staff

I was greeted by staff in pyjamas and stayed in a room dedicated to the theme of a WC in one of the most unusual but delightful hotel stays in the heart of a bustling city

Searching for a hotel, whether in the UK or worldwide, can be a daunting task with thousands of establishments to choose from. Yet, when I came across a four-star boutique hotel in Europe themed around a bathroom, curiosity got the better of me, and I hit ‘book’.

I checked into WC by The Beautique Hotels for a three-night stay one summer, which can be found on the popular street of Almirante Reis in Lisbon, Portugal. I was visiting the country for a wedding, before spending a few days sightseeing in the city, so the hotel looked like the perfect place to rest up after a long day of exploring.

As I arrived at the hotel, I was instantly taken aback by the extraordinary bathroom theme. It has tap graphics on the entrance doors and a picture of a woman wearing a shower cap covering a large window. Given the name WC, meaning water closet, I was expecting some level of bathroom-based decor, but not to this extent.

The front desk sported a huge white bathtub and a silver faucet on display, with a large rose gold shower head hanging above. Behind it was a feature wall with raindrops and running water for a tranquil, spa-like setting.

As I waited by the front desk, I admired the bathroom theme that flowed throughout every crevice. From the tiled water floor, to the blue curvy bar with a mini bathtub and a bottle of gin tucked inside, to the gleaming blue tiled walls and second reception desk that had a clear shower curtain pulled around it.

However, it was hard to hide my surprise when one of the receptionists appeared wearing long-sleeved silk pajamas. According to some travellers, the staff have even been spotted with towels on their heads to add to the aesthetic. I mean, if it were me, I’d be more than happy turning up to work every day wearing pyjamas.

My bewilderment continued as I entered my room. Having found a decent Expedia deal online, I had booked the deluxe double room, which was located in a curved area of the hotel, offering panoramic views of the bustling Lisbon streets below.

To match its shape, a circular bed was placed in front of the sprawling windows, which boasted curtains resembling those found in a shower, naturally. Other notable features in the room included the glossy turquoise tiles on every wall, which continued into the bathroom, the gloss-white wardrobes, and the room’s glasses that reminded me of bubbles in a bath.

Having been wowed by the unique features elsewhere, the bathroom was a little underwhelming. Yet, I’m not sure what else you could do with a bathroom when the theme is exactly that. Additionally, it was a generously sized bathroom with all the necessary amenities, and, of course, the essential robes.

Questioning whether it was socially acceptable to wear a dressing gown to breakfast each morning, I quickly settled into my intriguing room and made the most of the free mini-bar, filled with soft drinks. Although the room initially felt cold, given the tiled walls and blue colour scheme, it was a lot cosier than I imagined – the warm golden light fixtures and snug bed certainly helped.

I couldn’t fault the hotel for its facilities and comfort; it really did feel as though I was walking around a spa – even the hallways are decorated to resemble running water, with bedroom doors posed as steamy shower doors. For something a little different, I highly recommend it, and the buffet breakfast is well worth adding to any stay.

For more information or to book your stay, you can visit the WC by The Beautique Hotels website. Rooms cost from £48.

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

After Friday afternoon’s practice, USC football coach Lincoln Riley said he had no update on D’Anton Lynn, who has been the target of Penn State’s defensive coordinator search.

Penn State showed interest in Lynn last year before he received a contract extension from USC. Lynn was hired by the Trojans after a successful season as the defensive coordinator at UCLA.

“This is what happens this time of year, especially when you have a really good staff and are doing a lot of positive things,” Riley said. “We’re excited about having the opportunity to keep continuity but if there is turnover, not just with that position but any position, these are coveted jobs. It’s just part of the world we live in.

“Obviously, D’Anton has done a really good job here and we’ll see how it turns out.”

Being prepared for change is a must in the current college football climate, Riley said.

“Contingency plans for coaches, players, staff, everyone because so much can and does change,” Riley said. “Our job is to be prepared and have flexibility. You can’t always predict everything that’s going to happen but you have to be ready to adjust. Yeah, every team goes through it on some level and you try to handle it as well as you can.”

Riley has liked what he has seen in practice as USC (9-3) prepares for its Alamo Bowl matchup against Texas Christian on Dec. 30.

“We’ve done a really good job the last couple of years of going to work and we’re not thinking about what players or coaches are here or aren’t here,” Riley said. “It’s all about trying to maximize this time and build for the future.”

USC announced Tuesday that redshirt junior quarterback Jayden Maiava had re-signed for the upcoming season and is not joining Makai Lemon and Ja’Kobi Lane — USC’s two best receivers — in declaring for the 2026 NFL draft.

“It’s great. Anytime you can get a returning guy like that who has played a good amount of football, it’s important,” Riley said of Maiava. “He’s also become a good leader in this program and I’d expect that to continue to improve. The majority of this team has already re-signed, we know those guys are going to be here and it’s cool for those guys to show how much they believe in this place and what we’re doing.

“The exciting thing is you look ahead and you start to imagine pairing what we have coming back with what’s going to be walking through the door here in three weeks or so, but it starts with your veterans who have been through the fire and we have a lot of them back.”

Maiava, one of the last players to leave the practice field Friday, made it clear why he chose to stay.

“Coach Riley,” Maiava said. “Of course, the staff too and my brothers. I’m super grateful to be back out here. I’m focused on a day at a time, staying level-headed, making the right decisions and just taking care of the ball.”

Maiava is happy for Lemon, who won the Biletnikoff Award as college football’s top receiver after catching 79 passes for 1,156 yards and 11 touchdowns as a junior this season.

“It was awesome, everybody was there in the lobby when we found out … it’s well-deserved,” Maiava said. “He and Ja’Kobi set the standard for everyone. He won the award, so I’d say we had pretty good chemistry even off the field going out to eat and places. I had to do my job, but he did his job, too, as best he could.”

Defensive end Braylan Shelby also is grateful to be back with the Trojans for another season.

“I always knew I wanted to be here, he said. “Bowl games mean a lot and it’s a time for the team to put it all together and play together one last time.”

Regarding the new NFL model for announcing re-signings, Shelby said: “Some people love it, some hate it. … USC is a step ahead of the game and I think it’s the right step. In this NIL era, it helps fans know who’s returning.”

Having re-signed, junior safety Christian Pierce is excited about being a potential starter next fall.

“The bowl game is a huge start going into next season in terms of building the culture,” Pierce said. “My focus is on trying to understand the defense even more and the skills and techniques I’ll need to get better at. The talk after re-signing was more on the coaching staff and the program.”

Riley praised offensive lineman Tobias Raymond on his willingness and ability to play multiple positions on the front line.

“He was one of the most important players on the entire team,” Riley said. “His toughness was off the charts, his versatility with all the different lineups we played, being able to physically and mentally handle that. He was just a steadying presence. He’ll be a huge key coming back as a captain, a leader and a player. As many of those guys as you can have in a locker room — you’ll be a lot closer to winning.”

Much to his coach’s liking, Raymond has embraced his leadership role.

“I’ve just tried to be more vocal, set an example and hold other people to the standard our coaches have put out for us,” said the 6–foot-6, 315-pound redshirt sophomore out of Ventura. “Pick people up when things are low and when things are high making sure we’re keeping level-headed.”

Regarding the transfer portal, Riley said he plans to be less reliant on it than in previous years.

“The number we’re talking about is so much less than before, so moving forward we’ll be able to zero in on what we’re going to go after. So the picture is starting to become clearer on what we’ll be targeting.”

A spokesperson for Antonio Guterres calls for UN staffers’ immediate release, as 69 now detained in the country.

United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres has condemned the detention of 10 more UN staff members by the Houthis in Yemen.

Stephane Dujarric, a spokesperson for Guterres, confirmed on Friday that the previous day’s arrests had brought the total of detained local staffers to 69, calling for their immediate release.

“These detentions render the delivery of UN humanitarian assistance in Houthi-controlled areas untenable. This directly affects millions of people in need and limits their access to life-saving assistance,” Dujarric said.

The Houthis, who control most of northwestern Yemen, including the capital Sanaa, have stepped up their arrests of UN staff since the start of Israel’s genocidal war on Gaza in October 2023, accusing them of spying for the United States and Israel.

The UN has repeatedly rejected Houthi accusations that its staff or operations in Yemen are involved in spying, a charge that carries the death penalty in the country.

On Thursday, the organisation confirmed that the detainees were all Yemeni nationals.

The latest arrests came days after Guterres discussed detained UN, diplomatic and NGO staff with Sultan Haitham bin Tariq of Oman, which has served as a mediator in the conflict in Yemen.

Guterres also commented this week on the Houthis’ recent referral of three detained UN staffers to a criminal court, saying they had been charged in relation to “their performance of United Nations official duties” and calling for charges to be dropped.

Shift in balance of power

A decade of civil war has plunged Yemen into one of the world’s worst humanitarian crises, according to the UN.

Guterres said this week that 19.5 million people in the country – nearly two-thirds of the population – need humanitarian assistance.

The conflict has recently entered a new phase, as separatists with the Southern Transitional Council (STC) extended their presence in southeastern Yemen – marking one of the largest shifts in power since the war began.

They now claim to control areas including the eastern governorates of oil-rich Hadramout and al-Mahra and the port city of Aden.

The STC, which wants to establish an independent state in the south of Yemen, has fought in the past alongside the internationally recognised, Saudi-backed government, which is based in Aden, against the Houthis.

However, the STC’s advance in the south brings it into direct confrontation with the government in Aden, known as the Presidential Leadership Council (PLC), which condemned the seizure of territory as “unilateral and a blatant violation”.

The STC’s leader, Aidarous al-Zubaidi, has a seat on the PLC, officially as one of its vice chairmen.

But relations have often been shaky between the group and the internationally recognised government, which came under major pressure in areas under its control over power outages and a currency crisis this year.

The two entities have previously fought, most notably in 2018 and 2019, in Aden and its surrounding governorates.

This week, Guterres urged all parties to exercise “maximum restraint, de-escalate tensions, and resolve differences through dialogue”.

Luka Doncic was back at it again, this time surprising the Lakers and staff members with more than 100 e-bikes for Christmas gifts.

Doncic, who took his teammates to a Porsche Driving Experience in October as a way to bond, gave the gifts away Tuesday after practice.

“I just wanted to give everybody something,” he said. “Everybody works hard, even the people you don’t see in the back, so I want to do something for them too.”

Said teammate Jake LaRavia: “Shout-out to Luka, man. What a guy.”

US President Donald Trump said he was standing by his White House chief of staff, Susie Wiles, after Vanity Fair magazine published interviews in which Wiles revealed internal tensions in Trump’s administration and painted an unflattering picture of the roles played by some of the president’s inner circle.

Trump, who regularly describes Wiles as the “most powerful woman in the world”, told the New York Post on Tuesday that he has full confidence in his chief of staff and that she had “done a fantastic job”.

Vanity Fair published two articles based on the interviews, giving insights into what Wiles thinks about other key figures in Trump’s second presidency.

Speaking about Trump, Wiles described the teetotaling president as having “an alcoholic’s personality” and an eye for vengeance against perceived enemies.

“He has an alcoholic’s personality,” Wiles said of Trump, explaining that her upbringing with an alcoholic father prepared her for managing “big personalities”.

Trump does not drink, she noted, but operates with “a view that there’s nothing he can’t do. Nothing, zero, nothing”.

In his defence of Wiles, Trump said she was right to describe him personally as having an “alcoholic’s personality”, even though he does not drink alcohol.

“I’ve often said that if I did, I’d have a very good chance of being an alcoholic,” Trump said. “I have said that many times about myself, I do. It’s a very possessive personality,” he said.

Speaking on the Trump administration’s failure to quickly deliver its promise to share information related to convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein, Wiles suggested that Trump’s attorney general, Pam Bondi, had failed to clearly read the situation with the public.

“First, she gave them binders full of nothingness,” Wiles said of Bondi, noting that Vice President JD Vance had more fully grasped how important the issue was to some people, since he is himself “a conspiracy theorist”.

Of Trump’s inclusion in the Epstein files, Wiles said, “We know he’s in the file”, but claimed the file did not show him doing “anything awful”.

Referring to other members of the Trump administration, Wiles called Russ Vought, the chief of the White House Office of Management and Budget, a “right-wing absolute zealot” and branded tech tycoon Elon Musk an “odd, odd duck”, Vanity Fair said.

On Ukraine, Wiles said that Trump believes Russian President Vladimir Putin “wants the whole country”, despite Washington’s push for a peace deal.

Wiles also affirmed that Trump wants to keep bombing alleged drug boats in the waters off the coast of Venezuela until that country’s leader, Nicolas Maduro, “cries uncle”.

In a post on X, Wiles called the Vanity Fair story “a disingenuously framed hit piece on me and the finest President, White House staff, and Cabinet in history”, saying it omitted important context and selectively quoted her to create a negative narrative.

Other members of Trump’s inner circle also defended Wiles after the articles were published.

Vance said in a speech in Pennsylvania that he and Wiles had “joked in private and in public” about him believing conspiracy theories.

“We have our disagreements, we agree on much more than we disagree, but I’ve never seen her be disloyal to the president of the United States,” Vance said.

White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt told reporters outside the West Wing that Wiles was “incredible” and accused Vanity Fair of the “bias of omission”, while Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth said on X that there was “absolutely nobody better!” than Wiles.

WASHINGTON — President Trump’s chief of staff is defending herself after granting an extraordinarily candid series of interviews with Vanity Fair in which she offers stinging judgments of the president himself and blunt assessments about his administration’s shortcomings.

The profile of Susie Wiles, Trump’s reserved, influential top aide since he resumed office, caused scandal in Washington and prompted a crisis response from the White House that involved nearly every single figure in Trump’s orbit issuing a public defense.

In 11 interviews conducted over lunches and meetings in the West Wing, Wiles described early failures and drug use by Elon Musk during his time in government, mistakes by Atty. Gen. Pam Bondi in her public handling of the Jeffrey Epstein files, and acknowledged that Trump had launched a retribution campaign against his perceived political enemies.

“I don’t think he wakes up thinking about retribution,” Wiles told Chris Whipple, the Vanity Fair writer who has written extensively on past chiefs of staff, “but when there’s an opportunity, he will go for it.”

Wiles also cited missteps in the administration’s immigration crackdown, contradicted a claim Trump makes about Epstein and former President Clinton and described Vice President JD Vance as a “conspiracy theorist.”

Within hours of the Vanity Fair tell-all publishing on Tuesday, Wiles and key members of Trump’s inner circle mounted a robust defense of her tenure, calling the story a “hit piece” that left out exculpatory context.

“The article published early this morning is a disingenuously framed hit piece on me and the finest President, White House staff, and Cabinet in history,” Wiles said in a post on X, her first in more than a year. “Significant context was disregarded and much of what I, and others, said about the team and the President was left out of the story.”

The profile was reported with the knowledge and participation of other senior staff, and illustrated with a photograph of Wiles and some of Trump’s closest aides, including Vance, Bondi and advisor Stephen Miller.

The profile revealed much about a chief of staff who has kept a discreet profile in the West Wing, continuing her management philosophy carried through the 2024 election when she served as Trump’s last campaign manager: She let Trump be Trump. “Sir, remember that I am the chief of staff, not the chief of you,” she recalled telling the president.

Trump has publicly emphasized how much he values Wiles as a trusted aide. He did so at a rally last week where he referred to her as “Susie Trump.” In an interview with Whipple, she talked about having difficult conversations with Trump on a daily basis, but that she picks her battles.

“So no, I’m not an enabler. I’m also not a bitch. I try to be thoughtful about what I even engage in,” Wiles said. “I guess time will tell whether I’ve been effective.”

Despite her passive style, Wiles shared concern over Trump’s initial approach to tariff policy, calling the levies “more painful than I had expected.” She had urged him, unsuccessfully, to get his retribution campaign out of the way within his first 90 days in office, in order to enable the administration to move on to more important matters. And she had opposed Trump’s blanket pardon of Jan. 6 defendants, including those convicted of violent crimes.

Wiles also conceded the administration needs to “look harder at our process for deportation,” adding that in at least one instance mistakes were made when Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents arrested and deported two mothers and their American children to Honduras. One of children was being treated for Stage 4 cancer.

“I can’t understand how you make that mistake, but somebody did,” she said.

In foreign policy, Wiles defended the administration’s attack on alleged drug boats in the Caribbean Sea and said the president “wants to keep on blowing up boats up until [Venezuelan President Nicolás] Maduro cries uncle,” suggesting the end goal is to seek a regime change.

As Trump has talked about potential land strikes in Venezuela, Wiles acknowledged that such a move would require congressional authorization.

“If he were to authorize some activity on land, then it’s war, then [we’d need] Congress,” she said.

In one exchange with Whipple, she characterized Trump, who abstains from liquor, as having an “alcoholic’s personality,” explaining that “high-functioning alcoholics, or alcoholics in general, their personalities are exaggerated when they drink.”

He “operates [with] a view that there’s nothing he can’t do. Nothing, zero, nothing,” she said.

But Trump, in an interview with the New York Post, defended Wiles and her comments, saying that he would indeed be an alcoholic if he drank alcohol.

“She’s done a fantastic job,” Trump said. “I think from what I hear, the facts were wrong, and it was a very misguided interviewer — purposely misguided.”

Wiles also blamed the persistence of the Epstein saga on members of Trump’s own Cabinet, noting that the president’s chosen FBI director, Kash Patel, had advocated for the release of all Justice Department files related to the investigation for many years. Despite Trump’s claims that Clinton visited the disgraced financier and convicted sex abuser’s private island, Wiles acknowledged, Trump is “wrong about that.”

Wiles added that Bondi had “completely whiffed” on how she handled the Epstein files, an issue that has created a rift within MAGA.

“First she gave them binders full of nothingness. And then she said that the witness list, or the client list, was on her desk. There is no client list, and it sure as hell wasn’t on her desk,” Wiles said.

Wiles added that she has read the investigate files about Epstein, and acknowledged that Trump is mentioned in them, but said “he’s not in the file doing anything awful.”

Vance, who she said had been a “conspiracy theorist for a decade,” said he had joked with Wiles about conspiracies in private before offering her praise.

“I’ve never seen Susie Wiles say something to the president and then go and counteract him or subvert his will behind the scenes. And that’s what you want in a staffer,” Vance told reporters. “I’ve never see her be disloyal to the president of the United States and that makes her the best White House chief of staff that the president could ask for.”

Russell Vought, the director of the Office of Management and Budget who Wiles described to Whipple as a “right-wing absolute zealot,” said in a social media post that she is an “exceptional chief of staff.” Karoline Leavitt, the White House press secretary, said the “entire administration is grateful for her steady leadership and united fully behind her.”

Wiles told Vanity Fair that she would be happy to stay in the role for as long as the president wanted her to stay, noting that she has time to devote to the job, being divorced and with her kids out of the house.

Trump had a troubled relationship with his chiefs of staff in his first term, cycling through four in four years. His longest-serving chief of staff, former Gen. John Kelly, served a year and a half.

WASHINGTON — Susie Wiles, President Trump’s understated but influential chief of staff, criticized Atty. Gen. Pam Bondi’s handling of the Jeffrey Epstein case and broadly defended the president’s aggressive second administration in a series of interviews published Tuesday in Vanity Fair.

Wiles told the magazine in a wide-ranging, revealing series of conversations that she underestimated the scandal involving Epstein, the disgraced financier, but sharply criticized how Bondi managed the case and the public’s expectations.

After the story was published, Wiles disparaged it as a “disingenuously framed hit piece on me and the finest President, White House staff, and Cabinet in history.”

“Significant context was disregarded and much of what I, and others, said about the team and the President was left out of the story,” she wrote in a social media post. “I assume, after reading it, that this was done to paint an overwhelmingly chaotic and negative narrative about the President and our team.”

Wiles did not deny the comments that were attributed to her.

In her rebuttal, Wiles argued that Trump had accomplished more in 11 months than any president had in eight years because of his “unmatched leadership and vision.”

“None of this will stop our relentless pursuit of Making America Great Again!” she said.

Press secretary Karoline Leavitt also rose to Wiles’ defense, writing on the X platform that, “President Trump has no greater or more loyal advisor than Susie. The entire Administration is grateful for her steady leadership and united fully behind her.”

In the interview, Wiles said Trump wants to keep bombing alleged drug boats in the waters off the coast of Venezuela until that country’s leader, Nicolas Maduro, “cries uncle.”

And at one point said she and Trump had a “loose agreement” that his retribution campaign would end before the first 90 days of his second term — but it continues well beyond the three-month mark.

Trump tapped Wiles after she managed his winning 2024 campaign. She is the first woman to ever serve as White House chief of staff and is known for shunning the spotlight. It is rare for her to speak as extensively and openly as she did about the president to the magazine, which published its lengthy interview with her — and other members of the White House staff and the Cabinet. Wiles has been speaking to Vanity Fair since just before Trump took office last January.

Asked about Epstein, Wiles said hadn’t really paid attention to “whether all these rich, important men went to that nasty island and did unforgivable things to young girls.”

She said she has read the Epstein file and that Trump is “not in the file doing anything awful.” He and Epstein were friends before they had a falling out.

The Justice Department is facing a Friday deadline to release everything it has on Epstein after Trump, after objecting to the release, signed legislation requiring that the papers be made public.

Wiles criticized Bondi’s handling of the case, going back to earlier in the year when she distributed binders to a group of social media influencers that included no new information about Epstein. That led to even more calls from Trump’s base for the files to be released.

“I think she completely whiffed on appreciating that that was the very targeted group that cared about this,” Wiles said of Bondi. “First she gave them binders full of nothingness. And then she said that the witness list, or the client list, was on her desk. There is no client list, and it sure as hell wasn’t on her desk.”

Wiles, over the series of interviews, described the president behind the scenes very much as he presents himself in public: an intense figure who thinks in broad strokes yet is often not concerned with the details of process and policy. She added, though, that he has not been as angry or temperamental as is often suggested, even as she affirmed his ruthlessness and determination to achieve retribution against those he considers his political enemies.

Trump, she said, has “an alcoholic’s personality,” even though the president does not drink. But the personality trait is something she recognizes from her father, the famous sports broadcaster Pat Summerall.

“High-functioning alcoholics or alcoholics in general, their personalities are exaggerated when they drink. And so I’m a little bit of an expert in big personalities,” she said, adding that Trump has “a view that there’s nothing he can’t do. Nothing, zero, nothing.”

On Venezuela, Wiles said Trump wants to keep the pressure on Maduro.

“He wants to keep on blowing boats up until Maduro cries uncle. And people way smarter than me on that say that he will.” Her comment, though, seemed to contradict the administration’s position that the strikes are about stopping drugs and saving American lives, not regime change.

She said the administration is “very sure we know who we’re blowing up.”

The continued strikes and mounting death toll have drawn scrutiny from Congress, which has pushed back and opened investigations.

Wiles described much of her job as channeling Trump’s energy, whims and desired policy outcomes — including managing his desire for vengeance against his political opponents, anyone he blames for his 2020 electoral defeat and those who pursued criminal cases against him after his first term.

“We have a loose agreement that the score settling will end before the first 90 days are over,” Wiles said early in his administration, telling Vanity Fair that she does try to tamp down Trump’s penchant for retribution.

Later in 2025, she pushed back. “I don’t think he’s on a retribution tour,” she said, arguing he was operating on a different principle: ”‘I don’t want what happened to me to happen to somebody else.’ And so people that have done bad things need to get out of the government. In some cases, it may look like retribution. And there may be an element of that from time to time. Who would blame him? Not me.”

Asked about the prosecution of New York Attorney General Letitia James for mortgage fraud, Wiles allowed: “Well, that might be the one retribution.”

Superville and Barrow write for the Associated Press. Barrow reported from Atlanta.