciate what we’d achieved and how good our music actually was.
“Because at the time we were doing it, it was so packed in that we didn’t get to really appreciate how much we enjoyed each other’s company or how good our music was because… like, every day, it was all a bit mad.”
Jay added: “Even when we were under so much pressure and we’d be squabbling and whatever was going on, we always had fun, we were always very down to earth. But really,” he continued on a more serious note, “time helps a lot. And all of our perspective has changed.
“We are grateful, we’re the boy band that walk into the room and are, like, ‘I’m just happy to be here.’ Back in the day, Max has said this a few times, we wanted a number-one after number-one because we’d had that, and we felt terrible when we didn’t get that. And when five young men have that sort of ambition, it can get really tense.”
Jay said he believes the group reunion proved they could finally let bygones be bygones and simply enjoy being together again.
“There was a moment where I thought I was going to break down and have a meltdown,” Tom admitted.
“But the boys just comforted me… It was just an emotional night all around, even for the whole day and stuff. And just walking into the venue – we had never played the Royal Albert Hall before, when we played all around the world.”
He added: “There’s just something beautifully special about it.”
The Wanted’s greatest hits include ‘Chasing the Sun’ and ‘Walks Like Rihanna’Credit: Alamy
Max and Siva tour
The Wanted fans were left baffled in May 2024 after Max announced he was heading on tour with just one of his bandmates.
The Strictly Come Dancing star revealed he would be touring alongside Siva – but without Jay or Nathan.
Before the tour, Max told fans: “Myself and Siva can’t wait for this! Our first time in India… dream come true!”
Fans were quick to question the absence of Jay and Nathan – sparking fears the original line-up had officially fallen apart.
It later emerged that Jay would be performing in 2:22 A Ghost Story in Dublin, while Nathan is thought to be focusing on new music.
The shows marked the first time members of the group have performed since the tragic death of bandmate Tom.
The divide
The band have openly admitted there was a clear divide during their heyday – with Max and Tom on one side, and the others forming their own group.
Max and Siva even confessed they never imagined they’d end up touring as a duo when The Wanted went on hiatus in 2014, admitting they “weren’t the closest” and barely spent time together off stage.
Max said: “I’m not going to lie, if you’d said to us 10 years ago that it’d be me and Siva doing this together we’d be like no, never.
Siva agreed: “Max was with Tom, I was with Nathan and Jay.”
Max continued: “Apart from working, we didn’t spend any time together, so I feel like I’ve got to know Siva more in the last year than in the whole 10 before it.
Reflecting on Jay and Nathan’s decision not to rejoin the group, Max added: “We had lots of conversations with the other boys and each other.
“The other boys are so happy doing what they’re doing and they’re really focused on their lives and their careers.
Siva added: “We missed being in the band… we really wanted to get back on stage.”
Future reunion?
Earlier this year, Nathan told The Sun they would never get back together – as the band “will only ever be a five-piece.”
Nathan, Tom, Max, Siva and Jay reunited for a greatest hits album and one-off show in 2021, which was followed by a tour in early 2022, ending just two weeks before Tom’s passing.
Speaking about the emotional concerts, Nathan said: “Obviously, you’d give anything for it not to have happened.
“But, equally, I’m so grateful that we were able to have that time, given that it did happen.
“It was just such a special time and the reception that he got every night, he really felt it. And it meant so much to him that he could do that.
“He was desperate to do that tour. There were tough moments, but we were having some of our fondest memories with Tom over that time.
While Max and Siva toured as The Wanted 2.0 – a four-piece reunion with Nathan and Jay seems out of the question.
Nathan said: “I’m really happy for them. They get a lot of enjoyment in performing the music and they see it as a tribute to Tom.
“Whereas Jay and I’s approach to it is that there’s a lot of emotion attached to that still. And I think we would find that really difficult.
“It’s just two different approaches and neither one is wrong. I think it’s really difficult imagining The Wanted as a four-piece because The Wanted has been and will only ever be a five-piece.
“It’s difficult imagining not performing with Tom.”
The Wanted’s Nathan Sykes wed Charlotte Burke this month – but Max and Siva weren’t present at the celebrationCredit: Instagram
Nathan’s wedding
Nathantied the knot with his girlfriend of six yearsCharlotte Burke in October 2025.
Nathan opted for an intimate celebration, inviting just 61 of their closest friends and family, among them was his bandmate Jay.
But Max and Siva were noticeably absent from Nathan’s wedding.
Speaking toOK!Nathan said: “We haven’t touched base recently, so I’m not sure they would have known the wedding date.
“With them being out in America at the time, we’ve not had the chance to [catch up], but I’m sure we will soon.”
He added: “We had a room full of people we’re comfortable with, so it was a really safe space and allowed us to relax.”
However, it now seems that Max and Nathan might not be talking at all.
Unfollow
Fans on Reddit noticed that the pair unfollowed each other on Instagram, cutting off social media communication.
One said: “Couldn’t help but notice Max and Nathan unfollowed each other? I wonder if there’s any beef between them lol.”
Another added: “I’ve always suspected Max and Nathan had a falling out before they broke up the first time.”
A third penned: “It’s a real shame because teenage me loved Nathan and Max’s interactions.
“I remember when Nathan used to comment on Max’s ig posts around 2 years ago.
“They haven’t followed each other in a very long time.”
Max and Nathan went head-to-head as they were both managed by Scooter BraunCredit: AlamyThe bandmates reunited for a greatest hits album and one-off show in 2021, which was followed by a tour in early 2022, ending just two weeks before Tom’s passingCredit: GettyIn 2024, Max and Siva went on tour without their bandmatesCredit: Getty – Contributor
CONAKRY, Guinea — It was the middle of the day when Omar Diaw, known by his artist name “Chimere” — French for chimera — approached a blank wall off the main thoroughfare in Guinea’s capital and started spray-painting.
“They know who I am,” he said confidently. Though it wasn’t clear who ”they” were, civilians and police didn’t bat an eye as Diaw’s fellow artists unloaded dozens of paint cans onto the roadside in Conakry.
Graffiti has thrived for years in Diaw’s native Senegal, where the modern urban street art first took off in West Africa. But when he moved to Guinea in 2018 to explore a new place, he said such art was nearly nonexistent.
“It was thought that graffiti was vandalism,” he said.
To win over the public, Diaw took a gentle approach, using graffiti for public awareness campaigns. One of his first was to raise awareness about COVID-19 preventive measures.
“We had to seduce the population,” he said.
The port city of Conakry faces rapid urbanization. Diaw’s graffiti has become an undeniable part of its crowded, concrete-heavy landscape.
His larger-than-life images of famous Guinean musicians and African independence leaders now dwarf the overloaded trucks that drive by. Drying laundry hung over the portrait of the West African resistance fighter Samory Toure.
The tag of Diaw’s graffiti collective, Guinea Ghetto Graff, is on murals all over the city.
Graffiti as it’s known today began in the 1960s and ’70s in the United States. It arrived in West Africa via Dakar, Senegal, in 1988, when the region’s first graffiti artist, Amadou Lamine Ngom, started painting on the city’s walls.
Known by his artist name, “Docta,” Ngom and a group of fellow artists were commissioned the following year to paint murals for an awareness campaign aimed at cleaning up Dakar’s streets.
Ngom, 51, said that at the beginning, aside from such campaigns, he did graffiti mostly at night. He later changed his approach.
“I decided to do it in broad daylight,” he said. “So as not to copy what’s happening in the United States, Europe or elsewhere. To create graffiti that resembles the African reality, taking into account our reality, our values.”
Ngom, who later mentored the teenage Diaw, said communities grew to respect the public artwork since it reflected their lives and experiences.
With the public’s backing, “the authorities didn’t have a choice,” Ngom said.
These days, graffiti has grown more assertive in Senegal, becoming part of the political messaging around antigovernment protests. In Guinea, Diaw’s graffiti has addressed issues such as migration.
Diaw said Conakry’s governor supports much of his work and has given him carte blanche to do it wherever he wants.
As his latest work beside the thoroughfare took shape, passersby began to stop and admire the portrait of Guinea’s military leader, Gen. Mamadi Doumbouya, who took power in a 2021 coup.
A 22-year-old driver, Ousmane Sylla, said he was familiar with Diaw’s gigantic paintings near Conakry’s airport.
“It reminds us of old Guinean musicians. It reminds us of history,” he said. “Graffiti is good for Africa, it’s good for this country, it’s good for everyone. I like it, and it changed the face of our city.”
The next step might be bringing in a wider range of artists.
“I would really like to see more women become a part of this, because they say that [graffiti] is for men,” said Mama Aissata Camara, a rare female artist on Guinea’s graffiti scene.
Eating dirt is usually not a good thing, but in the new Amazon Prime series “Cometierra,” it’s a superpower.
The supernatural crime thriller, which premieres on Halloween, is based on the 2019 Dolores Reyes novel of the same name. The book follows the story of a young woman who has the ability to communicate through visions with the dead and missing people of Argentina by eating the physical land they trod.
“Cometierra” stars Lilith Curiel with supporting roles from Oscar nominee Yalitza Aparicio and Gerardo Taracena. It follows the same outline of the book but is set in contemporary Mexico to address the themes of state violence, femicide and the missing persons epidemic.
The source material and its new twist were what drew Mexican singer-songwriter Natalia Lafourcade to perform the series’s title song, “La Cometierra.”
“We have this reality in Mexico, there’s violence against many women and there’s the disappeared. It’s a very sad situation that we have, but it’s a fact,” the singer said. “It’s inspiring the way the series develops and how this girl, alongside her neighbors, creates a [positive] tribal strength out of her situation.”
Lafourcade especially liked that the series provides an organic avenue for debate and serves as a call to action to recognize that these are all problems in Mexico, while also showing that there is a deep well of beauty within the country.
“We all have a talent that we can always put forward as a service for our family, our country, just for other people,” she said.
The 41-year-old artist’s recently released single channels the energy of the series and its themes by conjuring a spoken word cadence that culminates in a nursery rhyme chant about the powers of the Cometierra.
“I wanted to make a sound that would be very strong and that would present a reality and that the lyrics wouldn’t be smooth,” Lafourcade said. “But at the same time, it would have hope and light and this feeling of joy for the next generations. So I wanted to have this mix of girls singing in a very naive tone, but also mix in a straight voice telling hard truths.”
The song, while geared toward a Mexican experience, now has a striking relevance in the United States as Immigration and Customs Enforcement raids — largely targeting Latinos — continue to take place across the country and as hundreds of detained people have been unaccounted for.
“I hope that music has this capacity to make us wake up and be conscious of situations,” Lafourcade said. “I have realized there are many themes that you can take through music, but sometimes music can become something that you hear truths that probably are not so pretty.”
Regarding some of the ugly truths of the U.S. at the moment, the “Nunca Es Suficiente” artist said that it’s not right that people should feel shame of where they come from and that communities need to show up for themselves at this point in time.
“Nobody should take our pride for our roots, our culture, our people,” she said. “The young lady [in the show] reaches a point where she’s confused about if she should use her power and give it to her people or not. She feels very afraid and insecure and she’s going through all that. But I love how she becomes a hero of her own power and I think that’s the fate of many of us, the way we can make a twist in the story we’re living every day.”
A glimmer of hope, a door creaked slightly ajar, a creeping sense of “what if” drifting through the crowd and the commentary box – but in the end, Australia win.
This was England’s long-awaited Ashes reunion, their first competitive meeting since the ill-fated 16-0 drubbing.
In some ways, this was a free hit, considering the fact that a semi-final spot at the Women’s World Cup had already been secured for both teams.
Throughout the tournament, England have shown – despite being far from perfect on occasions – that this is not the same dejected England that left the Melbourne Cricket Ground back in February, having barely left a scratch on their opponents – let alone a punch.
Against their great rivals in Indore, they had spells where they competed – again, something that was nothing more than a pipe dream at the beginning of the year.
Amy Jones and Tammy Beaumont dominated the first eight overs, cashing in as the Australian seamers bowled too wide and lacked control.
Alice Capsey played an enterprising cameo to get England to 244, which always felt below par, but when Lauren Bell removed Phoebe Litchfield’s off stump with a beauty and Georgia Voll and Ellyse Perry were dismissed shortly after, England were in unfamiliar territory.
They were favourites.
But against a team of such greatness, a line-up littered with stardom from one to 11 and the three left on the bench, you cannot and will not win a game in moments.
England learned a harsh lesson in Indore. They have improved massively in the field, they look fitter, they look a more cohesive unit willing to fight and scrap for everything.
Still, you can do all of that, and still be outplayed. You can take four top-order wickets for 68 runs and the next two will add a chanceless 180 between them, turning a wobble into a crushing victory with nearly 10 overs to spare.
England’s unbeaten run came to an end, ever so predictably, with a bump down to earth dealt by Australia.
CHICAGO — The music begins low and ominous, with the video showing searchlights skimming along a Chicago apartment building and heavily armed immigration agents storming inside. Guns are drawn. Unmarked cars fill the streets. Agents rappel from a Black Hawk helicopter.
But quickly the soundtrack grows more stirring and the video — edited into a series of dramatic shots and released by the Department of Homeland Security days after the Sept. 30 raid — shows agents leading away shirtless men, their hands zip-tied behind their backs.
Authorities said they were targeting the Venezuelan gang Tren de Aragua, though they also said only two of the 27 immigrants arrested were gang members. They gave few details on the arrests.
But the apartments of dozens of U.S. citizens were targeted, residents said, and at least a half-dozen Americans were held for hours.
The immense show of force signaled a sharp escalation in the White House’s immigration crackdown and amplified tensions in a city already on edge.
“To every criminal illegal alien: Darkness is no longer your ally,” Homeland Security said in a social media post accompanying the video, which racked up more than 6.4 million views. “We will find you.”
But Tony Wilson, a third-floor resident born and raised on Chicago’s South Side, sees only horror in what happened.
“It was like we were under attack,” Wilson said days after the raid, speaking through the hole where his door knob used to be. Agents had used a grinder to cut out the deadbolt, and he still couldn’t close the door properly, let alone lock it. So he had barricaded himself inside, blocking the door with furniture.
“I didn’t even hear them knock or nothing,” said Wilson, a 58-year-old U.S. citizen on disability.
Dreams and decay
The raid was executed in the heart of South Shore, an overwhelmingly Black neighborhood on Lake Michigan that has long been a tangle of middle-class dreams, urban decay and gentrification.
It’s a place where teams of drug dealers troll for customers outside ornate lakeside apartment buildings. It has some of the city’s best vegan restaurants but also takeout places where the catfish fillets are ordered through bullet-proof glass.
It has well-paid professors from the University of Chicago but is also where one-third of households scrape by on less than $25,000 a year.
The apartment building where the raid occurred has long been troubled. Five stories tall and built in the 1950s, residents said it was often strewn with garbage, the elevators rarely worked and crime was a constant worry. Things had grown more chaotic after dozens of Venezuelan migrants arrived in the past few years, residents said. While no residents said they felt threatened by the migrants, many described a rise in noise and hallway trash.
Owned by out-of-state investors, the building hasn’t passed an inspection in three years, with problems ranging from missing smoke detectors to the stench of urine to filthy stairways. Repeated calls to a lead investor in the limited liability company that owns the building, a Wisconsin resident named Trinity Flood, were not returned. Attempts to reach representatives through realtors and lawyers were also unsuccessful.
Crime fears spiked in June when a Venezuelan man was shot in the head “execution-style,” the Department of Homeland Security said in a statement. Another Venezuelan was charged in the death.
Days after the raid, the doors to dozens of the building’s 130 apartments hung open. Nearly all those apartments had been ransacked. Windows were broken, doors smashed, and clothes and diapers littered the floors. In one apartment, a white tuxedo jacket hung in the closet next to a room knee-deep in broken furniture, piles of clothing and plastic bags. In another, water dripping from the ceiling puddled next to a refrigerator lying on its side. Some kitchens swarmed with insects.
Wilson said a trio of men in body armor had zip-tied his hands and forced him outside with dozens of other people, most Latino. After being held for two hours he was told he could leave.
“It was terrible, man,” he said. He’d barely left the apartment in days.
A city under siege?
Chicago, the White House says, is under siege.
Gang members and immigrants in the U.S. illegally swarm the city and crime is rampant, President Trump insists. National Guard soldiers are needed to protect government facilities from raging left-wing protesters.
“Chicago is the worst and most dangerous city in the World,” he posted on Truth Social.
The reality is far less dramatic. Violence is rare at protests, though angry confrontations are increasingly common, particularly outside a federal immigration center in suburban Broadview. And while crime is a serious problem, the city’s murder rate has dropped by roughly half since the 1990s.
Those realities have not stopped the Trump administration.
What started in early September with some arrests in Latino neighborhoods, part of a crackdown dubbed “Operation Midway Blitz,” has surged across Chicago. There are increasing patrols by masked, armed agents; detentions of U.S. citizens and immigrants with legal status; a fatal shooting; a protesting pastor shot in the head with a pepper ball outside the Broadview facility, his arms raised in supplication.
By early October, authorities said more than 1,000 immigrants had been arrested across the area.
The raids have shaken Chicago.
“We have a rogue, reckless group of heavily armed, masked individuals roaming throughout our city,” Mayor Brandon Johnson said after the Sept. 30 raid. “The Trump administration is seeking to destabilize our city and promote chaos.”
To Trump’s critics, the crackdown is a calculated effort to stir anger in a city and state run by some of his most outspoken Democratic opponents. Out-of-control protests would reinforce Trump’s tough-on-crime image, they say, while embarrassing Johnson and Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker, seen as a possible Democratic presidential contender.
So the South Shore raid, ready-made for social media with its displays of military hardware and agents armed for combat, was seen as wildly out of proportion.
“This was a crazy-looking military response they put together for their reality show,” said LaVonte Stewart, who runs a South Shore sports program to steer young people away from violence. “It’s not like there are roving bands of Venezuelan teenagers out there.”
Officials insist it was no reality show.
The operation, led by U.S. Customs and Border Protection, was based on months of intelligence gathering, according to a U.S. official who was not authorized to discuss the matter publicly. The building’s landlord told authorities that Venezuelans in about 30 units were squatters and had threatened other tenants, the official said, adding that the building’s size necessitated the show of force. Immigration agencies declined further comment.
Even before the “Midway Blitz,” Trump’s election had whipsawed through Chicago’s Latino communities.
Stewart said Venezuelan children began disappearing from his programs months ago, though it’s often unclear if they moved, returned to Venezuela or are just staying home.
“I had 35 kids in my program from Venezuela,” he said. “Now there’s none.”
A wave of migrant newcomers
The raid echoed through South Shore, pinballing through memories of the surge in violence during the 1990s drug wars as well as economic divides and the sometimes uncomfortable relations between Black residents and the wave of more than 50,000 immigrants, most Latino, who began arriving in 2022, often bused from southern border states.
Chicago spent more than $300 million on housing and other services for the immigrants, fueling widespread resentment in South Shore and other Black neighborhoods where the newcomers were settled.
“They felt like these new arrivals received better treatment than people who were already part of the community,” said Kenneth Phelps, pastor at the Concord Missionary Baptist Church in Woodlawn, a largely Black neighborhood.
It didn’t matter that many migrants were crowded into small apartments, and most simply wanted to work. The message to residents, he said, was that the newcomers mattered more than they did.
Phelps tried to fight that perception, creating programs to help new arrivals and inviting them to his church. But that stirred more anger, including in his own congregation.
“I even had people leave the church,” he said.
In South Shore it’s easy to hear the bitterness, even though the neighborhood’s remaining migrants are a nearly invisible presence.
“They took everyone’s jobs!” said Rita Lopez, who manages neighborhood apartment buildings and recently stopped by the scene of the raid.
“The government gave all the money to them — and not to the Chicagoans,” she said.
Changing demographics and generations of suspicion
Over more than a century, South Shore has drawn waves of Irish, Jewish and then Black arrivals for its lakeside location, affordable bungalows and early 20th-century apartment buildings.
Each wave viewed the next with suspicion, in many ways mirroring how Black South Shore residents saw the migrant influx.
Former first lady Michelle Obama’s parents moved to South Shore when it was still mostly white, and she watched it change. A neighborhood that was 96% white in 1950 was 96% Black by 1980.
“We were doing everything we were supposed to do — and better,” she said in 2019. “But when we moved in, white families moved out.”
But suspicion also came from South Shore’s Black middle-class, which watched nervously as many housing projects began closing in the 1990s, creating an influx of poorer residents.
“This has always been a complex community,” Stewart said of those years.
“You can live on a block here that’s super-clean, with really nice houses, then go one block away and there’s broken glass, trash everywhere and shootings,” he said. “It’s the weirdest thing and it’s been this way for 30 years.”
Sullivan writes for the Associated Press. AP reporters Aisha I. Jefferson in Chicago, Elliot Spagat in San Diego and Claudia Lauer in Philadelphia contributed to this report.
‘The big war may be over, but what about the many smaller wars that still await us here?’ Al Jazeera’s Maram Humaid explains the difficult decisions facing Palestinians in Gaza living amid the rubble and navigating on-going violence.
Reality television production in Los Angeles declined sharply this summer, leading to a nearly 21% drop in overall TV shoot days, a new report shows.
The total number of shoot days in the greater L.A. area from July to September was 4,380, down 13.2% compared to a year ago, according to data from FilmLA, a nonprofit that handles film permits for the Los Angeles region.
Projects that received an incentive have 180 days to start production after notice of their award, and it often takes time to commence filming.
Because of that, FilmLA executives were not surprised to see on-location production continue to slip during the summer months.
“Fortunately, we’ve already begun to see early signs of these incentives having their desired effect,” he said. “We’re excited to be taking calls from productions looking to line up their locations and pull permits,” FilmLA Vice President Philip Sokoloski said in a statement.
TV production totaled 1,441 shoot days, down 20.7% compared to the same time period last year. The decline is especially significant because TV is the region’s main driver of production.
Reality TV dropped to 649 shoot days, down 31.4% compared to last year. Other genres of TV production also saw a downturn — drama (down 19%) and pilots (down 34.5%). Production of television comedies, however, was a bright spot with 79 shoot days, up 41.1%.
Feature film production in L.A. also ticked up with 522 shoot days, an increase of 9.7% compared to last year. But commercial production, which does not receive a tax incentive, was down 17.9% to 668 shoot days.
The report’s “other” category, which includes student films, still photo shoots and documentaries, saw a decrease of 9.9% to 1,749 shoot days.
A shoot day represents one crew’s permission to film at a single location in a 24-hour period.
Padilla, you may remember, was tackled and cuffed by federal officers after attempting to ask a question of Homeland Security Czarina Kristi Noem at an L.A. news conference in June, when the National Guard first made its appearance on our streets. Noem later claimed Padilla “lunged” at her — which he did not — using the classic Trumpian technique of erasing reality with blame, especially when it comes to brown people.
Padilla told me that “from day one of this administration, I have tried to speak truth to power,” and if getting tackled forced people to “have no choice but to now start paying attention … that could be helpful, because the general public knows it’s wrong.”
U.S. Atty. Gen. Pam Bondi recycled the incident on Tuesday when Padilla attempted to question her during a congressional hearing, voicing concern about the weaponization of the Department of Justice. Bondi refused to answer multiple questions, instead invoking the Noem defense.
“I find it interesting that you want order … in this proceeding now,” Bondi said. “You sure didn’t have order when you stormed Secretary Noem at a press conference in California, did you?”
Again, no storming, no lunging, not even a feint. Really, if anything can be said of Padilla, it’s that he’s a guy who likes order. An MIT-trained engineer, he’s known for being calm to the point of boring — in the best of ways. Who wouldn’t want a bit of boring in their politics today, if it’s seasoned with compassion and common sense?
Calm, of course, does not mean a lack of conviction. As the government shutdown limps to the end of its first full week, Padilla took a few minutes to fill me in on why Democrats shouldn’t back down, and why he won’t — whether the issue is healthcare, immigration or the collision of the two, which is at the heart of this shutdown.
Republicans would like voters to believe that undocumented immigrants are throwing parties in our emergency rooms, racking up free services while shoving U.S. citizens out to the sidewalk. In reality, there’s not a lot of good data on how many ER visits involve undocumented folks because doctors are more focused on saving lives than checking immigration status. But one Texas study found that about 2% of all hospital visits in a three-month period involved people without documentation. That’s in a state with a high number of undocumented folks, so take it for what it’s worth — hardly a scourge.
Padilla and Democrats would like to stay focused on an actual crisis — healthcare premiums for low- and middle-income folks are about to skyrocket in coming weeks if Congress doesn’t keep the Obama-era subsidies that make the premiums affordable. Padilla wants voters to understand how dire this is.
“This is not a what-might-happen-next-year concern … this is a now concern,” Padilla told me.
“Open enrollment is opening,” he said. “People are setting their premiums and have to make choices of where to sign up for healthcare and at the cost right now, and so it does need to be immediately addressed.”
In case you think this is partisan show, far-right MAGA cheerleader Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) agrees with Padilla. That’s when you know things are getting weird.
“Not a single Republican in leadership talked to us about this or has given us a plan to help Americans deal with their health insurance premiums DOUBLING!!!” Greene wrote on social media, breaking with her party on the issue.
That’s about the only thing that Padilla and Greene may ever agree on. Padilla is the son of immigrants who met in L.A. and later obtained legal status. He was born in Southern California, making birthright citizenship core to his identity at a moment when Trump is asking the Supreme Court to end it. His isn’t just an immigrant story, it’s a California story, and it’s never far from his mind.
He was recently asked if he regretted fighting with the Biden administration over proposed immigration reform that lacked pathways for immigrants, especially Dreamers and others who have been in the United States for years if not decades, to become citizens. Would it have been better to sell them out, leave them in limbo, but fix the border before Trump could exploit it?
“Of course not,” Padilla told me. Rather than shrink under attack, Padilla said he’s holding his ground.
California is one of a handful of states that does in fact offer healthcare to undocumented people, though budget shortfalls forced Gov. Gavin Newsom to scale back that plan.
No federal dollars are used for that undocumented healthcare — it’s solely state money. And Padilla supports it.
“There are some states that choose to use state funding to provide that care, and I agree with that, because it’s much smarter, from a public health standpoint, to help prevent people from getting sick or treat people early on, not administer healthcare, certainly not primary care, through emergency rooms,” he said.
Padilla said it’s rich that the very workers deemed essential during the coronavirus pandemic, the workers who kept food on tables, deliveries going, and cared for our young and our elderly, are now “the primary target of Trump’s massive deportation agenda. So whether it’s in the vein of the healthcare question, whether it’s in the vein of the indiscriminate raids by ICE and other federal agencies, that’s the cruel irony.”
The Trump administration raised Padilla’s profile inadvertently, but the newfound fame has had a somewhat unexpected consequence: Frequent speculation that he may run for governor when Newsom terms out in 2026.
Padilla said he hasn’t “made a decision on that and not making any announcements right now.”
Instead, he’s focusing on helping to pass California’s Proposition 50, which would rig election maps to potentially create five more Democratic seats in the midterm elections, with the hopes of taking control of at least one house of Congress, an effort he says is “critical to reining in this out-of-control administration.”
Newcomers Reiss Boyce and Leisha Lightbody tied the knot in Tuesday night’s episode
22:39, 07 Oct 2025Updated 22:59, 07 Oct 2025
A groom from Married at First Sight has revealed the heart-wrenching reason why he believes the show’s matchmaking “has to work”.
Tuesday’s episode (7 October) introduced us to newbies Reiss Boyce and Leisha Lightbody, who said their vows. The pair joined the programme on Monday, along with four other latecomers.
The couple were matched by experts Paul C Brunson, Charlene Douglas and Mel Schilling, and are now set to experience married life over the next few weeks.
Before his nuptials, 33-year-old decorator Reiss confessed that people often perceive him as a “pretty boy”. However, the lad from Essex was quick to point out that there’s much more to him than meets the eye.
Discussing his dream relationship, Reiss stressed the importance of family to him. He then revealed that he found out his dad wasn’t his biological father when he was just seven years old, reports OK!
Reiss stated: “When I get married, I don’t want to be having kids and breaking up. No way!”
He went on to say: “I want to do my best to keep it that [his family] all bonded and sealed together forever. When I was seven years old I found out that my dad wasn’t actually my real dad.”
Reflecting on this tough revelation, he added: “Looking back, at the time, I was only a young nipper. I didn’t really know what was going on. It was just a bit of a whirlwind, it was a lot to take in.
“That’s why I’ve got to do it properly. I’ve got one shot here, it’s got to work.”
Despite this, the new groom appears to share a close bond with his grandparents and is searching for a love story similar to theirs.
Sadly, Reiss’ MAFS experience has got off to a bumpy beginning.
Whilst he’s physically drawn to his new bride, the groom considers her “quite loud” and “a little bit over the top”.
The pair even clashed following the ceremony when Leisha challenged her new spouse for only pecking her on the cheek in front of their wedding guests.
They subsequently shared a kiss that Leisha appeared to relish but Reiss criticised because “there was no passion”.
Married at First Sight UK continues on E4 tomorrow night at 8pm
Norman Finkelstein tells Marc Lamont Hill why he believes Trump’s peace deal is the weakest yet with no path to justice.
President Trump has released a Gaza “peace” plan that would put Gaza under a Trump-chaired “Board of Peace”. While some in the international community have welcomed the move, some question the fact that it bypasses Palestinians and offers no path to statehood. So, with Netanyahu pledging not to fully withdraw from Gaza, will this deal bring genuine peace or cement the status quo?
This week on an UpFront special, Marc Lamont Hill speaks with one of the world’s foremost experts on the Israel-Palestine conflict, Norman Finkelstein.
Rebekah and Jamie Vardy have signed a huge TV deal with ITV which will give viewers an insight into their personal and professional lives as they start a new life in Italy
Rebekah and Jamie Vardy land their own reality TV show with ITV(Image: PA)
Rebekah Vardy may be able to put the humiliation of Wagatha Chrisitie firmly behind her after landing a lucrative TV deal to film a reality show with her husband and family. According to reports, Rebekah, 43, will document the couple’s personal and professional life as they film their transition to Italy.
Jamie has now signed for football team US Cremonese. As yet an official title has not been confirmed but The Sun has reported a working title of The Vardys. The family have already relocated to Lombardy with their five children.
And a source told the publication: “There is huge interest in Becky and her life as a Wag, a mother and a TV personality, not to mention the relationship between her and Jamie.”
They added: “She’ll be seen opening up her home and heart as she provides unprecedented access at a crucial point in their history. It’s a real coup for her to have this with a channel as huge as ITV.”
ITV declined to make an official comment. Rebekah was caught in a legal dispute with Coleen Rooney after she was accused of selling information to the media about Coleen’s private life.
News of Rebekah and Jamie’s TV deal with ITV comes after it was confirmed by Disney+ that Wayne Rooney and Coleen have signed a ten-part series focusing on their family life.
Viewers will get to see how Coleen deals with her business life while Wayne, who has retired as a professional footballer, now takes on the school run. Keen to give viewers a real insight into their life, fans will witness the highs and the lows.
Sean Doyle, Executive Director of Unscripted at Disney+, said: “We’ve seen great success over the past couple of years with our Disney+ Original unscripted series such as Finding Michael, Coleen Rooney: The Real Wagatha Story, Brawn: The Impossible Formula 1 Story and more recently, Flintoff.”
He added: “Our distinctive offering of combining the most talked-about household names and their incredible life experiences has hit the right note with our audiences who are looking for authentic and captivating real-life stories.”
Sean went on to say: “As our slate evolves, we want to continue working with world-class producers and homegrown talent in the reality space, with a focus on female-skewed factual.”
Another addition to the reality TV sector of the streaming platform is Jamie Laing and his wife Sophie, who were on Made In Chelsea.
Due to the success of their podcast the couple have become popular with the nation.
As the world’s pontificators and peacemakers gather over the coming months in their various forums—be those the UN General Assembly or the backrooms of Europe and the United States—to discuss the world’s worst conflict-driven humanitarian crisis, Sudan, they would do well to think hard about what they are really hoping to achieve. A quick peace, or an enduring settlement?
To do that, they will need to peel away the almost cartoon-like representations that have come to dominate media imagery and international perceptions of what this conflict is about, and seek a better understanding of the historical tensions within the Sudanese state, and of the competing visions for how it should be governed—if it is not to be further divided.
A recent analysis by Daniel J Deng, published by the Konrad Adenauer Foundation, would be a useful place to start. Deng, an East Africa and South Sudan peace-building specialist, argues that the war is not merely a quest for military dominance but is, significantly, a “war of visions” over the future architecture of the Sudanese state.
Deng sees the Rapid Support forces, led by Mohammed Hamdan Dagalo (“Hemedti”), as a product of both the collapse of centralized governance and, potentially, as a catalyst for more inclusive, decentralized national reconstruction—the ‘New Sudan’. The Sudanese Armed Forces under General Abdel Fattah al-Burhan, is cast as the contemporary custodian of Sudan’s long-standing centralist, military-Islamic order.
That vision of a ’New Sudan’ was the life’s work of John Garang, rebel leader and, briefly before his death in a helicopter crash in 2005, first vice president of Sudan and president of the South Sudan Autonomous Region. Garang articulated a Sudan centred on pluralism, federalism, and inclusive governance, in which he “imagined a pluralistic, democratic Sudan anchored in inclusive governance, ethnic equality, and political secularism,” transcending both northern and southern regional chauvinism.
This vision was central to the Comprehensive Peace Agreement signed between North and South in 2005, but with Garang’s death, the Islamist-dominated Bashir regime in Khartoum let it drift, leading to South Sudan’s secession in 2011. And, it can be argued, Hemedti, whether by conviction or design, is the inheritor of that vision. Certainly in his rhetoric, he appears to have adopted its central tenets and made them central to the vision that lies behind his political coalition, Tasis, and the ‘government of peace and unity’ it has set up in Nyala.
After Omar al-Bashir fell in 2019, the RSF sought to transform its image from a militia rooted in state repression to “a political actor speaking on behalf of Sudan’s neglected peripheries.” Hemedti’s own rhetoric is purposefully populist and ‘Africanist,’ explicitly distancing the RSF from the legacy of Khartoum’s “Islamist deep state”. He has called for “an end to discrimination, equal citizenship, and the rights of all Sudanese, regardless of region or ethnicity.” And in April 2023, as tensions between himself and General Burhan were about to boil over into war, he said: “We want a Sudan that belongs to all Sudanese, not just a select group… a Sudan where every citizen, from Darfur to Kassala, is treated with dignity and equality.”
According to Deng, Hemedti frames himself as “a man of the people, not one of the elites who live in glass towers.” He refers to his roots in Darfur and deep-rural Sudan, and his life as a camel driver—a far cry from Sudan’s tradition of urban, Nile-side Islamist elite dominance. Moreover, the alliances he has forged with the Sudan People’s Liberation Movement-North (SPLM-N, particularly the al-Hilu faction) and the Justice and Equality Movement (JEM), suggest a leader who understands that Sudan’s future governance must of necessity be decentralised to reflect the aspirations of its diverse ethnicities.
In contrast, Burhan and the SAF represent the “traditional centralist, military-Islamist dominated model of government”. After the 2021 coup which ousted civilian prime ministerAbdalla Hamdok, Burhan “sought to reintroduce Islamist figures into state structures, consolidating SAF’s traditional base and reactivating elements of the National Congress Party’s old guard.” In Deng’s view, this effort simply “reinforces a statist governance model misaligned with Sudan’s emerging decentralized realities” and represents a direct continuation of the old order, “domination by centre or clique”, instead of plural citizenship and regional equity.
And that’s pretty much where the Juba Peace Agreement of 2020 fell down: implementation was top-down and elite-centric: “The JPA institutionalized parallel sovereignties… Rather than demobilizing insurgents into a unified national force, the JPA institutionalized parallel sovereignties.” These were the same design flaws that led to the collapse, in South Sudan, of its own internal peace process in 2016. Both failures—that of South Sudan, and of Juba in Sudan and the subsequent coup, underline the perils of centralist bargains unmoored from grassroots legitimacy, writes Deng. “By replacing institutional pluralism with top-down military rule, the post-2019 transition drifted into warlord competition masked as governance.”
At no point does Deng attempt to downplay the RSF’s part in the conflict, but he makes clear that Sudan’s future depends on ‘moving beyond binary paradigms of unity versus secession’and reconstructing a governance model that is neither rigidly centralist nor hopelessly fragmented, but layered, decentralized, and rooted in local legitimacy—an outcome that, on the face of it, is more closely aligned with Hemedti’s public posture than Burhan’s.
And here’s where the pontificators and peacemakers need to pay attention. There is no Nobel Prize-gaming quick fix. Peace in Sudan, and the viability of a future state, will depend on the old Islamist-centralist-elitist-militarist model giving way—through committed, sustained peace and institution building—to a new model of inclusion and distributed power, anchored in accountable, civilian-led, and grassroots-rooted governance. It’s either that or suffering Sudan goes back to Square One.
There’s precisely one surprising moment in Scarlett Johansson’s feature directorial debut “Eleanor the Great,” written by Tory Kamen. It’s the impetus for the entire drama that unfolds in this film, and it feels genuinely risky — a taboo that will be hard for this film to resolve. Yet, everything that unfolds around this moment is entirely predictable.
Also unsurprising? That star June Squibb’s warm, humorous and slightly spiky performance elevates the wobbly material and tentative direction. If Johansson nails anything, it’s in allowing the 95-year-old Squibb to shine in only her second starring role (the first being last year’s action-comedy “Thelma”). For any flaws or faults of “Eleanor the Great” — and there are some — Squibb still might make you cry, even if you don’t want to.
That’s the good part about “Eleanor the Great,” which is a bit thin and treacly, despite its high-wire premise. The record-scratch startle that jump-starts the dramatic arc occurs when Eleanor (Squibb) is trying to figure out what to do with herself at a Manhattan Jewish community center after recently relocating from Florida. Her lifelong best friend and later-in-life roommate Bessie (Rita Zohar) has recently died, so Eleanor has moved in with her daughter, Lisa (Jessica Hecht), in New York City.
Harried Lisa sends Eleanor off to the JCC for a choir class, but the impulsive and feisty nonagenarian pooh-poohs the Broadway singing and instead follows a friendly face into a support group — for Holocaust survivors, she’s alarmed to discover. Yet put on the spot when they ask her to share her story of survival, Eleanor shares Bessie’s personal history of escaping a Polish concentration camp instead, with horrific details she learned from her friend over sleepless nights of tortured memories.
Eleanor’s lie could have been a small deception that played out over one afternoon, never to be spoken of again if she just ghosted the regular meeting, but there’s a wrinkle: an NYU student, Nina (Erin Kellyman), who wants to profile Eleanor for her journalism class. Eleanor initially makes the right choice, declining to participate, before making the wrong one, calling Nina and inviting her over when her own grandson doesn’t show up for Shabbat dinner. Thus begins a friendship built on a lie, and we know where this is going.
Nina and Eleanor continue their relationship beyond its journalistic origins because they’re both lonely and in mourning: Eleanor for Bessie, and Nina for her mother, also a recent loss. They both struggle to connect with their immediate families, Eleanor with terminally criticized daughter Lisa, and Nina with Roger (Chiwetel Ejiofor), her TV anchor father, paralyzed with grief over the death of his wife. And so they find an unlikely friend in each other, for lunches and bat mitzvah crashing and trips to Coney Island.
Eleanor decides to have a bat mitzvah herself, claiming she never had one due to the war (the reality is that she converted for marriage), but it feels mostly like a device for a big dramatic explosion of a revelation. It also serves the purpose of justifying Eleanor’s well-intentioned deception with lessons from the Torah.
It’s hard to stomach her continued lying, which is perhaps why the script keeps her mostly out of the support group — where the comparison to the real survivors would be too much to bear — and in the confines of a friendship with a college student far removed from that reality. Johansson also makes the choice to flash back to Bessie’s recounting of her life story when Eleanor is speaking, almost as if she’s channeling her friend and her pain. The stated intent is to share Bessie’s story when she no longer can, and surprisingly, everyone accepts this, perhaps because Squibb is too endearing to stay mad at.
Johansson’s direction is serviceable if unremarkable, and one has to wonder why this particular script spoke to her. Though it is morally complex and modest in scope, it doesn’t dive deep enough into the nuance here, opting for surface-level emotions. It’s Squibb’s performance and appealing screen presence that enable this all to work — if it does. Kellyman is terrific opposite Squibb, but this unconventional friendship tale is the kind of slight human interest story that slips from your consciousness almost as soon as it has made its brief impression.
Walsh is a Tribune News Service film critic.
‘Eleanor the Great’
Rated: PG-13, for thematic elements, some language and suggestive references
According to the source, Anton found the offer to feature on this particular reality TV show “too good an offer to turn down”, especially since it involved “all expenses paid fun in the sun, with a bit of drama thrown in to boot.”
Though the TV personality, 31, will now be gearing up for his next appearance on-screen, he’s recently fallen out of favour with the public.
Anton became under-fire after making a post to Instagram where his followers accused him of using Ricky Hatton‘s death to boost his Instagram views.
Read Celeb Ex On The Beach
In a post mentioning the passing of the late boxer, Anton appeared to plug his services as a personal trainer and online coach.
Many commenters found this to be disrespectful and distasteful.
One commenter even said Anton needs to have a “word with himself” and reflect on his actions.
Featuring on Celeb Ex On The Beach will be another way for Anton to promote his company: another reason cited by the source for Anton’s decision to go on the programme.
“While Anton is focused on his personal training company, being on TV now and then always helps boost the business and keep those clients coming in.”
Anton featured on series five of Love Island back in 2019 before going all-in on his love for fitness.
Love Island’s Anton Danyluk reveals staggering 19lbs weight loss in just six weeks
Following his exit from the show, be became a bodybuilder and even fronted a BBC documentary called Anton Danyluk on Body Shame in 2023.
It is not yet confirmed exactly when Celeb Ex On The Beach’s fourth series is going to air, but a show source revealed “it’s in the very early stages but should film towards the end of the year.”
The show’s cast will consist of well-known faces from other reality shows including Love Island and MAFS, as well as Netflix stars.
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Anton got close to Georgia Harrison on Love Island: All StarsCredit: Rex
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He vowed it would be the last time he featured on a reality TV programmeCredit: MTV
Growing up, Al Roker loved animation. His Saturday mornings were devoted to Bugs Bunny and Road Runner, and he would spend hours studying Preston Blair’s book on how to draw cartoons. He dreamed of becoming an animator for Walt Disney. But when he grew up and became the “Today” weatherman instead, he had the idea to combine his love of weather with his love of animation into a children’s TV series.
“Weather Hunters,” premiering Monday on PBS Kids, follows 8-year-old Lily Hunter (Tandi Fomukong) as she, her younger brother, Benny (Lorenzo Ross) and her older sister, Corky (Kapri Ladd), investigate the weather with the help of their parents, Dot (Holly Robinson Peete) and Al (Roker). The children in the series are based on Roker’s own three children: Courtney, Leila and Nick. And in a case of art fondly imitating life, Roker’s Al Hunter is a local weatherman with a penchant for dad jokes.
“This really is one of those instances where everything that you love in your life comes together,” Roker says. “The show reflects what my childhood was. My parents were very supportive of their children and what their dreams were.”
Roker has been developing the show since his now-adult children were the ages the Hunter kids are in the series. “Good things come to those who wait,” he says with a laugh.
“This is a real passion project for him,” says Sara DeWitt, senior vice president and general manager of PBS Kids. “We love to have a creator who is so excited about getting kids interested in the world.”
For PBS Kids, a series rooted in weather exploration was a natural extension to its current slate of programming. “Weather plays such a big part of kids’ lives,” DeWitt says. “What should I wear today? What if it rains and I can’t do the thing I was planning to do? Where does that thunder come from? It just immediately opened up so many ideas and possibilities for us about ways we could really connect with families and get them more excited about the scientific topic.”
“Weather Hunters” centers on Lily Hunter and her family, which includes her father, Al, who, like Roker, is a weatherman.
(Weather Hunters Inc.)
Over the course of the first 10 episodes, all of which will premiere digitally on PBS Kids at launch, Lily and her family will investigate things like fog, clouds, leaves changing colors, thunderstorms, snow and the moving rocks of the desert. Sara Sweetman, an associate professor at University of Rhode Island, is an educational advisor for the series. “Weather is such fantastic content because it is very relevant to the kids’ lives,” she says. “They understand why it’s important and how it impacts them.”
But weather science, like all science, can get complex pretty quickly. “I was really adamant that there’d be one takeaway message [in each episode],” Sweetman says. “What we really want is [for] kids to watch the show and then run into the kitchen to find their dad or their mom and say, ‘Guess what?’ and be able to state that one idea really clearly.”
Sweetman was involved in each 22-minute episode from the very first pitch. “The ideal situation for educational media is that we hit the learning moment at the same moment as the emotional arc of the story,” she says. “We know from research when we can do that, that kids take that meaning away and hold on to it.”
Peete, the voice of Dot, has been friends with Roker for years. She starred in Hallmark’s “Morning Show Mysteries,” which Roker produced and was based on Roker’s novels. For Peete, whose father, Matthew Robinson Jr., was the original Gordon on “Sesame Street,” starring in the series is a “full-circle moment.” “PBS just meant so much to me,” she says. “It’s one thing for your dad to be on TV. It’s nothing for your dad to be on like the best TV children’s TV show ever. I wish my dad could see that I was actually on PBS doing this type of show with Al. He would be very, very proud that I would continue this legacy of children’s entertainment and education.”
Executive producer and showrunner Dete Meserve says animation allows the series, which is aimed at children ages 5 to 8, to have flights of fancy like the flying mobile weather station known as the Vansformer that the family explores in combined with “reality-based scientific explanations for what’s happening.” The episode on clouds explains how even though Benny can no longer see the sun behind the clouds, the sun is still there.
All kids are scientists, says Meserve, and it’s particularly nice that the character at the center of this series is a young girl interested in science. “There’s research that shows that if she can see it, she can be it,” Meserve says. “And Lily is surrounded by her siblings who have an equal interest, but the way they interact with it is different. Corky wants to film and document it. And then you have Benny, who’s more the artistic part of it. He wants to draw.”
The show also seeks to make some weather phenomena like hurricanes or thunderstorms less scary by helping the young audience understand the science behind what is happening. “We’re explaining what it is and how it works,” Roker says. “Kids can feel some sense of empowerment. In the show we talk about, how do we, as a family, prepare? How do we protect ourselves? How do we keep ourselves safe?”
Throughout the series Lily will form hypotheses and test them to see if the facts fit what she originally thought. “Those are all things that I think the show excels at — helping create those skills for critical thinking that kids can take forward as they get older,” Roker says.
He also hopes children walk away with a sense of the true beauty of weather. “There’s really this magic that happens around us,” he says. “And it’s based in science.”
“Love Island USA” star Taylor Williams says he is “all good” after being thrown from his horse during the Arizona Invitational Black Rodeo in Scottsdale.
In a TikTok video, Williams’ horse seemingly trips over another horse before falling to the ground. Williams and his horse appear to be trampled by other participants before the horse rolls over Williams and rises to its feet. Williams, 24, was still lying on the ground when officials rushed over to help him.
Williams gave an update on his condition later that day on social media, saying that his injuries would not get in the way of him attending an event that he was scheduled to appear at Saturday night, according to Entertainment Weekly.
“Was in a horse accident last night but I’m still pulling up tonight injured and all,” he wrote on Instagram Stories. “It’s my brothers’ bday [you know] we still turnt!”
He followed up the post with a photo of himself lying on a hospital stretcher, wearing a neck brace and holding two thumbs up. “Preciate all the love!” he wrote over the image. “I’m good.”
Williams’ girlfriend and fellow “Love Island” alum Clarke Carraway later posted a video via Instagram Stories, which showed Williams being wheeled out of a hospital, while Maverick City Music’s “The Story I’ll Tell” plays in the background.
In a second video, Carraway poses next to Williams, who has one arm in a sling, while they rock matching cowboy hats.
The Oklahoma native, who said he “was on a horse before I could walk,” appeared on the seventh season of Peacock’s “Love Island,” which aired earlier this summer. The veterinary student became known for wearing cowboy hats and talking about his love for the rodeo.
Williams first coupled up with fan-favorite Olandria Carthen on the reality dating show, but ultimately ended the series with Carraway, from Charlotte, N.C. The couple made it to the second-to-last episode, but were booted off the island shortly after making their relationship “exclusive.”
During the reunion, which was hosted by Ariana Madix and Andy Cohen last week, Williams and Carraway said that they were still going strong and making their long-distance relationship work.
DEONTAY WILDER has welcomed a fight with Jake Paul – in a bid to dish out a “reality check”.
Wilder has become the latest champion of the past linked with a bout against YouTuber-turned-boxer Paul.
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Deontay Wilder is open to fighting Jake PaulCredit: Getty
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Jake Paul has been linked with a number of ex-championsCredit: AFP
And while it so far remains just another possibility on the table – Wilder is ready to come to the table for that lucrative conversation.
He told Brian Mazique: “Nothing has been presented to us, at the moment it’s not real, but if it came my way of course I’m 100 per cent taking it.
“He’s been doing his thing in the business although it’s not the traditional way, it’s not the logic way of how a fighter comes up or how he gains stardom and fame and fortune.
“Unfortunately, it’s a more brutal road than that. Some of these guys never, ever in their lifetime see $50,000, let alone $100,000 or $1million or $2million.
“It just doesn’t go like that. That module of how it is, it’s not like that. But it’s the wave of what young people are looking to or what they like.
“Unfortunately, people try and go off the vote of popularity. What’s going on, what’s popular, what can make them money.
“Money makes the world go round and everybody is trying to make that dollar – no matter what skill you’ve got if you can generate a crowd that generates to asses in seats that generates money.
“So all of this is a cycle that’s used and here it is you’ve got a guy that’s been doing good in generating money and putting asses in seats although he’s selective in how he fights and who he fights, I would say.”
Paul moved up to heavyweight in November when Mike Tyson controversially made a comeback aged 58.
And despite the scrutiny surrounding the showdown – over 100 MILLION tuned in on Netflix to watch Tyson lose over eight shorter rounds of two minutes.
Dillon Danis calls out Jake Paul after slamming ‘joke’ Gervonta Davis fight and says rival is ‘stealing people’s money’
Paul, 28, then returned in June to beat ex-middleweight world champion Julio Cesar Chavez Jr, 39, over ten rounds to earn himself a No14 cruiserweight rank in the WBA.
The American – whose only loss in 13 fights came to Tommy Fury in 2023 – soon after entered shock talks to fight Anthony Joshua.
And two-time heavyweight champ AJ looked to be nearing a deal to face Paul next year.
Sharing the spotlight with Robert Rinder, Liz Hurley stars in The Inheritance as The Deceased – an eccentric winemaker. But she admits she isn’t the biggest fan of alcohol.
Liz Hurley portrays an eccentric vintner in The Inheritance(Image: Channel 4)
Liz Hurley recently opened up about her relationship with alcohol – and it may be the secret to her ageless appearance.
Her admirers may be surprised but Liz Hurley is a Traitors superfan. So, when the chance came to star alongside Robert Rinder in C4’s The Inheritance, she didn’t hesitate.
In the new reality game show, Liz plays The Deceased, a glamorous winemaker with a lavish estate. Barrister and broadcaster Robert portrays The Executor in the show and ensures the stipulations of The Deceased’s will are followed to the letter.
“I really enjoyed The Traitors and loved the idea of being part of a show in which audiences were really invested,” Liz says, “I thought Robert Rinder and I would be a good combination.”
Though she wouldn’t mind following in the footsteps of celebrity vintners like Kylie Minogue and Brad Pitt, Liz has her own spin in mind.
“I can certainly see the glamour of having your own wine, and Brad Pitt’s rosé is actually delicious,” she says. “But I drink alcohol so rarely that I’d be more interested in trying to create an exceptionally fabulous alcohol-free wine.”
Liz Hurley and Robert Rinder team up in The Inheritance as The Deceased and her Executor(Image: Channel 4)
At 60, Liz is still gleefully playful about her roles – even if that includes lying in a coffin. “I quite enjoyed it, it was very restful,” she quips. What really stole her heart, though, was the shoot’s picturesque setting.
“Shooting at an exquisite country estate was a real treat,” she says. “The air was so fresh it felt like we were at a health retreat. It can be easier shooting on a sound stage, but I prefer real locations as it really helps with getting into character.”
Liz shines on screen but she admits she’s never been tempted to join a reality show as herself. “I have been invited on a few really good ones, but I prefer scripted work,” she says. “I don’t much like being myself on camera; it feels like I’m invading my own privacy!”
Talk of inheritance sparks a softer note. Liz treasures porcelain coffee cups passed down from her great aunt. “I think of her with every espresso,” she says.
Material possessions don’t matter much, though. “I’m not desperate to inherit anything,” she says. “I want everyone I love to check out empty, having spent every penny on enjoying themselves.”
The new C4 reality show follows 13 contestants as they battle it out to get their hands on The Deceased’s fortune(Image: Channel 4)
Produced by Studio Lambert, the powerhouse behind BBC’s The Traitors, the show takes 13 strangers, locks them inside a grand stately home, and pits them against each other in challenges to prove themselves worthy of inheriting part of The Deceased’s fortune – and it’s no easy feat.
Contestants must show cunning, teamwork and nerve, all while enduring surreal challenges that embody Liz’s camp and larger-than-life alter ego.
“They’re very right for this lady and her estate,” she says, “As the show goes on, she comes up with some interesting things.” The absurdity is clear from the very first episode.
Tasked with creating The Deceased’s trademark rose, players must gather white wine from the bottom of a lake and pick out the perfect red wine from a string of barrels. “That’s absurd, isn’t it?” Liz says, “Everyone has to put on their diving suits. I wouldn’t want to do that!”
Lily Phillips is the subject of a new episode of Stacey Dooley’s show, Stacey Dooley Sleeps Over, where she talks about her decision to leave university and enter the adult content creator industry
20:30, 25 Aug 2025Updated 20:35, 25 Aug 2025
Lily got emotional as her parents spoke of their struggles(Image: u.co.uk)
It’s every parent’s worst nightmare to learn that their child has become an adult content creator. But that is the reality for the parents of Only Fans star Lily Phillips, 23.
Lily grew up in a small village in Derbyshire and dropped out of university after a few months to join the online platform. In her first 24 hours online, she made £2,000 and has since gone on to pull a number of ‘live stunts’ which has seen her sleep with 100 men in one day, taking her content very much offline as well.
“When I started that, I was like wow – I found a glitch in the matrix and I can make money doing what I love,” she says. Quickly, the conversation comes up about her parents feel about it.
“I described it to them as more like glamour modelling. Obviously, they were concerned at the start – are you safe, as long as it’s only online,” she says, before admitting she hadn’t told her parents about her latest ‘stunt’.
Stacey was with Lily as she got ready for one of her live videos(Image: u.co.uk)
The stunts happen in person – rather than online – and Lily will go out and physically recruit people for them. No one is off limits. The content was so shocking that none of it ended up in the documentary.
In a candid chat, Lily got emotional as she spoke with her parents on her regular Sunday catch up, joined by documentary maker and journalist Stacey Dooley. Speaking on Stacey Dooley Sleeps Over, her dad says: “We’ve known for years she’s done OnlyFans and I thought it was just posing in swimwear and lingerie.”
“When she said she was doing Only Fans, we stood back because we want to continue our relationship with our daughter. We were pretty open with it, but when it went to the next step, we were like ‘no no’,” her mum says. Heartbreakingly, her dad says: “If there’s anything we could do to change her profession, we’d do it overnight … It’s the degradingness of it and making sure that she’s safe.”
Her dad says: “Sometimes we think have we done anything wrong with her upbringing, well as far as I’m concerned we’ve had nothing but nice times and love … Is it money? Because if it was money, we’d sell our house. You could have everything you want Lily if you gave it all up now.” When asked how she feels, Lily says she understands and respects how they feel and “that’s that”.
The conversation later gets too much for Lily and she walks away, hearing her parents get emotional over their daughter’s career choice. “I don’t want to be on camera, I just need a moment,” she says. Her mum is also emotional as they both apologise for upsetting her, as her dad says he receives calls from random people saying ‘I hope your daughter dies’.
Lily’s parents opened up about their own feelings towards what she does(Image: u.co.uk)
Lily says she’d do anything to stop her parents being affected by what she does – but talk of money doesn’t come easy for Lily. When pressed by Stacey about how much she earns, Lily eventually confesses to being a multi-millionaire.
“So the subscribers, they’ll give a tenner and she’s got 33,000 so that’s £330,000 a month,” Stacey reveals during one of Lily’s live videos – which all gets too much and Stacey walks out, unable to watch it continue.
Her empire has allowed her to buy her dream car outright and finance isn’t even a word Lily needs to think about. “Does multimillionaire mean lots of millions in the bank? I’d say multimillionaire,” she says rather bashfully, before adding: “I’m so English – I find money so uncomfortable to talk about… I find it a little bit distasteful.”
It comes just weeks after the Channel 4 documentary on her fellow adult content creator Bonnie Blue was criticised for appearing to promote their career choice with young women looking to enter into the industry.
At just 23-years-old, Lily believes she’s slept with over 1,000 men. One of her most viral videos – which saw her sleep with 100 men in one day – earned her a seven figure sum. Despite her parents’ worries, she has no plans to stop doing what she does.
When asked by Stacey if there was a world where she’d stop what she did, she say she wouldn’t. “I don’t see it as that extreme,” she says, appearing to double down on her decision to stay in the industry.
“Is all of this worth it?” Stacey asks Lily, who tells her: “I can’t imagine what else I’d be doing. It gives me so much drive and a reason to wake up in the morning. This is something that isn’t degrading for me – I still have to live my life how I want to.”
Lily’s appearance on Stacey’s show has been hit with furious backlash. One wrote: ‘I’m just losing my conviction towards Stacey’s content and the authenticity of her views… is it just documentary clickbait.” Another said: “Really disappointing, just don’t think Stacey Dooley should be promoting or giving this girl a platform. Lowest derivative entertainment, a real regression in content from Stacey.”
A study, published in 2021, revealed that one in five Britons open to working in adult industry, with 32% of those aged 18-34 saying they were tempted by the money – but is a show like this serving a warning or promoting it as lifestyle choice?
*Stacey Dooley Sleeps Over is available to stream on U.
