risk

Top executives of California’s two biggest utilities warned they would take action to protect their shareholders if Sacramento lawmakers fail to pass legislation limiting their companies’ liabilities for wildfires sparked by their equipment.

“If the legislature does not act, or if they act and don’t actually solve the problem, then we’re going to have to take action,” said Patti Poppe, chief executive of Pacific Gas & Electric, on a July 23 call with Wall Street analysts.

Poppe did not specify what her company would do, but made it clear any action would protect shareholders’ money. Previously, she told Wall Street analysts that if lawmakers failed to pass legislation to protect the utilities, PG&E would use its cash to buy back the company’s shares, according to a report by the bank Jeffries.

That could raise the company’s stock price and benefit shareholders, while reducing money available for the utility’s California programs.

The comments from Poppe and Pedro Pizarro, chief executive of Edison International, came just before the state Legislature returned from summer break Monday to begin the last four weeks of its session.

Gov. Gavin Newsom and legislators have been working behind closed doors to address the state’s escalating cost of wildfires, including those caused by the utilities, The Times reported last month. The big electric companies have told their investors they are talking to Newsom and lawmakers about a bill package that would protect shareholders from paying for utility-sparked fires.

On Tuesday, government fire officials released their investigation into last year’s devastating Eaton fire, blaming Edison’s century-old transmission line, which the utility kept in place even though it had not carried power since 1971.

Last week, Edison’s Pizarro echoed some of Poppe’s statements. He told Wall Street analysts on a conference call that he too was prepared to make financial changes if the legislature does not pass a comprehensive bill that cuts the utilities’ financial wildfire risk before the legislative session ends Aug. 31.

Any legislation that passes without a protective framework for utilities, Pizarro said, would “influence how we prioritize and deploy future capital.”

Pizarro declined analysts’ requests to say where the company would cut back, other than saying it would continue spending aimed at keeping its grid safe and reliable.

“We’re going to evaluate the totality of the package that comes to us and figure out our response that goes along with it,” Pizarro said.

Pizarro also told analysts that without legislation supporting the utilities, Edison’s credit rating could be downgraded. If that happens, he said, it could raise bills for electric customers since the utility may have to pay a higher interest rate for new borrowings.

“That could be a significant cost impact through the cost of debt that gets passed through to SCE customers if we don’t have a framework in the next four weeks that is credit supportive for our utility,” Pizarro told the analysts.

Newsom and lawmakers are drawing up legislation based on recommendations in an April study that the governor ordered last year.

The final report didn’t focus on utilities’ responsibility for sparking at least seven of the 20 most destructive wildfires in state history. It suggested ways to reduce the cost of wildfire liabilities, including by capping fees of attorneys representing victims and reducing payments to survivors for non-economic damages like pain and suffering.

The report also suggested that utilities should no longer reimburse property insurers for damages of fires sparked by electrical equipment. Insurers say this would increase premiums for homeowners.

Edison is now facing thousands of lawsuits from the victims of the Eaton fire, which roared through Altadena, destroying more than 9,000 homes and other structures and killing 19 people. The lawsuits claim it was negligent for the fire, which Edison denies.

The utility created a program to pay for victims’ damages if they agree to give up their right to sue.

Edison has so far paid more than $1 billion to victims. Experts say the fire’s costs could exceed the $21-billion state wildfire fund that Newsom and lawmakers created in 2019 to protect Edison, PG&E and San Diego Gas & Electric.

If that happens, Edison customers must pay for the rest under legislation that Newsom and lawmakers introduced in the final days of last year’s legislative session.

Because of utility protections in legislation that Newsom and lawmakers passed in 2019 and last year, Edison has said it expects its shareholders to pay little for the Eaton fire. The utility says it believes it will be reimbursed for its damage payments to victims by the state wildfire fund and through customer bills, according to the company’s financial disclosures.

A coalition of wildfire survivors, consumer advocates and other groups wrote a letter to Newsom last month, asking him for legislation that keeps utilities accountable for the fires they cause.

The coalition pointed out that despite billions of dollars in damages from the Eaton fire, Edison’s profits soared last year by more than 200% — from $1.3 billion in 2024 to $4.5 billion.

The company’s board also rewarded Edison executives with higher salaries and bonuses. Pizarro received $16.6 million in cash, stock and other compensation, up 20% from 2024.

“For-profit companies that repeatedly cause catastrophic harm must be held accountable, not protected and enriched,” wrote Joy Chen, executive director of Every Fire Survivors Network, who is leading the coalition, in the letter to Newsom.

The letter warned that without reform of current state laws protecting utilities, disasters like the Eaton fire could happen again.

“Altadena is not the first community to endure this cycle, and it will not be the last,” the letter said.

AS the drought continues across Europe, low water levels in Europe are now threatening river cruise holidays.

The River Rhine and the Danube River have started to dry up with passengers being re-routed at the last minute after two ships ran aground.

On the morning of June 29, the ship called Viking Einar ran aground on the Rhine River at Cologne in Germany.

Days later, the Viking Ullur ‘experienced a grounding incident on the Danube River‘ in Bulgaria with 186 passengers being evacuated.

It came ‘into contact with a sandbank during a period of exceptionally low water levels‘, Viking said in a statement.

With no rain on the horizon, river cruise companies are having to take action with some having to change sailings completely.

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One woman who booked with Riviera Travel wrote on Facebook: “We have just received an email to tell us that our Rhine and Switzerland cruise is being re-routed and will not be travelling to Switzerland but instead north to Netherlands and Belgium.”

She added that she was given the option to change the itinerary or “cancel with full refund and have been offered compensation”.

Riviera Travel, issued a statement about potential alterations on its website.

It explained that “individual sailings may continue to develop right up until departure and, occasionally, during the cruise itself.”

Passengers who have booked after August 5 are being contacted up to two weeks before departure with updates and between 48 hours and 24 hours before departure to “explain the latest position, any expected changes and the options available.”

Talking to The Independent, Riviera Travel said that cancelling a cruise is always a last resort.

In another case, one woman heading on a river cruise with TUI shared her new itinerary on a Facebook page.

Instead of sailing from Basel, through Germany to Amsterdam, the new suggested route starts in Zaandam through to Rotterdam, Antwerp, Middelburg, Dorecht and Amsterdam.

In the email, TUI also offered a 15 per cent refund of the holiday cost with £150 holiday vouchers per person on the new sailing.

Other options were to rebook another river cruise with a refund in cost if the new sailing is cheaper, or if it’s more expensive, an incentive of up to 10 per cent of the value of an existing holiday.

Or there was an option to cancel the booking with a full refund.

On TUI’s website, it says “Most sailings go ahead without any disruptions, but water levels on the rivers can go up or down depending on the weather.”

It continued: “If your cruise is affected, we’ll make every effort to complete your itinerary. To do this there may be changes to berth locations, modifying shore experiences or completing some sections of the itinerary by coach.”

Emerald Cruises confirmed that reduced water levels are affecting sections of the upper Danube between both Vienna and Budapest, and Regensburg and Passau near Pfelling.

On its website it has said that it may make “operational adjustments” with passengers possibly being transferred to a “sister ship” as well as embarkation and disembarkation being amended.

There could also be overnight stays in hotels.

AmaWaterways said: “Due to unusually low water levels on sections of the Rhine and Danube rivers, operational adjustments to select sailings have been deemed necessary.”

It continued to add that “modifications may include changes to ports, embarkation or disembarkation locations, motorcoach transfers, ship scheduling or other itinerary elements”.

Breast cancer is a leading cause of death in women under 50 in the UK.

About one in seven women develop breast cancer in their lifetime, yet only 5-10% of cases are linked to inherited genes.

Most cases – 96% – are in women over 40, while 25% are in women over 75.

Men can get breast cancer too, with about 420 new cases every year in the UK.

In England, guidance from Nice recommends GPs ask about family history if a woman is worried that she might have a higher risk of breast cancer, and sometimes if they are over 35 and using an oral contraceptive pill or considering taking hormone replacement therapy (HRT).

Hormones have been linked to a slightly increased risk of breast cancer, although larger risk factors include alcohol intake and obesity.

The study, by a team from Cambridge University and the Institute of Cancer Research, looks at how to predict breast cancer risk in younger women.

They used a risk calculator called Boadicea that combines factors such as family history, lifestyle, reproductive history and genetic information to give a risk score.

If all women under 50 were to have this done, they estimate about a quarter (26.5%) would be categorised as at above-average risk and referred for further assessment.

This would include a third of women under 50 (34.8%) who develop breast cancer within 10 years.

By comparison, the current Nice criteria would result in 1.4% of women under 50 being referred for further assessment, which would include just 4.4% of those women who develop breast cancer.

A main reason for the disparity, the researchers say, is because three-quarters of women (73%) under 50 who develop breast cancer within a decade have no family history of breast cancer – the key criterion in the Nice guidelines.

Maybe there is something in the fog. Matthew Rhys landed two Emmy nominations in different categories for darkly comedic and darkly chilling turns this TV season.

Rhys is nominated for lead actor in a comedy series for his deft performance as Tom Loftis, a single dad and the mayor of a cursed New England island who is trying to balance the town’s supernatural threats with his efforts to boost tourism, in Apple’s TV’s breakout horror-comedy series “Widow’s Bay.” The word-of-mouth buzz around the series, which premiered in April, intensified each week leading up to its finale last month and prompted chatter around its prospects as a major Emmys contender. The series arrived late in the season, so only its first seven episodes qualify for the 2026 awards cycle, but that was enough for Rhys to nab a nod.

It wasn’t the only performance from Rhys that voters boosted. He is also nominated for lead actor in a limited or anthology series for his role as the sociopath Nile Jarvis, a famed and formidable real estate developer who once was the prime suspect in the killing of his wife, in Netflix’s “The Beast in Me.” Nile finds himself in a cat-and-mouse dynamic with his new neighbor (Claire Danes), an author in search of her next book subject who is suspicious of his innocence.

Prior to this year’s nominations, Rhys received five Emmy nominations over his career, including for his lead roles in “The Americans” and “Perry Mason,” as well as a guest actor nod in “Girls.” He won in 2018 for his role as KGB spy Philip Jennings in “The Americans.”

The Times spoke with Rhys about his nomination; these are edited excerpts.

Matthew Rhys as Mayor Tom Loftis in Apple TV’s “Widow’s Bay.”

(Apple)

Congratulations on your exciting morning — it’s a big day in the Rhys-Russell household [Keri Russell, Rhys’ partner, is nominated for lead actress in a drama for her role in “The Diplomat”]. Let’s start with the most important question: What’s in the fog, Matthew?

[laughs] I love how it took me a moment. I was like, “Wait, what?” Oh, yes, the fog! What’s in the fog is an incredible Season 2.

Place me in the moment when you got the news.

I was in Brooklyn Bridge Marina at the time. I just got off a boat, and I thought, “Oh, God, it’s 11:40.” So I thought quite possibly [they] got to our categories. I checked my phone and there were the many texts. That was the exciting moment because if you haven’t been nominated, there’s no text.

Did one text stand out from the others?

The real pinch-me moment — this is going to sound like a real name drop — but it really got me emotional because I thought, if I’d have told my 18-year-old self that Gary Oldman would text me to congratulate me, I wouldn’t have believed it. That’s when it got me in an emotional way because he’s such a true hero.

Let’s start with “Widow’s Bay,” which recently wrapped its first season. There’s something so thrilling about how it broke through the way that it did. What has struck you about how viewers responded to this horror comedy?

There was a great degree of nervousness about how this would land, whether indeed it would land at all, and the fact that it has, and kind of the depth and the complex nature that’s landed or resonated with people in different ways, is what I’ve loved. Some people go, “Oh my God, it’s so funny”; some people say, “Oh my God, it’s terrifying” — some people say both. And some people pick up on the weirdest things, and then some people pick up on the most obvious, great things. But it’s the length and breadth and the variety of its resonances that has really made me very happy, and really made me doff my cap to [creator] Katie Dippold, for what she did.

What should networks and studios take away from the success of “Widow’s Bay” if they are really paying attention?

Take the risk. And challenge audiences. Everyone’s more than ready for it and thirsty for it in a real way. I really hope this does something in the Hollywood psyche, where they go, “Let’s put away the remakes and let’s just get after new challenging, original material.”

What guidance did you get from Katie about who Tom was and how to play him?

She’s dizzyingly collaborative, so she said, “Tom is yours.” It was more me going, “But what about this for Tom?” She would help, but she really said, “Tom is yours to create now. Everything I’ve done is on the page.” And it was. That’s the beauty of her writing. If you’re true to it, and you don’t get in the way of it, it sings.

The way Tom reacts to situations and people is such a master class in facial expressions. Did you recognize that would be your tool for your performance early on?

We had a kind of sliding scale — Hiro [Murai, executive producer and director], myself and Katie — because it was a departure for me. I’d go, “I don’t know where this lives or where reality lives.” And as much as anyone can say, “Play for real” — playing it for real can mean many things. It can mean a very minimal reaction, and it can mean a great reaction, and so there were times when I was like, “I’m gonna hit the sliding scale, and you let me know where it should be landing, or where, in your opinion, it’s landing in a real way.” Sometimes they were like, “Maybe a little less,” and then they were like “Maybe a little more.” That element of collaboration was wonderful too.

The moment on the boat is a GIF I send often. The jolt.

It’s funny, we have a great and incredible stunt coordinator Paul [Marini]. He said, “You have to lead where the momentum of the energy would be; it’d be your hips. So let your hips lead, and then let your body follow.” And I was like, “Oh, that’s smart.” Then if you do that, then it has a degree of comic effect to it. But my pelvis hasn’t quite recovered.

Matthew Rhys as Nile Jarvis opposite Claire Danes as Aggie Wiggs in Netflix’s “The Beast in Me.”

(Netflix)

Sort of like your dance moment in “The Beast in Me” — lead with the hips. This is your thing, Matthew.

Anytime, in the stage direction, it says “dances,” I’m like [mimics vomit sound]. That strikes ice in my veins because I’m always like, “Oh my God.”

That’s your horror comedy.

That is my true horror comedy because my dancing can be horrific and comical when it is to be neither.

Let’s talk about “The Beast in Me.” Nile Jarvis was also quite the departure from you. What was your entry point to understanding him and figuring out how chilling to make him?

It was a lot of YouTube watching, where you just type in “psychopaths” and stuff comes up. I read Jon Ronson’s “The Psychopath Test” and “The Journalist and the Murderer” [by Janet Malcolm]. The writing was so strong in “The Beast in Me,” so much of Nile was preemptively done for me. As [director] Antonio Campos said, “The trick might be not to do too much because enough has been said.” Everyone has this predisposed idea of who he is and, therefore, the idea we came up with was to do not as little as possible, but to be minimal with it because he’s aware of what everyone thinks of him and there’s a degree of enjoyment and relishing in that.

Have you been able to sensibly eat a roast chicken since?

No, not sensibly. It’s become Pavlovian for me now. When I eat roast chicken, I devour it in a slightly psychotic way. I love that scene. It’s an astute piece of writing to say so much about someone without words.

What would you be best suited to achieve: rebranding the town of Widow’s Bay as a tourist destination or charming your neighbors into signing paperwork for the construction of a running path through the backwoods of their properties?

I’m not saying I could charm the neighbors, but I would attempt to charm the neighbors. Playing Tom was exhausting in a way that playing Nile wasn’t. I always spent the end of the day on “Widow’s Bay” going, “My God, I’m exhausted” — because you’re just vibrating on a higher level with Tom. It’s always like, “Listen, please!” The pitch is always higher; you’re always like, “You’ve got to listen to me!” Or if you’re terrified, you’re just hyperventilating.

I know the news of these nominations is still fresh and I don’t want to tell you how to approach the big night, but I just have to say, this could be the moment you take a page from Philip Jennings of “The Americans” and come with a wig and getup so when they pan to you during both categories, you can make them feel distinct.

That’s exactly what I’m going to do. I’m going to Jennings it. I’m going to PJ it. When it pans to me in the second category, I’m gonna look completely different. I’m going to be dressed as Elizabeth [Jennings].

Well, congratulations. How do you think you and Keri are going to celebrate?

Keri, in true “Americans” style, is having me meet her in a clandestine spot that I don’t know anything about, so who knows what. I don’t know what the afternoon is going to unfold, but it’s a big surprise. She might end up killing me, who knows.

The Odyssey actor said he loved the ‘creamy shredded chicken dish’ for its taste and ‘sentimental reasons’

Tom Holland’s been doing the rounds promoting Spider-Man and The Odyssey this month, and during an appearance on the podcast Dish, he shared a classic 60s dinner that holds a special place in his heart – and it could boast a number of health benefits.

Holland, who plays Telemachus in Christopher Nolan’s film, recorded the episode with hosts Nick Grimshaw and Angela Hartnett the day after England played against Mexico in the World Cup. Starring alongside his wife in the film, Zendaya, who plays Athena, he raved about a dish called Chicken Véronique.

And according to WebMD, one of its ingredients, chicken, could help with weight management and, as a result, reduce the risk of heart disease and high blood pressure. The health experts explain: “Research suggests that 25-30 grams of protein per meal can help us feel more full.

“Protein-rich meals can make us feel fuller despite us eating less, which helps to promote better weight management. Healthier weight leads to improvements in risk factors for heart problems, such as high triglyceride levels and high blood pressure.

“A food rich in protein, chicken can help with weight management and reduce the risk of heart disease.”

The health experts also note that chicken is a lean protein that provides the amino acids our bodies need to build and maintain muscle, which becomes more important as we age. A higher-protein diet can also help support bone density.

Because of this, eating chicken can help keep muscles strong and bones healthier. This can lower the risk of injuries and conditions like osteoporosis.

So the chicken in Tom Holland’s dish could actually provide some benefits to our health. But as with everything, always make sure you are having a healthy and balanced diet, as while a dish may include a healthy ingredient or two, it doesn’t always make the dish itself healthy.

‘

During the podcast, Holland’s younger brother, Sam, who is a chef, shared a pre-recorded video, explaining that their mum and Granny Tess “cooked Chicken Véronique and an apple crumble on a beach in Thailand for the cast and crew of Impossible”.

Now, 15 years later, and it’s “our favourite family meal” especially after Tom has a “long stint away” filming, Sam said, calling it a dish he loves for many “sentimental reasons.”

Tom shared the same memories, re-calling: “We were making a movie in Thailand. It was my first ever film. It was a real family.

“The crew were such lovely people, and we would always go down to this beach called Memories Beach. Cast and crew would be down there every weekend – all weekend.

“We started cooking down there, we became friends with the people that ran the beach bar, and they would let us cook. The English guys would cook one week, and then the Italians would cook the next week.

“Naomi Watts was the star of that movie. So, my granny roasted two chickens in her oven at her house in Thailand. She then drove it through the jungle to this beach, because you had to kind of go down this dirt road for about 25 minutes.

“She made Chicken Véronique. It’s like a kind of creamy shredded chicken dish, but then you peel and roast the grapes. And then you shred the potatoes. It’s absolutely delicious.

“So now if I’ve ever been away and I come home to the family house for dinner, that’s always what we always have.”

Host and chef Angela Hartness replied: “Now you’ve mentioned it’s a really old, classic French dish. And one that you’d have had in the ’60s.”

While they did not cook the classic dish during the podcast, they did cook a dish Tom called a “treat” – spicy pork and pineapple skewers with Greek salad.

Spicy pork & pineapple skewers – full recipe

Ingredients

• 500g pack British diced pork shoulder
• ½ supersweet medium pineapple
• Vegetable oil, for griddling
• 1 satsuma, halved
• 2 salad onions, thinly sliced

For the marinade

• 1 satsuma, juice
• 2 clove/s garlic, crushed
• 1 tbsp Cooks’ Ingredients Turkish Pepper Flakes
• 1 tsp cayenne pepper
• 1 tsp smoked paprika
• 2 tsp ground coriander
• ½ tsp ground cumin
• 1 tbsp light soy sauce
• 1 tbsp olive oil

Method

1. Soak 8 wooden skewers in cold water for at least 30 minutes to prevent them burning. In a mixing bowl, combine the marinade ingredients and add a few cracks of black pepper. Add the pork (halve any large pieces) and stir to coat. Cover and marinate in the fridge for at least 30 minutes, or preferably overnight.
2. Peel, core, then cut the pineapple half into 24 chunks. Thread 3-4 pieces of pork and 3 pieces of pineapple alternately onto each skewer and discard any remaining marinade.
3. Heat a griddle pan over a medium-high heat, brush the pan lightly with oil, then cook half the skewers for 12-15 minutes, turning twice, until the pork is cooked through with no pink meat, juices that run clear, and is charred in places. Keep hot, while you cook the second batch.
4. Char the satsuma, cut-side down, on the hot pan. Serve the skewers scattered with the salad onions and the warm satsuma juice, squeezed over at the table. Perfect with a leafy salad on the side, if liked

Angela Hartnett serves this recipe with a village Greek salad. You can find check out the recipe for that and handy cooking tips and tricks on the Waitrose website here.

Ospreys finished 11th in the URC last season and were knocked out in the last 16 of the Challenge Cup.

Mark Jones’ side were impacted by uncertainty, with fans protesting against the WRU and Y11 at fixtures in Bridgend.

The unsettling situation was a factor in Wales captains Dewi Lake and Jac Morgan opting to join Gloucester for the coming season.

Signing the Professional Rugby Agreement (PRA) with the governing body offers some level of security until 2028, but the latest development will provide more challenges for both Scarlets and Ospreys.

“Is it really a surprise? We just had a little bit of a break from the debacle,” said former Ospreys and Wales wing Shane Williams on Radio Wales Breakfast.

“The conversation has always been that everyone believes there will be a region cut, that players’ welfare and jobs will be put on the line again.

“It’s no real shock to me, we just have to start the conversation again and the uncertainty hits us again.”

There is the prospect of a tender process to be the western club, or the possibility of reviving the merger that almost happened in 2019.

“It’s easier said than done,” said Williams, who is from Carmarthenshire. “There is huge rivalry and the Ospreys are in the process of rebuilding St Helen’s and there is Parc y Scarlets, which is barely used by anyone else.

“For the fans, there has been a huge rivalry and it would take some job to get those two sets of supporters together to support one entity.”

A NEW passport rule introduced earlier this year has already caught out a number of families.

As many as 1.2million people can no longer use their foreign passport to enter the country.

These passport rules came into play in February and mean that British nationals have to carry a valid British passport to return to the UK.

They can no longer use their foreign passport to enter the country.

An alternative is to have a “certificate of entitlement” costing £589.

Despite being in place for five months, the new rules have been catching people out.

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In one case, a British student was stuck in Rome and missed six weeks of school – she was unable to return home for over a month.

The 15-year-old girl had been visiting her grandmother in Italy in April of this year.

When it was time to return home, she was turned away at the airport because she didn’t have a valid British passport.

The girl’s father sought help from the Home Office and the Foreign Office.

He told The Guardian: “The embassy, the Home Office and the Foreign Office bounced us from one to another.

“They are playing with people’s lives, a child’s education. It is loathsome.”

Eventually, she was issued with an emergency travel document.

In another case, one British woman was caught out when she was trying to travel from Copenhagen to Manchester with her two children.

Colette Bjorn-Alderson, who has lived in the UK for 28 years, had been in the Danish country since April, but was returning to the UK with her six-week- old and 23-month-old for a wedding.

However, her two children only had Danish passports which meant they didn’t have valid travel documents for returning to the UK.

She told The Times that she felt “unwelcome in my own country” after being turned away from the flight.

Colette sent photocopies of her documents to the Home Office – but ultimately the decision was made that the family could not fly.

In June, dad-of-two, Kyle Harris, was refused boarding onto his flight from Kefalonia in Greece back to the UK due to only having an American passport.

The 39-year-old had been on holiday with his wife and two sons and the family has had to extend their time away as a result.

Shipping through the Strait of Hormuz remains in effect halted.
Tankers are now avoiding another critical waterway – Bab al-Mandeb – as Yemen’s Houthi forces threaten Saudi-linked vessels. Ukrainian strikes have hit Russian export infrastructure.
Three major routes are now disrupted at once: the Gulf, the Red Sea and the Black Sea.

Together, they threaten trade flows equivalent to nearly a quarter of global oil supplies just as reserves sit at multiyear lows.
Goldman Sachs says oil could rise above $120 a barrel by the fourth quarter if disruptions in the Strait of Hormuz alone persist.
Economies worldwide are bracing for another energy shock.

Media freedom organisations and opposition lawmakers have criticised sweeping media reforms pushed through by Israel’s right-wing coalition as part of a legislative blitz before the parliament’s dissolution in advance of elections later this year.

The parliament, or Knesset, last week approved the bill that could give the government a far greater say in Israel’s news and broadcast sectors. The controversial measure strips away traditional oversight safeguards, eliminates requirements for minimum journalism standards and lifts longstanding limits on cross-ownership, among others.

Following the July 17 vote, watchdog groups, including the Union of Journalists in Israel, along with opposition parties, successfully petitioned the High Court of Justice to freeze parts of the legislation. They warned that some provisions that were set to take effect immediately, including the removal of limits on ownership of multiple media outlets and the stripping away of newsroom standards, could permanently distort the media landscape before the October 27 election, potentially influencing its outcome.

The government has until Sunday to respond, after which the court will decide whether to keep the freeze, widen it, or allow the provisions to take effect. Other, less contentious and immediate sections of the law were left to stand.

Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu did not vote on the measure. He is currently bound by a 2020 conflict-of-interest agreement that bars him from participating in government decisions that could affect his ongoing corruption trial, where, among other charges, he stands accused of using his position to unduly influence media coverage of his administration.

Nevertheless, Communications Minister Shlomo Karhi thanked Netanyahu directly, saying: “Mr prime minister, I want to thank you and tell you that the mission you gave me four years ago – to deliver right-wing reform of the media – was today successfully completed.”

Israeli media reported that such a directive by Netanyahu could be a violation of his agreement. Neither the Prime Minister’s Office nor the Communications Ministry responded to Al Jazeera’s queries over whether Netanyahu’s role in the legislation’s passage represented a conflict of interest. However, Karhi subsequently claimed that he had secured a legal opinion determining that the prime minister was not in breach of the conflict-of-interest agreement.

“Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Communications Minister Shlomo Karhi have proven repeatedly that they are enemies of independent journalism in Israel,” Martin Roux, of the Reporters Without Borders media monitor, told Al Jazeera.

“This means they’re attacking every Israeli citizen’s right to reliable information from diverse sources. This has been true for years, and it is becoming more obvious every day as the legislative elections, set for the end of October, approach. It’s all about controlling the narrative,” he said.

In a social media post, Karhi claimed the new legislation would bring “more right-wing coverage and less regulation”.

“After a determined struggle against every possible element from the deep state, tycoons, attorneys, officials and fearmongering networks – we managed to pass the right-wing media reform.”

‘Boosting propaganda channels’

However, for many observers, there was little new in overhauling media that had grown used to toeing the government line, with critical coverage of the multiple wars that Israel has engaged in and the international outrage that many have caused typically relegated to the sidelines of the national conversation.

“The reforms are part of Netanyahu’s ongoing media overhaul – undermining the remains of critical reporting and journalistic independence in the country, while boosting Netanyahu’s propaganda channels,” London-based Israeli academic and media analyst Ayala Panievsky told Al Jazeera.

She cited the far-right Channel 14, which she said emboldened Israel’s war crimes and offered unflagging support to what she described as the most right-wing government in Israel’s history.

“In 2020, they amplified ‘the Big Lie’ in the US elections, claiming Trump won the election – they might therefore act similarly following the Israeli general elections in October, if Netanyahu’s coalition indeed loses,” said Panievsky, echoing similar concerns among academics and legal analysts sparked by accusations from lawmakers within Netanyahu’s Likud party that the acting head of the Central Elections Committee, Dean Livne, was “clearly politically biased”.

Analysts and observers from across Israel have long pointed to the strongly nationalist undertone of much of Israel’s current affairs coverage and the absence of space given to Palestinians and Palestinian suffering.

When the United Nations’ Independent International Commission of Inquiry concluded in September 2025 that Israel had committed genocide in Gaza, Israel’s Foreign Ministry dismissed the findings as “distorted and false“, a framing echoed across domestic outlets rather than scrutinised.

A subsequent Molad report found only 3 percent of Channel 12’s early war coverage referenced Gaza’s humanitarian crisis, with just two of 206 visuals showing Palestinian civilian casualties. Elsewhere, allegations of Israeli war crimes, including sexual abuse, are either omitted or given pro-government framing, observers told Al Jazeera.

“The Israeli media just doesn’t feature Gaza. It’s not there,” political analyst Ori Goldberg said from outside Tel Aviv. “There’s no sense of solidarity with the journalists killed there, or those they don’t let in. They’re just not mentioned.”

Similarly, discussion panels on the various wars that the Netanyahu administration had embarked upon were typically staffed by ex-generals, who had no question with the need for war, only differences over its prosecution, said Goldberg.

However, even this relative compliance was not enough for a prime minister fighting an election that had come to rely on the appearance of forward momentum and paper enemies to sustain his political project.

“Netanyahu always needs to be seen to be pushing the envelope,” Goldberg added. “He needs a media that will give barely critical coverage of his every word, but one that he can still present as the enemy within.”

A major incident has been declared by Police Scotland as emergency services continue to tackle a wildfire which has been burning in the Cairngorms National Park for 10 days.

The force said it followed “a significant change in weather conditions” which has increased the risk of fire spreading towards the village of Nethy Bridge.

All Nethy Bridge residents have been evacuated as a precaution to allow emergency services to continue their response.

But a local resident told the BBC the wildfire should have been declared a major incident sooner and the lack of communication from authorities had been “pretty poor”.

The BBC has contacted the Scottish government and Police Scotland for comment.

First Minister John Swinney, who held a meeting of the Scottish government’s resilience room early on Saturday, said additional police resources were being deployed to assist with the Nethy Bridge evacuation.

He urged people to “respect the exclusion zone that’s been put in place”, adding that the change in weather conditions illustrated “the scale and difficulty of the situation that we are managing”.

Smoke from the wildfire can now be seen 59 miles away in Aberdeen following a change in wind direction.

Supt Judy Hill said weather conditions “experienced within the Cairngorms over the last 24 hours have added further complexities to this situation”.

“With evidence suggesting the fire is spreading towards Nethy Bridge, the decision has been taken to declare a major incident and evacuate residents as a precaution.”

She said additional police resources were being deployed to help contact those who need to leave their properties.

With temperatures growing ever higher as the sun continues to bake Britain, skin experts and the car industry are combining to issue important health advice for motorists

Millions of Brits are unknowingly putting themselves at risk of sunburn every time they get behind the wheel.

New research has found that 47% of motorists take no precautions against UV exposure despite an estimated 14million experiencing sunburn while travelling by car. Around one in three (31%) said they didn’t even realise it was possible to get sunburnt inside a vehicle, according to the survey by Autotrader and the British Skin Foundation.

While modern windscreens block the vast majority of UVB radiation, many side windows can still allow significant levels of UVA rays into the vehicle. Dr Zainab Laftah, consultant dermatologist and spokesperson for the British Skin Foundation, said: “A common misconception is that being inside a vehicle provides complete protection from the sun.

“In reality, both short periods of intense UV exposure and repeated exposure over time contribute to an increased risk of skin cancer. While standard car windscreens block most UVB radiation, the amount of UVA that enters a vehicle varies depending on the type, thickness and tint of the glass.

“This means a significant amount of UVA can still penetrate vehicle windows, contributing to cumulative skin damage, premature skin ageing, pigmentation changes and an increased risk of skin cancer over time.”

While UVB rays are those primarily responsible for sunburn, UVA rays can cause deep skin damage and heighten the risk of skin cancer. Dr Laftah’s warning comes as demand for open-top motoring rises with the temperature. During the May heatwave, searches for convertibles on Autotrader increased by 8 per cent week-on-week, with models including the Porsche 911, Mazda MX-5 and Mercedes-Benz SL among the most-viewed vehicles on the platform.

She said that those driving convertibles need to be even more wary – and take care they know how long they are spending in the sun. “Many drivers also underestimate how long they’re exposed during everyday journeys, particularly on longer drives or when sitting in traffic,” she said.

“For drivers of convertibles and other open-top vehicles, the risk is even greater because the face, scalp, neck, arms and hands are exposed to direct sunlight for prolonged periods.”

The stark warning follows separate British Skin Foundation research from 2025 which found that a third of Brits had already been sunburnt by early summer. The same proportion (31%) admitted they simply “couldn’t be bothered” to wear sunscreen in sunny weather.

Rory Reid, YouTube director at Autotrader, continued: “Nothing beats driving with the roof down on a sunny day, and every time the weather improves, we see demand for convertibles climb. What many people don’t realise is that spending time behind the wheel can expose them to harmful UV rays, even inside the car.

“Whether you’re driving to work, heading off on holiday or simply enjoying the sunshine, applying sunscreen should be as much a part of your journey as checking your tyre pressures, topping up your screen wash or making sure you’ve got water in the car.”

To browse the UK’s widest choice of new and used cars, including convertibles, visit here.

How to stay safe behind the wheel

• Apply a broad-spectrum sunscreen with SPF30 or higher to all exposed skin at least 15 minutes before setting off, paying particular attention to often-forgotten areas including the ears, neck, scalp, hands and forearms.
• Reapply sunscreen during longer journeys, particularly if you’re spending extended periods behind the wheel.
• Consider UV-filtering window films if you drive frequently or spend long periods in the car.
• If driving a convertible or other open-top vehicle, keep the roof up during peak UV hours (12pm–2pm) where possible, wear protective clothing and ensure all exposed skin is covered with high-factor sunscreen.
• Wear UV-protective sunglasses to protect both your eyes and the delicate skin around them.

HEADING to Turkey for your summer holiday in the next few weeks? Make sure to double check your passport before flying.

Brits are repeatedly being caught out before they travel by things like passport expiry dates and leaving blank pages for stamps.

Thomas Cook has found that travel to Turkey is up 37 per cent year-on-year with Brits heading to places like the sparkling Turquoise Coast.

For those heading on holiday soon, it’s important to have a reminder of the entry rules as they are different to countries in the Schengen Area.

Brits heading to Turkey need at least 150 days left on their passport from the date of arrival.

This is different to the EU rules which requires three months, compared to Turkey’s nearly five months.

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If you don’t have the right amount of time then you may be denied entry by your airline before flying, or at the border on arrival.

Even worse news is that if this happens, travel insurance is unlikely to cover the cost of cancelled accommodation, missed flights or return travel.

Another requirement to enter Turkey is that passports need to have one completely blank page.

This is to allow room for entry and exit stamps or full-page visas.

Airlines may check this before passengers even board the plane, as they could face fines if a passenger is later refused entry.

So if you’re a frequent flyer, check how many blank pages you have remaining in your passport before booking a trip.

The UK Foreign Office currently states: “To enter Turkey, your passport must have an ‘expiry date’ at least 150 days after the date you arrive and at least 1 blank page.

“You will be denied entry if you do not have a valid travel document.”

If you need a new passport for your holiday, you may want to look at applying now as typical renewals can take around three weeks.

There is a fast-track service if your passport isn’t valid and you need to travel soon.

For more information on passport rules, visas and items you need to pack in your hand luggage this summer – head here.

Plumes of smoke from wildfires in Canada are pouring into major US cities across the Midwest, Northeast and mid-Atlantic. Polluted air is affecting more than 100 million people and is creating concern ahead of Sunday’s World Cup final.

Lots of people travel with easyJet, but there’s a certain rule passengers need to follow. If they don’t stick to it, they could end up having to pay more money

Lots of people jet off abroad at this time of year, but there’s important information you need to be aware of if you travel with easyJet. After all, travellers need to be clued up on everything there is to know as the summer holiday season gets going, with countless people dreaming of some time in the sun.

If you’re set to travel soon, and you’re flying with easyJet, there are some crucial travel tips you need to come to terms with before you depart. This is information you don’t want to ignore, as failing to follow the guidelines could see you having to cough up extra cash during your journey.

This isn’t the only occasion travel advice has been highlighted either. Not too long ago, tips were also given to people to help them bag the best plane seats to avoid germs.

What can cost you extra?

Everyone wants to squeeze as much value as possible out of their holiday budget, so it pays to know exactly what baggage is included before you book. Many travellers tend to focus on the headline ticket price, but baggage fees can swiftly add a considerable sum to the total cost of a trip.

According to Ricky Durrance, travel expert at package holiday specialists Teletext Holidays, getting to grips with easyJet’s baggage rules can save you a tidy sum and help you make the most of your baggage allowance. The good news is that every easyJet passenger is allowed to bring one small bag on board without any extra charge.

However, that’s where things get complicated as, if your bag won’t fit beneath the seat in front of you, you’ll probably need to pay an additional fee.

Overhead locker space is restricted and frequently comes at a price, so it’s worth weighing up whether a checked bag represents better value. The easyJet website states: “Our low fares include one small cabin bag free of charge.

“Your bag can weigh up to 15kg, but we do ask that you’re able to lift and carry it yourself. You can purchase additional bags online when you make your booking or any time before you travel, via Manage bookings on our website or mobile app.

“Buying online is always cheaper than at the airport. Fees vary depending on the route selected, flight and time of booking.”

However, it’s crucial to remember that, if you wish to pay for a large cabin bag, charges can be steeper during busy travel periods. For couples and mates travelling together, it’s worth crunching the numbers to determine whether sharing a checked suitcase makes more financial sense before you book.

Things you may be overlooking

Managing your baggage allowance can be a right faff, and it becomes even trickier when your suitcase eats up a substantial chunk of the weight limit. easyJet’s large cabin bag allowance permits up to 15kg.

However, many hard-shell cabin cases tip the scales at between 3.5kg and 4.5kg when empty, meaning the usable space for clothes and other belongings can end up being considerably less than anticipated.

You may find yourself with as little as 10.5kg available for packing, which can disappear remarkably quickly. In contrast, a shared 23kg checked bag using a similarly weighted case still leaves upwards of 18.5kg free for packing, which can make a world of difference.

Ricky added: “It’s also worth knowing that booking your baggage allowance sooner rather than later can help save you money.”

easyJet’s baggage fees tend to be cheaper when added at the point of booking rather than closer to the departure date. For those booking a package holiday rather than directly through the airline, it’s worth checking this as early as possible, ideally at the time of booking.

When airlines levy extra charges for every kilogram and each bag, careful planning of your luggage before you travel is absolutely crucial, according to Ricky.

The Trump administration finalized a rollback of the Endangered Species Act on Friday, paving the way for drilling, mining and other human development across protected wildlife habitats.

The move redefines “harm” under the Endangered Species Act, the landmark conservation law that protects threatened and endangered plants and animals. For years, “harm” meant actions that injure or kill wildlife, as well as actions that destroy protected habitats.

Under the new rule, destroying those habitats is no longer illegal.

The decision aligns with the Trump administration’s ongoing effort to slash regulations in the name of economic growth. Interior Secretary Doug Burgum, whose department finalized the move, said the prior definition of harm “interfered with private property rights” and “turned routine activity into a regulatory trap.”

Environmental groups called the decision a disaster, saying it puts protected species on a path to extinction.

The move seems especially poised to hit California, the most biodiverse state in the country, where more than 6,700 species are spread across mountains, forests, deserts and oceans. Of the roughly 2,300 species protected by the Endangered Species Act, nearly 300 are found in California.

These species include amphibians such as tiger salamanders and Yosemite toads; birds such as California condors and northern spotted owls; fish such as Little Kern golden trout and Santa Ana suckers; insects such as Franklin’s bumble bees and Mission blue butterflies; mammals such as gray wolves and Santa Catalina Island foxes; and reptiles such as desert tortoises and green sea turtles.

The Endangered Species Act is widely credited with saving the California condor, which almost went extinct in the 1980s due to several factors, including habitat destruction. Thanks to a recovery program under the act, the condor population has since soared to several hundred. But under the new law, the logging and human development that led to their near demise is now allowed.

A handful of California species recoveries have been championed as success stories under the Endangered Species Act, including southern sea otters, peregrine falcons, humpback whales, bald eagles and green sea turtles.

According to a report from the Center for Biological Diversity, the El Segundo blue butterfly lost 90% of its oceanside habitat due to the construction of LAX and beachfront housing developments. The population dwindled to about 1,000 butterflies in the 1970s, when it was named an endangered species. Now, the population has climbed above 120,000.

In California, the rollback could pave the way for more farming, mining, logging and drilling in areas that were once forbidden due to the potential for wildlife habitat destruction. A report from Earthjustice estimates that expanded oil drilling in California could threaten five marine species including humpback whales, sea otters, leatherback sea turtles, marbled murrelets and wild salmon.

Several environmental groups are planning legal challenges to the ruling.

“For the first time ever, a presidential administration now claims that species protected by the Endangered Species Act shouldn’t be safe from habitat modification that destroys where they live, raise their young, or search for food,” Kristen Boyles, attorney for the environmental nonprofit Earthjustice, said in a statement. “Let’s be clear: there is no support for the Trump administration’s rule — no scientific support, no legal support, no public support. We will see the Trump administration in court.”

Ben Greuel, wildlife campaign manager at the Sierra Club, called the decision “an unlawful attempt to open the door for corporate polluters to degrade vitally important habitats.”

“For more than four decades, the definition of ‘harm’ recognized a simple truth: if you destroy the places wildlife need to survive, you are putting species on a path to extinction,” Greuel said in a statement.

It’s not the first time Trump has taken aim at California environmental regulation.

Earlier this year, Gov. Gavin Newsom, along with the governors of Washington and Oregon, submitted a formal opposition to the Trump administration’s plans to expand drilling off the Pacific Coast, with Newsom saying it leads to “dead wildlife.” In June, the Trump administration ordered a review of the California Coastal Commission, claiming the state’s “environmental extremism” obstructs spaceport development and offshore oil production.

A day before the Endangered Species Act decision, the Trump administration signed off on a controversial plan to use an old oil pipeline to pump water from the Mojave Desert into cities. Environmental groups said the plan threatens springs and local wildlife, since six pumps would need to be built in desert tortoise habitats.

Regional health agency warns of increased risk of a disease outbreak after Venezuela’s twin earthquakes

Venezuela’s authorities say the death toll from twin earthquakes last month has risen to 3,889, as regional health agencies warn of an increased risk of disease.

Lawmaker Jorge Rodrigues said on Thursday at least 16,740 people had been injured and 17,907 displaced.

The Pan American Health Organization (PAHO) warned that displaced people across Venezuela’s northern coast, the area most affected by the tremors, are at risk of disease because of limited access to clean water and regular medical care.

“In the coming weeks, the greatest health risks may stem not only from injuries caused by the earthquakes, but also from disruptions to health services, overcrowded conditions, deficiencies in water and sanitation and reduced access to vaccination and routine healthcare,” PAHO’s director Jarbas Barbosa said.

The agency is working with Venezuela’s health ⁠ministry to improve vaccine access and trace any outbreaks of respiratory or digestive illnesses, especially in shelters set up for those who lost their homes.

The United Nations launched an appeal for roughly $300 million to assist 1.3 million people in urgent need of aid in Venezuela.

PAHO urged immediate disbursement of the remaining $15 million in requested emergency aid to repair damaged hospitals and to maintain basic sanitation in camps for the displaced to prevent a health emergency.

In the afternoon of May 31, 2026, the Anguwan Hausawa area of the Mokwa Local Government Area of Niger State, North-Central Nigeria, was thrown into mourning. The news of Abubakar Usman’s death in the lodge water had spread through the area, and people were trooping to the house to extend their condolences to his parents.

Abubakar, a 13-year-old, had gone out to play with his friends. Hours later, he was brought back lifeless while his other friend was rushed to the hospital, having drowned in floodwaters caused by a blockage the construction workers working on a culvert had put in to hold the water as they worked. 

As the lastborn of his parents, Abubakar was the kind of boy whose presence lit up every corner of the community. He attended the Islamic school close to his house, and his teachers admired how brilliant he was. Residents say he was respectful, and the elders in his community often praised him as he never passed by without greeting people warmly—a rare quality that made him beloved by all.

His father, Usman Shekare, an elderly man in his late sixties, stood heartbroken at the sight, lying on a mat, fixing his gaze on his beloved son. The only words he had the courage to utter were, “God gave him to me, and He has collected him back.”

What broke him further was a simple question: “What message do you have for the government?” He instantly broke down in tears, unable to speak further.

This tragedy is not an isolated incident. Just weeks earlier, residents told HumAngle that three boys fell into the clogged waters and were luckily rescued. The water continues to gather at last year’s Mokwa Flood site, fed by the heavy downpour flowing from the Zugurma and Yagbagba axis, and worsened by another source from gully erosion sites in nearby communities. 

Hussaini Ibrahim, the Spokesperson of the Niger State Emergency Management Agency (NSEMA), told HumAngle almost a month after the incident that the agency is not aware of any loss of life due to the blockage but will reach out to the community leader and affected family for further actions.

In Mokwa, the echoes of last year’s devastating flood still haunt the community. Residents told HumAngle that farmers had raised alarm before last year’s disaster, warning that water was accumulating, but their concerns were ignored until after the flood struck. Now, the same warnings are being repeated, with little sign of preventive action.

“Barely a year after the flood, Mokwa is once again staring at water lodging in the same vulnerable zones,” Isah Mokwa, a community leader and activist in the community, told HumAngle. “The bridge and waterway reconstruction, meant to symbolise recovery, has inadvertently blocked water channels, creating a dangerous buildup. As we speak, the town is sitting on a ticking bomb.”

Residents told HumAngle how the first rainfall they witnessed in May made them apprehensive. That evening, they revealed, the sound of rushing water sent shivers down their spines. Mothers were seen rushing to gather their children as fathers stood at the site of collapsed structures, staring at the lodging of water in the same flood-prone channel that swallowed over 150 lives and many homes last year, with hopes of it not wreaking havoc again. 

Studies indicate that the mental health and wellbeing of individuals, especially children affected by flooding in Nigeria, can deteriorate for extended periods, often lasting months or even years after the event.

The cumulative stress of rebuilding homes, restoring livelihoods, and coping with displacement has been shown to exert a heavier toll on affected populations than the initial impact of the flood, underscoring the need for comprehensive psychosocial support in disaster management strategies.

“The water was coming right from Yagbagba,” Ndako Usman, a resident, said. “It’s accumulating just behind the blockage. Once it gets bigger and more powerful, it could hit our homes again.” 

Hussaini told HumAngle that the blockage was caused by construction workers working on the ongoing drainage construction, and the management has taken swift action to address the issue.

“During last year’s flood, we were taken unaware, but we have taken proactive measures to ensure that it does not repeat itself this year. We have a monitoring team, and also volunteers who constantly update us on the flow of water so that we take immediate action.”

“Regarding the culvert, we have written to relevant stakeholders, including the Ministry of Water Resources, to study and assess the situation of the culverts to see if they can handle the water volume in case of a flood-related disaster and advise appropriately,” Hussaini added.

A catastrophe remembered

The fear is not irrational. In May 2025, Mokwa was the epicentre of one of Nigeria’s deadliest flood disasters in recent memory. Torrential rains combined with structural failures to unleash devastation that claimed hundreds of lives, displaced thousands, and left the town grappling with hunger and grief. 

Flooding has become one of Nigeria’s most persistent natural disasters, wreaking havoc on communities across the country almost every year. Heavy rainfall, poor drainage systems, deforestation, and the release of water from dams often combine to create devastating outcomes. 

In 2024 alone, floods claimed over a thousand lives, displaced millions, and destroyed farmlands and infrastructure worth billions of naira, but the situation dropped in 2025, according to the National Emergency Management Agency (NEMA). 

The agency revealed that floods killed 241 people and affected 459,995 residents across 27 states and 128 local government areas. Also, the disaster displaced 158,588 people, injured 839, and damaged 54,684 houses while destroying 96,649 farmlands. 

Early warnings had been issued by the Nigerian Meteorological Agency (NiMet), but local authorities failed to act.

The disaster struck suddenly. Heavy rainfall battered Mokwa, but the real trigger was the collapse of a railway embankment and blocked drainage channels that redirected torrents into residential areas. 

Within hours, homes were submerged, bridges collapsed, and farmlands were washed away. Reports varied, but estimates suggested between 200 and 700 people lost their lives, and about 3000 houses and properties were destroyed, leaving families stranded in makeshift camps.

In the wake of the disaster, the Minister of Information and National Orientation, Mohammed Idris, revealed that President Bola Tinubu approved the release of ₦16.7 billion for the immediate reconstruction of the Mokwa Bridge, which was destroyed by flooding, noting that the project would involve constructing a bridge with 10 spans. 

In the months that followed, HumAngle published a damning investigation into the Mokwa flood, among other issues. Our findings painted a picture of systemic neglect. The investigation established that gully erosion in Mokwa has remained a destructive force despite years of significant financial allocations. The erosion continues to expand, damaging infrastructure and farmland and worsening during rainy seasons. 

Equally, the report uncovered that billions of naira from ecological funds and World Bank loans were earmarked for erosion control, yet no substantial work has been executed. While officials claimed contractors were engaged, there was no evidence of transparent bidding processes. Field assessments confirmed that erosion control activities remain absent, exposing a gap between official pronouncements and actual implementation.

Last month, NEMA listed Mokwa among high flood-risk local government areas in Niger State for 2026. Yet on the ground, little seems to have changed. 

Isah Mokwa, the activist based in Mokwa, confirmed to HumAngle that the bridge constructed to contain the water has proven inadequate. According to him, the community braces for the worst, fearing that heavier downpours could unleash destruction far greater than before.

“Nothing has changed. In fact, the situation has deteriorated even further. In the same direction where the water started gathering before the flood, farmers have raised the alarm that water is already accumulating,” he said.

“We believe there is no accountability for the funds contributed to the state government. What happened to the billions donated after the 2025 flood? Even the shelter that was promised for victims of last year’s flood has not been provided. Just recently, there was a flag-off ceremony, but no contractor has been mobilised to the site, no details were given about the number of houses to be built, and no project timeline was shared,” he said.

According to residents, some of the affected families who were lucky to receive ₦500,000 ($360) in financial support last year to rent houses have exhausted their funds, and the majority are now struggling to renew their rent. 

For many in Mokwa, the suspicion is that the tragedy of 2025 has been reduced to a political talking point, while the lived reality of survivors remains ignored.

However, experts warn that Mokwa cannot afford another disaster. 

Abbas Idris, the president of the Risk Managers Society of Nigeria (RIMSON), in an interview with HumAngle, said that before now, the government should have taken a proactive disaster management approach through risk assessment and hazard categorisation.

This, according to the risk expert, would help not only the government and state emergency management agency but also residents to put in place measures or tackle the disaster even before it strikes.

In the longer term, Abbas revealed that the Niger State government must enforce urban planning regulations, preventing construction on floodplains and investing in climate adaptation strategies. 

“Neglecting risk assessments leaves communities defenceless when disaster hits,” Abbas stressed. “We must address corruption, weak governance, and poor ecological management as root causes of the crisis and pave the way for transparent, science-driven interventions to mitigate future disasters.”

It has been a year since the flood, and despite repeated appeals from the community, the state government, under the leadership of Umar Bago, has yet to provide a lasting solution. Families like the Shekare’s are still left to brace for waters that rise too quickly and claim too much.

And until their demands are met, Mokwa remains vulnerable — a place where the memory of one brilliant boy reminds everyone of both the fragility of life and the urgency for change.

From this week, there will be strict rules on the consumption of alcohol in two popular UK seaside towns, and anyone not careful could face a fine of up to a staggering £1,000

Two popular UK seaside towns have introduced a ‘booze ban’, with the risk of £1,000 fines for anyone caught flouting the rules.

In a bid to help manage anti-social behaviour in Kent, a new Public Spaces Protection Order (PSPO) has been approved for three years. Under this order, which will be in force from Wednesday, 1 July, there will be a year-round blanket ban on the consumption of alcohol in Margate and Ramsgate high streets.

Anyone caught breaking a PSPO, which is a criminal offence, could be fined up to around £100. This can be reduced if it’s paid within 10 to 14 days; however, if anyone avoids paying the fine, they could face prosecution and be fined up to a staggering £1,000.

Margate has long been a popular destination in Kent, thanks to its traditional Victorian charm, stretches of golden beach and close link to London, often earning the nickname of ‘Shoreditch-on-Sea’. Ramsgate is just as popular with its sprawling beaches, Royal Harbour and thriving independent food scene.

But it’s not just these seaside towns taking the brunt of the new order.

The PSPO also sets out that in areas across Broadstairs, Cliftonville West, Margate and Ramsgate, there will be bans on anti-social behaviour related to the consumption of alcohol and not handing over alcohol when asked by authorities. It comes after Kent Police said fights had erupted on Broadstairs and Margate beach last week, while people were also assaulted at Margate Railway Station.

Some businesses in Thanet told BBC Radio Kent that they had been forced to close early on occasions due to anti-social behaviour in the area. One even said they were planning to move out of the area as it had become intimidating.

The aim of the order is to “introduce targeted restrictions to curb alcohol-related disorder, public urination, and defecation for a period of three years”, the Thanet District Council website noted. According to the BBC, East Thanet MP Polly Billington said following approval on Thursday: “It’s vital for our economy that people feel confident about keeping their doors open to their shop, and actually, [it’s vital] for the wellbeing of our residents and our visitors that everybody feels safe.”

Meanwhile, before the order was approved, Councillor Heather Keen, Cabinet Member for Neighbourhoods, highlighted: “We are incredibly grateful to everyone who took the time to share their views. Our communities deserve safe, clean, and welcoming public spaces, and this overwhelming support shows how passionate local people are about protecting their environment.

“If Cabinet agrees to implement these proposals, our safety teams and the police will have an effective tool to address persistent issues impacting our towns. We have listened closely to feedback, and while enforcement would always be a last resort, these measures could significantly improve the quality of life across Thanet.”

Do you have a travel story to share? Email webtravel@reachplc.com

Tourists have been told they need change a key phone setting before travelling to airports. Failing to do so could land them with a “major problem”, so it’s best to act

There’s so much to think about when you travel abroad, but something that probably slips your mind is safely using your phone during your journey. It’s something you need to pay attention to, as you are required to follow a few rules to keep safe.

While it may be something that rarely crosses your mind, it should actually be on the top of your travel list, as making some simple mistakes can be super costly when you’re on a holiday adventure. We all use our mobile phones when we’re at airports but, little you may know, some dangers can come with making the decision to use them in certain ways.

This isn’t the first time such matters have been brought to people’s attention either. Previously, some other hidden dangers were outlined to aid travellers.

Free airport Wi-Fi feels like a small win when you’re killing time before a flight. However, William Thackray, IT expert at AGT Computer Services, claims it’s one of the riskiest things you can do on your phone.

What you need to know

William explained: “The biggest threat isn’t the airport’s actual network. It’s the fake ones sitting right next to it.

“Criminals can set up a hotspot called something like ‘Heathrow Free Wi-Fi’ or ‘Gatwick Passenger Network’ that looks completely legitimate. The moment you connect, they can intercept your data including passwords, emails, anything you’re sending or receiving.”

This technique, known as an “evil twin” attack, is increasingly common in busy public spaces and airports and, with thousands of distracted travellers all hunting for a signal, they are prime targets.

You may not realise, but connecting to airport Wi-Fi can leave your personal data exposed to hackers in seconds. Criminals can set up fake networks designed to look identical to the real thing.

Airport Wi-Fi is rarely considered completely safe. While it is generally fine for browsing the news or checking your flight status, public networks leave you vulnerable to hackers, phishing attempts and rogue “evil twin” hotspots.

You should avoid online banking or entering passwords without taking precautions. This is why the guidance is so essential.

However, one simple phone setting can keep you protected without costing you a penny. It’s easy to sort out once you know what to do.

How to avoid a problem

The fix is straightforward. Before you leave for the airport, go into your phone’s Wi-Fi settings and turn off “Auto-Join” or “Auto-Connect” for public networks. On iPhone, you can also go to Settings > Wi-Fi and toggle off “Ask to Join Networks”.

That way your phone won’t go hunting for a signal without your say-so. “Better still, use your mobile data if you have it,” added William.

“It costs a little more, but it’s your own private connection. If you do need to use airport Wi-Fi, avoid logging into anything sensitive like banking, work email, anything with a password – until you’re somewhere you trust.”

The rule of thumb? If you didn’t set up the network yourself, treat it with caution. This is a rule that’s really worth paying attention to, as failing to follow it could lead to major problems.

In this week’s episode of The Envelope podcast, Rachel Sennott discusses finding the voice of “I Love L.A.” — and finding her footing as series creator — during a tumultuous time in her life.

Kelvin Washington: Welcome to The Envelope, Kelvin Washington alongside you know who, Yvonne Villarreal, Mark Olsen. Always great to have you two here and spend some time with you. We talked about it earlier, we had Emmy season — a few weeks ago we discussed it. But now Emmy nominations are on the way. Yvonne, I’ll start with you, just maybe someone, a show, a couple of things you’re looking at saying, “Hey, I would love to see this or that person nominated.”

Yvonne Villarreal: I wanna give some shout-outs to the women right now. I was really frustrated when Rhea Seehorn didn’t get love until the final season of “Better Call Saul,” and I’m hoping — and I do have a lot of hope — that she will be recognized for “Pluribus.” [I] was a really big fan of “The Comeback” this season. I would like to [see] Lisa Kudrow get in there. Show-wise, I would like to see “The Testaments” in there. I don’t know how much of a dark horse that one is, but that’s my pick for show.

Washington: You’ve been riding “The Testaments.” What about you, Mark?

Olsen: I’m sort of leapfrogging over nominations, and I’m just thinking about what would be exciting on the show. And last year, I remember Stephen Colbert won for talk show kind of right after his show had been canceled, and that seemed like a very exciting moment. And so this year, with Jimmy Kimmel, where this is the first Emmy cycle since he had his suspension last year, and really has been in the news, I just think if he were to be nominated and then to win, that just would be such an exciting moment at the show. What’s he gonna say? I just would really love to see that.

Washington: Yeah, he seems like he would have some things to say, right? Because just kind of the nature of who he is. We’ll have to wait and see. And just for me, a couple of people. Just a fan of this particular person, Janelle James is hilarious to me. She plays in “Abbott Elementary.” She plays that role great. And then this one is no real surprise, probably 50-plus-year career, but Martin Short. Every time I see him, he’s amazing, steals the scene. So those are folks that just jump off on the radar for me.

All right, I’ll get to you, Mark. You had a chance to sit down with Rachel Sennott of “I Love L.A.,” creator and star of it. Tell me a little bit more about that.

Olsen: She’s been kind of a real, like, bright light on the comedy scene for the last few years in films like “Shiva Baby,” “Bodies Bodies Bodies” and “Bottoms,” and, you know, she also was like a writer as well as a performer. And so with “I Love L.A.,” which is a look at sort of like the young creative class in Los Angeles, she is the star of the show, she created the show, she writes on the show, she’s executive producer, she actually made her directing debut with one of the episodes. And so it’s just exciting to see her sort of really like come into her voice and come into her own with this new show.

Washington: Kind of reminds me a little bit of, you know, now maybe a decade ago Issa Rae’s surge in L.A. and comedy creating, and then Riz Ahmed, who you spoke with last week — same thing creating and starring and stuff. Seems like that’s the energy [we’re] getting from a lot of the young talent. Well, here is Mark and Rachel now.

Rachel Sennott, creator and star of HBO’s “I Love L.A.”

(Evan Mulling / For The Times)

Mark Olsen: We’re here with Rachel Sennott, creator, executive producer, writer, star, and for the first time, director on the show “I Love L.A.,” as well as co-creator and writer on “Big Mistakes.” That’s a lot.

Rachel Sennott: When you say it like that, I’m like, “Oh, my God.” And I’m also a friend, daughter, let’s not forget girlfriend. Yeah, those are all things that I am doing. And I am so grateful and having so much fun doing that.

Olsen: Hopefully this isn’t something that just I get a kick out of, but we’re here at the L.A. Times offices in El Segundo, and the Randy Newman song “I Love L.A.,” one of the first lines in the song is “Rolling down the Imperial Highway.” And we are in fact on Imperial Highway.

Sennott: We’re here right now. We’re living it.

Olsen: Tell me about the title of the show, its relationship to the song and what was it that you liked about having the show called “I Love L.A.”

Sennott: We were between two titles for a while, “I Love L.A.” and “Climbers,” and the reason we went with “I Love L.A.” is because in the process of making the show, I moved here from New York and I had a hard time when I was first here. And in the process of filming the pilot, I really fell in love with L.A., and I think getting to make something here, I all of a sudden saw L.A. through this lens where everything was like a movie. I would go on my walks that I usually go on. I would walk through my neighborhood, I would go to my spots, and I just saw it through this different lens, and I was really falling in love with it in the process of making the show. And I think with “Climbers,” that title fell a little bit — it was a double meaning of like social climbers and then also, being the age that I am, where I feel like ever since I got to college, ever since I became an adult, there’s been this chaotic energy in the world and uncertain ground where things never felt expected. It was always unexpected events. Graduating into COVID and then there was a strike and everything. So I feel like Sisyphus, where you’re always pushing the rock up the hill and it’s never enough. But we were worried that “Climbers” would seem too negative … We didn’t want to set people up already judging the characters.

Olsen: And then what has it been like for you learning to be a showrunner in making “I Love L.A.”? It’s funny, your co-showrunner Emma Barrie, she mentioned how you were very organized, but she was struck that you had everything in a pink binder with horses on it. So it was you trying to learn this new thing while also holding on to your essence.

Sennott: I feel so grateful for everyone who works on the show with me. I learned a lot from Emma. I learned from Lorene [Scafaria], who inspired me so much as a director. Aida [Rodgers], our producer, Amy [Gravitt] and Allie [Wasserman] at HBO; Max [Silvestri], who’s one of our EPs and writers. Showrunning is a million different jobs, and some of the jobs I’d done before, some of them I hadn’t, and I felt like I got to see different people shine in certain things, people who are more talented or more skilled at structure than me, people who have directed before, people who understand shots and basically learn from everyone and see that everyone wants the show to be the best it can be. They’re bringing stuff to the table. And so I benefited from everyone else’s skills and talents and just being like, “If you know how to do this better than me, I’m gonna learn from you and watch you and hopefully take from that so I can do my job better.”

Olsen: In a lot of the press as you’ve been talking about the show, you’ve been talking a lot about the concept of the Saturn return and this sort of chaotic period people have in their late 20s. You yourself now are 30 —

Sennott: Yes, I made it. I literally just finished. I was relieved, but my Saturn return was the process, getting the show picked up and the first season of the show. That was my Saturn return.

Olsen: Can you already feel that something has settled or things are different somehow?

Sennott: Yes, a thousand percent. My Saturn return, the dates that it was the strongest were the month around when the show got picked up. Making the pilot was so amazing and I learned so much. And then I was in this moment where I had to pick — basically, I couldn’t take on acting jobs because I was gonna hopefully do the show, but I didn’t know if the show was picked up yet or not. And so I had to say no to certain things and kind of take this leap. At the same time I went through a breakup, and then I got arrested for having CBD in the Cayman Islands. And it was just a very chaotic month of my life where I was like in jail for six hours on a break with my boyfriend, so he, like, had no idea where I was, and I was like, I don’t even know if I have a show, I just said no to this other thing. I just felt like I didn’t know what was happening. I’m someone who it’s hard for me to take risks sometimes, and that was a big risk and leap into what I thought I should be doing. And then the rest of it was learning for the first season how to do a job I’d never done before. Obviously, I still have more to learn, but I think that was a big Saturn return for me, the roller coaster of it.

Olsen: It’s so interesting to hear you say that you think of yourself as a person who’s afraid of risk, because that’s not my impression of you.

Sennott: You’re like, “Stop taking risks. Chill on the risks, every second.” No, I think it’s more [that] I didn’t necessarily believe in myself as a creator on my own, and that was really scary for me. That was the risk, I think.

Olsen: Because especially in building up to making “I Love L.A.,” in your career, I feel like you’ve created this comedic persona for yourself. What is the biggest distinction between the Rachel I think I know and like the actual you?

Sennott: You mean the characters that I play? Or like the persona?

Olsen: These sort of hard-charging, very ambitious, but maybe not always understanding of themselves characters, and you. I’m just interested in how you see the distinction between that persona and the actual you.

Sennott: Well, I hope that the characters that I’ve played have been somewhat different from each other. I think “Shiva Baby,” that character, was a little bit more anxiety-inward. Alice in “Bodies” was way more outward and kind of no filter, said every inside thought. Maia on “I Love L.A.,” I think, is kind of bitter in the beginning of the first season and is pinning her failures, blaming them, on her friend. All of those characters, I always draw on some element of myself. I think all actors, you have to find some connection to the character. But I think I’m hopefully more grounded and balanced and mature than the character. I hope.

Olsen: You’ve talked about how “I Love L.A.” really explores the foibles and challenges that people have leading these very, like, online lives and the way that people nowadays are really sort of tethered to their phones all the time. Is that something that you feel like you grapple with yourself? Is it something you yourself have had to kind of get over?

Sennott: I would say I started my career on the internet, and I grew up on the internet, and basically, I created a different sort of persona on the internet that was based in truth of a time when I was in my early 20s in New York, and it was a lot more messy and a little chaotic, and I was just going through things in my life at that time [that inspired] — I say “writing,” but like the tweets, the jokes, the videos, whatever, that were coming out of me. And then I felt I changed, but I still wanted to kind of project that character. And so I actually ended up putting that character into Tallulah [played by Odessa A’zion]. And I think Maia was a little bit more the version of myself when I first moved to L.A. and I felt isolated and it was during COVID, and I felt I was kind of gripping onto my friends in a codependent way. And so I think the show is sort of dealing with, whether or not you’re an influencer or person online, anyone who’s grown up on the internet is projecting some sort of version of themselves. So I think it was that I was trying to explore.

Olsen: You mentioned that the character of Tallulah is this version of you that you used to be. So what was it like for you creating this character that was almost like your id unleashed?

Sennott: It felt like I was separating myself from her. At first, [it] maybe could have felt like a caricature. And then when we cast Odessa, who is so talented and just, as an actor, she has such depth and range, and I think she asked questions and brought so much to it. Then it actually made me sever myself from the character, and the character became its own thing that she brought to life.

Olsen: Your character, Maia, in some ways is the audience surrogate, she’s kind of the most “normal” character on the show. And considering that in “Bottoms” or “Bodies Bodies Bodies” you often were the outrageous character, what has it been like for you to play this character that’s a little more self-contained?

Sennott: It’s been fun. I think we sort of found her during the first season. I feel that Episodes 6 through 8 are really where the show finds its footing and where we find what’s the comedy of Maia. It takes a little for her to kind of crack open, what’s funny about her as a character, but also I think Tallulah is almost like an agent of change for her — Maia was set in her ways and sort of struggling and depressed, and I think Tallulah puts her on track, and she’s going through her Saturn return and all that stuff. And so I think we get to see at the end of the season and just having been writing Season 2, I think that we get see her do a lot more fun stuff.

Olsen: It’s funny, as viewers, a lot of times people say, “Oh, you know, there’s this show you should watch, it really gets going on like Episode 3” or whatever. And I don’t think I’ve ever heard a creator say before, like, “Oh, 6, 7, and 8, we figured it out.” Do you feel you knew that in the moment, or has that only come to you as you’ve been working on Season 2?

Sennott: I think as we were editing the first season. Tone is something that you can say, like, “We want it to be like, this needs this, and it’s that and that and the tone of that.” But tone is what you find in the edit. I think you shoot different versions of a line, of a scene, and then you piece it together. And I think for me, that’s when I felt like, “This is the tone of the show. This is the world of the show.” And in writing Season 2 as well, just living more in that world.

Olsen: You kind of touched on this, but the characters on the show, they kind of skirt this line between being endearing and annoying. What is it that you like about that?

Sennott: Because I think that’s how people are. I am not interested in seeing perfect people or people who are flawed in a way that’s not actually real. So I love all the characters. I think Alani [played by True Whitaker], for example, is someone where you could really easily be like, “Oh, a nepo baby, she’s so privileged, whatever.” I think she’s the character with the biggest heart. She’s the best friend out of the whole group. She cares for everyone. She’s so deeply sensitive. And she’s actually been through a lot of s— and she drops these little things, these clues where you’re like, “Gee, she went through something crazy but is choosing to look at life half-full,” and I think that’s fun. I like the characters who make you feel or expect something of them and then show you another side. Charlie [played by Jordan Firstman] I think does that as well, where you meet him and you think he’s a little acerbic, he’s a little judgmental, and then he goes through loss and grief when Lukas, spoilers, Lukas Landry dies, RIP Lukas. That’s really hard for him. I’ve been friends with Jordan for so long, and I love him so much. I think he’s so talented. But I think he showed a totally new side of himself with the character.

Olsen: I agree. I found those scenes very touching. There’s an emotion there that’s kind of unexpected. Another moment that I really like in the show is Odessa’s character, she wants to change a dinner reservation to five people at 8 o’clock. And then you have to spend hours trying to make that happen. And I really appreciated how it’s something that sounds like it should be simple, and for some people it’s no big deal. But then for other people, it’s the biggest hurdle imaginable. Did you like that the show explores this sort of proximity to ease? Sometimes you end up at this party in a big, big house, but it’s not your house. Was that something you wanted to explore about life in L.A.?

Sennott: Totally. There’s also something specific to L.A. and specific to the industry we’re exploring — which is the internet as opposed to Hollywood — that I would say is relatable to me, to anyone in their late 20s, early 30s. When you’re in your early 20s, everyone’s sort of grouped together or feels like they’re in the same bucket. It’s like, “Oh we’re all doing this same thing, we’re all roommates, we’re all in school together, we’re all whatever.” But people make decisions that you don’t even see. I feel like the first time I found out that one of my friends had a SEP IRA, I was like, “When did we all decide that we’re getting SEP IRAs?” And it was a friend who loves to party, and I was thrown. Now I’m panicking I didn’t do that. Or who’s getting in a serious relationship, whatever. People start making decisions in their late 20s, all of a sudden everyone’s off on different paths. It’s like, “Wait, you’re getting married, but you’re still partying the way that we did when we were in college.” This person is moving, this person is changing their career path. And so you all of a sudden feel a little bit betrayed or on your own, and it’s isolating, and that is something that, yes, we’re doing it through a specific lens of L.A. and this world and these characters, but I think it’s really relatable to people at that age.

Olsen: I’ve heard you describe yourself as a zillennial cusp.

Sennott: Yeah, I’m cusp, and I feel like I relate to a little bit of both.

Olsen: But do you feel a pressure for the show to feel like some sort of a generational statement, to capture these kind of big-picture things?

Sennott: No. Ayo [Edebiri] and I were texting each other because there’s always an article that’s like, “Turns out these b— are 30. Yeah. They’ve been lying the whole time. They said they’re Gen Z.” I’m like, “I didn’t say anything. I was born in ’95. I’m 30.” Call me what you want, but I was just writing to what I feel at the time. I think people who grew up on the internet in the way that I did will relate to it, but I think you can relate too if you’re older or you’re younger.

Olsen: As people are writing about the show, they very frequently are referencing “Girls,” “Insecure,” “Sex and the City.” But I’ve heard you reference “Entourage” quite a bit. Could you explain that?

Sennott: “Girls” and “Sex and the City” and “Insecure,” all of those shows, all HBO shows, are formative to me as an artist. I remember watching “Girls,” I was in high school and looking at colleges with my dad and we went and toured [New York University], and in the hotel room that night, he was like, “I heard so much about this new show, ‘Girls,’ we should watch it. And it was the episode with Patrick Wilson where they f— in his nice apartment the whole time, and we turned it on and my dad was like, “OK, you can watch this later on your own, this is for you.” And I remember going to bed being like, “I’ve gotta go to New York, like whoa, this is crazy.” I think naturally those were already gonna inspire me. “Entourage” and “Atlanta,” those were two references that I mentioned a lot when we were making the show. “Entourage” because I feel I got to come up in this industry with my friends, and when I’m with my friends I feel completely invincible, and so there was that aspect. It was like, “I wanna see ‘Entourage’ but from a different point of view and perspective and a slightly different industry.” And then “Atlanta,” there is already having a family relationship and friendship on top of managing. Like how [Earn] manages Paperboi. And then I think “Atlanta” did such a great job of capturing a city that has almost magical realism elements to it. And L.A., a lot of the time, there’s things that happen here that are crazy, that feel almost unreal, but they are real. So that was a big inspiration for the show as well. Like the opening of the show, sex during an earthquake. That’s happened to me, but it also feels a little ridiculous, but it happens in L.A.

Olsen: You mentioned earlier that in waiting for the show to come around, you felt you were having to turn things down or you were really having to sort of change your mindset in a way. Can you talk a little more about that? With the show “Big Mistakes” that you created with Dan Levy, is that one of the things that you had to step away from or readjust how you were gonna be involved because of the fact that you were going to have “I Love L.A.”?

Sennott: I was more talking about acting roles. When you step into a creator role, it’s a different mindset than acting jobs and you have to commit to a longer time period. When you’re just acting in things, you can pop in, pop out and you leave set and you’re like, “I love you guys so much. I’ll see you in a year at the premiere,” which is fabulous too — love doing that. But when you are creating something, you’re in it from beginning to end, and you really wanna give your all to it. So I think I was more talking about just, like, betting on myself as a creator, as opposed to just acting.

Olsen: And how has that felt now that you’re on the other side of it, with one season of “I Love L.A.” made? How do you feel about having made that decision, having bet on yourself like that?

Sennott: I think it’s changed me, in a way where I’m so happy I did it. And it’s sometimes harder and there’s more parts to it, but I feel more in myself creatively than I ever have before, I think.

Olsen: It changed you how?

Sennott: Just because you all of a sudden see all the different parts of the process of making something and all these different jobs that maybe I wasn’t as aware of before. And I think there’s also something beautiful about popping into something and acting and just being like, “I am present as my character. This is what I am thinking about. I’m thinking about what does the character want.” And that’s amazing too. But I feel so lucky to have been able to experience other parts of making something.

Olsen: What was it like learning how to switch hats, especially during production? I would imagine you have a producer brain, you have an actor brain, then for one episode you have a director brain.

Sennott: I had to like sort of take it day by day. There are days where it’s a lighter scene for me and I can be on the side approving locations, taking meetings during lunch. There was a day where I had two sex scenes, for Episodes 6 and 7. So we shot the end of 7, the fight scene with me and Josh [Hutcherson], and the sex scene where it’s Maia and Dylan but she’s fantasizing about Ben. It was a lot. And so I was like, to Emma and Max and Aida, “Let’s not do any other meetings today in the middle of the day,” and they were like, “Totally got you.” That day I was more focused. I really needed to be present in the scene and have this be my main focus. And then on a day where I’m shooting like, “you’re texting on your phone” and “you’re walking on your walking treadmill,” I can do other stuff. So I think it was just taking each day as it comes and having so much support from the rest of the team.

Olsen: It’s wild to think of just one day providing all this material for the show. Just a single day could be so pivotal.

Sennott: Yeah, totally. A lot can happen in a day and then other days you’re like, “I’m just opening doors.” You never know.

Olsen: How did you come to conceive of how you kind of wanted to depict the online world, how people text, whether they’re FaceTiming and things like that? The show obviously exists with that world, as part of it, but you didn’t spend a whole lot of time animating texts. How did you come to conceive of how to depict people’s online life?

Sennott: I wanted it to feel how it does in the real world, which is the internet is just a big part of everyone’s life, but people aren’t explaining it to each other all the time. So we wanted to have the internet feel like the real internet, but our own internet. We didn’t want to ever reference anything that would date us because the internet moves so fast. So, like, Coke Larry, for example, when Dylan gets made into a meme, whatever, that’s our own thing, but it moves the same way as the internet does. And we tried not to have too much phone screens, texting, whatever. Like for example you [just] see snippets of Tallulah making videos or posting or whatever. In “Entourage,” you don’t really see that much of Vince acting. You see all the stuff around it. So that was sort of our model for the show.

Olsen: You directed the final episode of the season. Do you expect to be directing more in Season 2?

Sennott: Yeah.

Olsen: And how did you find the experience? What did you like about it?

Sennott: I loved it. You’re just in every aspect of the process. You are thinking about everything, and it was so engaging and exciting, and afterwards I felt fried, and I like crawled onto the edit couch and I was like limp and it took a lot out of me. People describe it like giving birth. And then you’re like, “I gotta do it again.” So that’s kind of how I felt on the other end.

Olsen: Can you talk a little about that final episode? The show is called “I Love L.A.” You send the main characters to New York for the final episode, which has turned into kind of a controversial decision. A lot of people have talked about that. Can you talk just a little about deciding to end the season in New York?

Sennott: I think it was because it was sort of addressing the fact that these girls went to school in New York together. They lived in New York and they chose to move to L.A., and I think when you do that there’s always going to be the push and pull of the two cities, and going back to New York, it was almost like getting a chance to get back together with your ex and being like, “You know what, there’s a reason it didn’t work out.” And they end the episode with, “I miss L.A.” So I think that’s kind of what we were aiming to do.

Olsen: And then before we wrap up, I should be sure to ask, is there anything that you could tell us about Season 2? What can people look forward to?

Sennott: It’s sort of what we were talking about earlier, Episodes 6 through 8, I think, I just feel we’ve locked in to our tone, we get to see other sides of characters we haven’t before, we go deeper on certain characters. And I think there’s some fun stuff that we set up in the finale that we get to explore.

A weekend BASE jumping accident in a Utah canyon killed two people, one of them a daredevil athlete best known for performing onstage with Madonna at the 2012 Super Bowl, authorities said.

The Sheriff’s Office in Grand County, Utah, confirmed one of the dead was Andy Lewis, an extreme athlete known for feats in BASE jumping, a dangerous sport that involves parachuting to the ground after jumping from a tall fixed object such as a building, a bridge or a desert cliff overlooking a deep canyon.

In BASE jumping circles, Lewis had a huge following and a reputation for pushing the envelope — leaping into tighter spaces or deploying his parachute later than his peers would dare, said John McEvoy, a BASE jumping instructor in Twin Falls, Idaho, who has jumped with Lewis.

“He had an incredible level of athleticism and skill that was developed over years of practice,” McEvoy said. “But then he would take an incredible amount of risk.”

Lewis’ other sport made him an overnight celebrity, thanks to Madonna

Lewis was also a prominent figure in the niche sports of slacklining and tricklining, which combine elements of high-wire walking with aerial acrobatics — sometimes at perilous heights.

Lewis went from obscure athlete to overnight celebrity when he appeared onstage in Madonna’s 2012 Super Bowl halftime show. Dressed in a Roman toga, Lewis bounced and executed tricks on his inch-wide line as though it was a trampoline while Madonna sang behind him.

“My phone actually rang itself to death three days in a row,” Lewis said soon afterward in an appearance on Conan O’Brien’s late-night show.

Emergency responders were dispatched Sunday to a report of people injured in a BASE jumping attempt at Mineral Bottom, a remote desert area near the Utah-Colorado line, according to the Sheriff’s Office. Lewis and an unidentified 50-year-old man died at the scene, the office said in a news release.

Sheriff’s Lt. Al Cymbaluk confirmed to the Associated Press that it was Lewis the extreme athlete who died. He said he had no further details on the fatal accident.

BASE jumping is far more dangerous than skydiving

Though there’s no official tally of BASE jumping deaths, a list compiled by the website BASEaddict.com shows 540 total fatalities worldwide since 1981 — including 30 people killed last year. Prominent deaths include BASE jumper Dean Potter and his climbing partner, Graham Hunt, who were killed in 2015 while attempting a wingsuit flight in Yosemite National Park.

A study focused on BASE jumping in Norway, published in a medical journal in 2007, estimated that BASE jumping carried risks of injury or death five to eight times greater than skydiving.

Lewis openly acknowledged the sport’s inherent danger.

“It’s weird to think about how many people are dead, because it’s like a normal thing,” Lewis told documentary filmmaker Ella Warnick in an interview published last year.

Lewis owned BASE Jump Moab, a business that offered excursions to inexperienced customers using tandem jumps, in which the customer was harnessed to a guide wearing the parachute.

Sheriff’s spokesperson Cymbaluk said he didn’t know whether Lewis and the other man killed were performing a tandem jump.

Tandem BASE jumping carries additional risk because it straps together two people, one of whom generally lacks experience, under a single parachute, McEvoy said. But because they involve novices, they also tend to be the most low-risk, basic types of jumps.

“Within BASE, it’s a very controversial topic,” McEvoy said. “There’s a lot of people who say it’s the stupidest thing in the world and others arguing, `No, we’re giving people the experience of their lives.’”

No one immediately returned phone, text and Facebook messages left Monday for BASE Jump Moab.

Lewis won four straight world championships in competitive slacklining from 2008 through 2011. Lewis set a Guinness World Record for slackline surfing, swaying his feet side to side in a rocking motion that mimics surfing, while keeping his balance above China’s Diaoshuilou waterfall in 2011.

In 2014, he walked a slackline suspended between two hot air balloons more than 4,000 feet above the Nevada desert.

Bynum writes for the Associated Press.