Miami authorities on Tuesday night responded to a residence after a disturbing video was posted on social media that appeared to involve celebrity blogger Perez Hilton.
The Times has not confirmed the authenticity of the video. But the Miami-Dade Sheriff’s Office said in an emailed statement that authorities had received an influx of calls on Tuesday reporting that an individual was livestreaming acts of self-harm on social media.
After surrounding the Miami residence of a man who was not named, the Sheriff’s Office said around 9 p.m. that he had been “safely recovered and transported by Miami-Dade Fire Rescue to a local hospital, where he is receiving medical attention.”
Deputies had arrived earlier and said they spoke with family members at the scene and confirmed that the man was alone inside the home.
“In many incidents involving a person experiencing a mental health crisis or actively harming themselves, deputies prioritize de-escalation by creating time, distance and opportunities for communication,” the statement read. “Unless there is an immediate threat to others, slowing the situation and utilizing crisis intervention techniques can reduce the likelihood of a suicide-by-cop encounter and minimize the risk of injury to the individual, deputies and the public.”
Authorities said they had “tactically disengaged while continuing to monitor the situation.” In their later update, the Sheriff’s Office said that after the man had been transported to a hospital, mental health professionals were at the scene “providing support and resources to the individual’s family.”
A representative for Hilton did not immediately respond to The Times’ request for comment.
In the TikTok live video, a person who seems to be in distress harms himself. The video has since been removed from the platform.
Police and fire personnel converged on the Miami home Tuesday night. NBC6 News reported that some neighbors said Hilton lived at the home, but police would not confirm that.
Hilton, born Mario Lavandeira Jr., has been a pop culture personality since the early aughts when he launched his eponymous celebrity gossip rag. The venture garnered the columnist social status but also made him persona non grata among many celebrities who weren’t fans of his controversial coverage, which was often deemed disparaging, especially toward women.
Suicide prevention and crisis counseling resources
If you or someone you know is struggling with suicidal thoughts, seek help from a professional or call 988. The nationwide three-digit mental health crisis hotline will connect callers with trained mental health counselors. Or text “HOME” to 741741 in the U.S. and Canada to reach the Crisis Text Line.
Welcome back to The Times’ Lakers newsletter where the NBA is slipping into its summer slumber.
The long league-wide nightmare is over (or, depending on your team, just beginning): LeBron James has chosen a suitor. The 22-time All-Star is heading to the Philadelphia 76ers. James’ much-anticipated decision was the last major domino of the eventful offseason that shifted the balance of power in the league, relocated some of the sport’s biggest stars and completely remade the Lakers roster.
As we get ready to go into offseason rest mode, here’s where the Lakers stand heading into the summer:
All things Lakers, all the time.
Get all the Lakers news you need in Thuc Nhi Nguyen’s weekly newsletter.
By continuing, you agree to our Terms of Service, which include arbitration and a class action waiver. You agree that we and our third-party vendors may collect and use your information, including through cookies, pixels and similar technologies, for the purposes set forth in our Privacy Policy such as personalizing your experience and ads.
Roll call
He got a new deal and new jersey number on his new team. Now Walker Kessler can move on to more important things.
“Still learning names,” the Lakers’ prized offseason acquisition told reporters last month. “That’s probably the hardest thing right now.”
The former Utah center was the centerpiece of the Lakers’ transformational offseason. Wanting to pair Luka Doncic with a new center, the Lakers reached for the 25-year-old Kessler, signing him to a four-year, $130-million deal while sending four first-round picks to Utah.
Now the focus will be whether these moves can pay off. Getting a roster with nine new players to jell will be a season-long journey for the Lakers. The process is starting even before training camp as Doncic invited all of his teammates to Slovenia for a minicamp/group vacay this summer, according to ESPN. The superstar point guard stayed in Europe this offseason to rehab his hamstring injury and spend time with his two young daughters. Doncic elected not to play for his national team during the FIBA World Cup European Qualifiers to focus on his family.
Doncic’s leadership was a major theme during his first full season with the Lakers, when he organized team activities including a Porsche Driving Experience for players and gifted everyone in the organization electric bikes for Christmas. With James and fellow vocal leader Marcus Smart now elsewhere, Doncic’s presence off the court will be almost as important as his outsized impact on it.
From a basketball perspective, the Lakers already know they can count on Doncic.
“All four guys around him, it just makes it a lot easier for them to do what they need to do,” Kessler said of playing with Doncic. “What I can do for him is obviously play defense for him, set great screens. Get him some assists. It’s gonna be a lot of fun. I’ve never played with a point guard of that kind of size and stature to where he’s just a matchup nightmare.”
Kessler already has experience with some of his new Lakers teammates. Even before he played with guard Collin Sexton in Utah from 2022-25, Kessler was familiar with the fellow Atlanta-area native from their high school days.
Kessler also played with Austin Reaves during the 2023 FIBA World Cup, in which the United States finished fourth. Reaves was the United States’ second-leading scorer, averaging 13.8 points per game, while Kessler, then only one season into his NBA career, tied for the team lead with nine total blocks while playing the fewest cumulative minutes (56).
“He’s a big, goofy dude that just enjoys life and has fun,” Reaves told reporters during summer league about his impressions of Kessler. “Obviously you see what he does basketball wise and how he impacts the game. He’s good defensively, good in the pocket. Just a smart player. So I’m happy to have him on the team and get to play with him.”
The center depth behind Kessler remains one of the biggest question marks for the Lakers. Their only other option at the position is the 30-year-old Kevon Looney, who signed on a one-year, $3.9-million, veteran minimum deal. The UCLA alumnus and three-time NBA champion played only 21 games for the New Orleans Pelicans last year, averaging 2.8 points and 5.6 rebounds.
Despite turning over more than half of their roster, the Lakers cannot be done with offseason moves. They already went overboard with 16 players. One has got to go before the regular season begins to reach the league maximum. Maybe more will be on the way out if the Lakers continue to pursue options to fill a persistent hole on the wing. Former Hawks forward Jonathan Kuminga is still floating in the open market.
Pending the finishing touches, the Lakers roster still might not be enough to supplant Oklahoma City and San Antonio in the Western Conference. Kessler’s play will determine the Lakers’ ceiling this season, and he hopes to make the team’s bet on him worth it.
“For me, I’m somebody that if I know that they have that belief in me, I’m gonna run through a brick wall for them,” Kessler said. “That’s just how I’ve been wired my whole life and it definitely makes it a lot easier to go out there and compete for a team.”
Favorite thing I ate this week
Clockwise from top left: cocobread fish cutter, sweet spiced plantains, red pepper goat, jerk chicken wings, cucumber salad and mom’s curry chicken roti.
(Thuc Nhi Nguyen / Los Angeles Times)
I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: When in doubt, consult the L.A. Times 101 best restaurants list.
A hunt for a convenient post-gymnastics class snack brought us to Bridgetown Roti in East Hollywood. It’s a Caribbean cuisine gem specializing in roti, a type of flatbread, they use to make curry-filled wraps, but the chicken curry roti was only the beginning of our feast. We also got a cocobread fish cutter, sweet spiced plantains, red pepper goat, jerk chicken wings and cucumber salad.
Did it feel like we ordered almost the entire menu? Yes. Did we regret it? Absolutely not.
All the dishes were fantastic, but the red pepper goat, which can be served in a wrap, over rice or on a plate with crispy potatoes and slaw, was my favorite, and the honey jerk whole wings were another standout. And if you order a flight of sauces — which range from sweet to spicy enough that it comes with a warning — it basically multiples every dish by four with all the different combinations you can make. It’s food math.
Susanna Hoffs calls it “the list”: a faded piece of paper ripped from a Filofax day planner on which are scrawled the names of every guy she’s ever gone out with — some famous, some not, some “kind of douchey,” as she puts it with a what-can-you-do shrug.
“It was like a dating profile but pre-internet,” Hoffs says of the tally, which she composed sometime in the late 1980s as she was racking up hits — among them the chart-topping “Walk Like an Egyptian” and “Eternal Flame” — as the frontwoman of the Bangles. “I’m a nice Jewish girl,” she adds. “I was just keeping track, doing my homework.”
Today at the bottom of the list in all caps sits the name of Jay Roach, the movie director whom Hoffs met on a blind date in 1991. He’s the subject of a new song called “None of Them Were You,” in which the singer runs down some of Roach’s predecessors — “a very dapper Brit,” “a suave and handsome actor” — before musing on her deep connection with the man to whom she’s now been married for 33 years.
“I ended up with such a good guy,” she says. “It almost brings a tear to the eye.”
“None of Them Were You” isn’t the only tune with that potential on an album Hoffs is preparing to release next month. Due Sept. 18 from her Baroque Folk label, “The List” — Hoffs’ first set of original material in more than a decade — collects a dozen touching and witty songs based on tales from her life as an artist, wife, businessperson and mother. At 67, her winsome singing voice is remarkably unchanged from the era of big hair and dangly earrings. Yet the music reflects an emotional wisdom that had to be earned through experience, as in the folky “Time,” which ponders her and Roach’s relationships with their two adult sons.
“I see you dancing in the kitchen / I feel your tiny hand in mine,” she sings, “What if you fly back home this summer? / We could spend a little while.” (Beware, parents — this one will wreck you.)
A voluble presence with an easy laugh, Hoffs points out that she’s hardly been “hiding in a cave” since 2012’s “Someday.” In 2024, she put out a long-shelved solo record of songs she’d cut back in 1999; before that, she made a series of expertly curated covers albums, including three she recorded with the power-pop maestro Matthew Sweet. But publishing her first novel in 2023 — “This Bird Has Flown,” a charming bestseller about a one-hit wonder looking for a comeback — rejuvenated Hoffs’ devotion to songwriting.
“I never thought the book would sell, and I never thought it would get great reviews,” she says on a recent afternoon at her home in Brentwood. “That was a big turn career-wise.”
For “The List,” Hoffs teamed with CJ Camerieri, a musician and producer known for his work with Paul Simon and Bon Iver, among others; Camerieri in turn recruited an array of songwriters to collaborate with the two of them, including a couple of Grammy winners in Dan Wilson and Jesse Harris.
“Sue has built up decades and decades of goodwill in this town,” Camerieri says, seated next to Hoffs on a sofa, “so you call up somebody like Dan and you say, ‘Hey, you want to write a song with Susanna Hoffs?’ and he goes, ‘Great, yeah, I’m in.’”
The process was simple, the producer explains: “We’d start in Sue’s kitchen with coffee at 10 in the morning —”
“I’m really good at coffee,” Hoffs interjects. “I mean, I use Nespresso. But I’m good at being a hostess to all the lads.”
“So I’d give everybody a yellow legal pad and Sue would start telling stories,” Camerieri continues. “We’re all scribbling notes, and after about an hour, we’d go, ‘I think we got enough here,’ and we’d go write songs about what she’d told us.”
They recorded at Hoffs’ place — “We’d move this couch and the drums would go right here,” she says — beneath a vaulted ceiling that provided just the right ambience. First-call players like Greg Leisz and Wendy Melvoin stopped by to take part in the sessions; for harmony vocals in a country-ish ditty called “Bad Case of Loneliness,” they got Rufus Wainwright, with whom Hoffs had done a version of the Turtles’ “Happy Together” for Roach’s 2025 comedy “The Roses.”
The dreamy-rootsy arrangements are never less than handsome — and never prettier than in “Fool,” which Hoffs says was inspired by her love of the records Dionne Warwick and Burt Bacharach made together. Yet “The List” was built to showcase Hoffs’ rich storytelling.
The LP opens with “Casablanca,” in which she recounts a run-in with the Grateful Dead’s Bob Weir in New Orleans in the late ’80s. The Bangles were on tour opening for George Michael; the Dead had a gig at the University of New Orleans’ Lakefront Arena. After Hoffs and Weir ended up at a crawfish boil put on by the Neville Brothers, the two took a walk along Lake Pontchartrain — “He was very cute,” Hoffs says — then later strolled again through the French Quarter.
“At one point, I looked back and there was a sea of Deadheads who realized it was Bob Weir,” she says. “But I was with him. I got to be his pal, which I just couldn’t believe was happening. It was delicious.” (Between the two walks, the Bangles famously jumped onstage with the Dead to perform “Iko Iko.”)
As we’re talking, Camerieri tells Hoffs that he recently met Weir’s former tour manager — Weir died in January at age 78 — and that he’d relayed Hoffs’ memory of the encounter. “He was like, ‘I know this story,’” Camerieri says the manager replied. “‘Bob used to talk about the time he got to walk around New Orleans with Susanna Hoffs.’”
“Oh my God!” Hoffs says, eyes starting to glisten. “So it meant something to him too.”
Bookending “The List” is “What Are Wings For,” a stately ballad about sticking to one’s guns that Hoffs and Camerieri wrote with Edie Brickell, who’s married to Simon, on a trip they took to the couple’s ranch in Texas.
“We were there during the World Series [in 2024],” Camerieri recalls, “and we watched the Yankees game with Paul every night after working on songs.”
Adds Hoffs with a laugh: “He also told me that he thinks the Bangles’ version of ‘Hazy Shade of Winter’ is better than his. I was like, ‘Please don’t — yours is the iconic version.’”
By the time the Bangles covered that Simon & Garfunkel tune for the soundtrack to 1987’s “Less Than Zero,” the band was already a fixture on the radio and MTV. Hoffs formed the group in 1981 with sisters Vicki and Debbi Peterson, who learned to play together in the garage of Hoffs’ parents’ house, just a few blocks from where the singer lives today.
The Bangles came up through L.A.’s ’60s-steeped Paisley Underground scene and found stardom after the addition of Michael Steele with “Manic Monday,” a sparkling pop-rock gem gifted to the band by Prince. (Beyond her list of boyfriends, one of Hoffs’ prized possessions from back in the day is Prince’s original cassette demo of “Manic Monday.”)
“He was brilliant but mischievous,” Hoffs says of the late trailblazer, on whom she modeled the character of Jonesy from her novel. “I remember one time he invited us to Sunset Sound in the middle of the night. We get there and we’re jamming, then suddenly we look around and he’s disappeared. ‘OK, I guess we’re done.’”
The Bangles with an assortment of music execs in Los Angeles in 1987.
(Lester Cohen / Getty Images)
After eight Top 40 singles and a triple-platinum LP, the Bangles split in 1989 amid differing ideas about the band’s creative direction and ambitions. The members pursued solo and other projects but reunited to record a song for 1999’s “Austin Powers: The Spy Who Shagged Me,” which Roach directed; two more Bangles albums followed in 2003 and 2011, the second minus Steele, whom Hoffs says she’s not in touch with at the moment.
Compared to the Go-Go’s, whose parallel career was detailed in a 2020 documentary and who were inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame a year later, the Bangles haven’t quite cemented their legacy, though an authorized biography came out last year and a doc is currently in development.
Yet Hoffs doesn’t seem especially troubled by the possibility that the Bangles might be underappreciated, perhaps because she’s got plenty of her own stuff going on. Before “The List” comes out, she’ll play her old hits in a Sept. 5 gig at Largo at the Coronet and in a handful of dates opening for Billy Idol; after the new album drops, she’ll head east for a residency at New York’s Café Carlyle.
She and Camerieri are also at work on a musical adaptation of “This Bird Has Flown” for the stage or the screen. And just the other day she found a folder on her computer full of songs she wrote years ago with her friend Marvin Etzioni of Lone Justice.
“I don’t like using the word ‘bucket list,’ but all these things are labors of love,” Hoffs says.
What’s the trouble with “bucket list”?
“Oh, I don’t know,” she says, smiling. “It just seems, like, death-y.”
You can’t keep a beloved news team down, even after more than a decade since being yanked off the air in a move that stunned fans and local TV newsrooms.
For almost 20 years, KTTV Fox 11’s “Good Day L.A.” was hosted by Steve Edwards, Dorothy Lucey and Jillian Barberie, becoming a dominant fixture in the fiercely competitive morning show arena. The show’s popularity for a time outdistanced network morning shows and crosstown rivals “The KTLA Morning News.”
The trio’s freewheeling banter spiced with humorous mayhem and mischief enchanted legions of viewers while bringing freshness to the familiar formula of news, weather and sports. The distinct personalities meshed effortlessly — veteran newsman Edwards, relentlessly upbeat co-host Lucey and fiery weather reporter Barberie, who injected the proceedings with outrageous, at times crass comments along with declarations that “my breasts are real.”
An undercurrent of friction brought an edge to the breezy vibe, with Edwards often acting as the awkward buffer between Lucey and Barberie, who did little to disguise their dislike of each other. Barberie would go on to bash Lucey on Howard Stern’s radio show, calling her “very Christian and Bible-thumpy.” Lucey was frequently distraught by Barberie’s “mean.”
But that winning combination was broken up starting in May 2012, when Lucey was fired as part of a show revamp. Barberie was let go four months later after declining a demotion. And after continuing with other co-hosts, Edwards vanished from the show in December 2017 after allegations of sexual harassment, but there was never an official explanation from him or management about the reason for his departure. The exits sparked a wave of protests from viewers and celebrities, including Suzanne Somers, Piers Morgan and Simon Cowell of “American Idol.”
Dorothy Lucey, left, Steve Edwards and Jillian Barberie in 2001 on the set of Fox 11’s “Good Day L.A.”
(Genaro Molina / Los Angeles Times)
But good days have returned for the former “Good Day L.A.” hosts. More than a decade after being let go, Edwards, Lucey and Barberie are fired up about their new venture.
The trio has reunited for “So Unanchored,” a weekly podcast fueled by spontaneous riffs on their years together, pop culture and their deep friendship. As they did on “Good Day L.A.,” they consistently interrupt one another and the chatter careens from one topic to the next without a breath. Complete sentences are rare.
“We have not missed a beat,” Edwards said as he, Lucey and Barberie relaxed in an office lounge after a recent taping. “It’s the most effortless thing. It makes us very happy when we get together. There’s an endorphin thing going on.”
“And we like each other more,” added Lucey.
They will tape a special live episode Wednesday at 11 a.m.. New episodes usually appear on Fridays.
The shattering of the “Good Day L.A.” team was particularly traumatic for Barberie, the breakout star of the trio. In addition to getting divorced after the Fox 11 job, she was later sideswiped by financial woes and a devastating health scare.
“I lost my job, got divorced and got cancer all at the same time,” said Barberie, her voice cracking as she sat near Edwards and Lucey in the lounge. “The fact that these two were a constant in my life during those 12 years when I was going through all those things is everything. I’m so grateful.”
Of course, there are major differences from their previous collaboration. While “Good Day L.A.” was broadcast at Fox 11’s massive West Los Angeles studio, “So Unanchored” is a no-frills affair staged at a Canoga Park office park.
The hosts sit in a small office, backed by nondescript office furniture and a framed poster of the vintage “Please Stand By” image broadcast by stations when there were technical difficulties.
Lucey, left, Edwards and Barberie in the Canoga Park office where they tape their podcast, “So Unanchored.”
(Annie Noelker/For The Times)
On their initial podcast, Barberie made it clear that there is no love lost when it comes to her former employer.
“I don’t want anything associated with that show,” she said. “Let’s start fresh, man. They used us and they treated us like s— at the end. Who needs them? Goodbye!”
The other major shift is the relationship between Lucey and Barberie.
“Dorothy and I love each other now,” Barberie said on one episode.
Lucey: “We do. Because the last time you saw us, we really didn’t like each other.”
Barberie: “And Steve has never been happier.”
Edwards: “You two are like sisters. You used to be like brothers — Cain and Abel.”
Barberie: “And then something happened between the three of us that got her and I close, and then I got cancer. She took me to all of my surgeries and took care of me. I’m telling you, it’s a beautiful thing.”
Lucey: “We still hate Steve, though.”
Barberie: “We have that in common.”
The burying of the hatchet is a great relief for Edwards, who was troubled by the tension between his colleagues during their time on “Good Day L.A.”
Barberie pressed Edwards on their first podcast: “Be honest, Steve. Did you like it when we didn’t get along?”
Edwards: “Sometimes it would get ugly and my stomach would turn.”
On “So Unanchored,” Barberie has revived her loose cannon role in their dynamic, raw and unfiltered. She will tear up, and moments later throw her head back with an explosive laugh that bounces off the studio walls.
She detailed her wild lifestyle during her TV days: “From 34 to 40, I was single, had five TV jobs, partied like a rock star, dated anyone I wanted and made a s—load of money.”
Though she eventually landed a talk show on KABC-AM 790 after leaving Fox 11, hard times hit in 2019 as she tried to make ends meet while raising two children as a divorced mom battling cancer.
“When I lost everything, I literally collapsed on my money manager’s table. I was bald and I started crying,” she said.
She listed her ranch-style Tarzana home, which was featured in “MTV Cribs,” for $2.5 million in 2021. She currently rents “a beautiful little apartment way out in Thousand Oaks. I love it and my life is quieter.”
Barberie was more explicit on the podcast: “I haven’t dated in 10 years. I have no tinglies down there. I’m dead from the waist down. I don’t want to date. I don’t want a man, an ape beside me at night if I’m having a hot flash. I have no nipples. I have no desire to cook, sit and talk with you. I don’t care.”
Edwards: “So you’re saying there’s a chance.”
Since leaving “Good Day L.A.,” Barberie, left, and Lucey have developed a close friendship. Edwards, standing center, said, “You two are like sisters. You used to be like brothers — Cain and Abel.”
(Annie Noelker / For The Times)
Scott Sternberg, whose production company produces “So Unanchored,” said “Good Day L.A.” was a clear standout on the morning show spectrum.
“There was something different about ‘Good Day L.A.’ from the other shows,” Sternberg said in a phone interview. “Their personalities were all different, but they could finish each other’s sentences and were not afraid to say what they wanted to say. I felt if I could bring them back together, there would be a huge audience who remembered them fondly.”
Asked to define the magic of their chemistry, Edwards said it was not instantaneous.
“At the time, there were five morning shows, including the network,” he said. “It took years for our thing to happen, but when it did, it happened big. We could do no wrong for 10 years. The ratings were crazy good. There was a run for many years when we were No. 1. We made them a lot of money.”
He continued: “Success is based on the relationship between the people on the show and the audience. Once that is established, it doesn’t matter if the show is good or bad that day. I was going through a lot with these two [Lucey and Barberie], and the audience was doing it with us. But the suits don’t care about that.”
The first indication that the show was in trouble came in 2017, when a new management team initiated a revamp of the morning show.
Lucey wrote at the time in her blog “God and Gossip” that her new boss told her that her voice, which has a trace of raspiness, “made his eyes bleed. Not the crusty yucky pink eye. New guy was saying when I spoke I made his eyes bleed. I have read that can happen after you vomit. Now I could almost see my husband saying something like that to me … But from a new boss…”
But station executives did not express regrets about dismissing Lucey, saying in a statement after her ouster: “The revitalization of ‘Good Day L.A.’ has been refreshing.”
Months later, Barberie was approached about taking a reduced role as a field reporter. She turned it down. Edwards’ departure caused a bigger stir because it was so abrupt. KTTV would say only that he was no longer employed by the station.
“Fox never issued a statement, and I never issued a statement,” Edwards said. “Obviously there was not agreement on what happened.”
As they prepared to leave the lounge, the three hugged each other warmly and said they were looking forward to getting together the following week.
“There is one word for us being back together,” Barberie said. “Home.”
Elderly people line up to receive free meals outside the Tapgol Park in Seoul, South Korea, 10 July 2026. According to the Ministry of the Interior and Statistics, the proportion of Seoul’s 9.3 million residents aged 65 or older has exceeded 20 percent, and it is projected that one in three Seoul residents will be 65 or older by 2040. JEON HEON-KYUN/ EPA
July 28 (Asia Today) — South Korea’s elderly population exceeded 20% of the country’s total population for the first time in 2025, while the share of working-age residents fell below 70%, government data showed Tuesday.
The figures illustrate the accelerating transformation of South Korea’s population as low birth rates and rapid aging reduce the number of children and economically active adults.
South Korea’s total population stood at 51.817 million as of Nov. 1, up 12,000, or 0.02%, from a year earlier, according to the 2025 Population and Housing Census released by the National Data Agency.
The number of South Korean nationals declined by 50,000, but the foreign population increased by 70,000, preventing the country’s total population from falling.
Population growth has continued to slow. After declining in 2021 and 2022 during the COVID-19 pandemic, the population increased 0.2% in 2023 and 0.1% in 2024. Growth slowed to 0.02% in 2025.
The number of South Korean nationals has fallen for five consecutive years since 2021, largely because of the country’s persistently low birth rate.
The foreign population rose 3.2% to 2.11 million, driven partly by increases in international students and seasonal workers. Foreign residents accounted for 4.1% of the total population.
Elderly population rises sharply
The number of people age 65 and older increased by 601,000, or 5.9%, to 10.723 million.
Older residents accounted for 20.7% of the population, exceeding the 20% threshold for the first time.
A country is generally classified as a super-aged society when at least 20% of its population is age 65 or older.
By comparison, the population age 14 and younger fell by 196,000 to 5.225 million, representing 10.1% of the total.
The number of older residents was more than twice the number of children.
South Korea’s working-age population, defined as people ages 15 to 64, decreased by 393,000 to 35.87 million.
The group accounted for 69.2% of the population, falling below 70% for the first time since the current census series began in 2015.
The decline could increase pressure on South Korea’s labor market, pension system and healthcare services as fewer working-age people support a growing elderly population.
People in their 50s were the country’s largest age group, accounting for 16.7% of the population. Those in their 60s represented 15.3%, followed by people in their 40s at 14.8%.
South Korea’s median age rose 0.6 year to 46.8.
Nearly 3 in 10 adults unmarried
The census also showed continuing changes in South Korea’s marriage patterns.
Of the country’s 43.234 million South Korean nationals age 18 or older, 12.789 million, or 29.6%, had never married.
The number of unmarried adults increased by 54,000, or 0.4%, from a year earlier.
The never-married rate among people in their 30s stood at 54.7%, meaning more than half of South Koreans in that age group had not married.
Among people in their 40s, the rate was 21.9%.
Seoul recorded the country’s highest never-married rate at 37.1%, while South Jeolla Province had the lowest at 22.2%.
Phil Collins faced death two years ago, and has lived to tell the tale.
The Grammy-winning singer recalled to the Times of London how his “kidneys were packing up, my organs were just seizing” when he was was hospitalized in Switzerland in April 2024 because of alcohol abuse. At the time, Collins’ five children — including “Emily in Paris” star Lily Collins — were called to his bedside for what they thought could be his final moments.
“There were some decisions to be made about ‘Do we keep Phil on life support?’” he recalled for the profile, published Monday. He added: “People were coming to say goodbye. But I don’t remember them coming, I didn’t have no idea this was going on. They were all worried that they wouldn’t see me again. It could all have gone so terribly wrong.”
Collins reflected on his brush with death to the news outlet months before he is set to be inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in November. His fellow inductees include Billy Idol, Iron Maiden, Joy Division/New Order, Oasis, Sade, Luther Vandross and Wu-Tang Clan.
The profile about the “In the Air Tonight” and “You’ll Be in My Heart” singer recalled the extent of his struggles with alcohol, including after his divorce from Orianne Cevey. Collins, 75, said when he was drinking, “the calendar [went] out the window” and that he opted for wine for breakfast. The Times of London reported that Collins was hospitalized in November 2023 and swiftly discharged, only to return to the intensive care unit and stay hospitalized for seven months.
“I was very lucky to have come out of that. Needless to say, I haven’t had a drink since,” he said. According to the outlet, Collins has permanent scarring on his pancreas, and his kidneys “barely” function.
Collins spoke about his alcohol abuse earlier this year in a five-episode podcast series with Zoe Ball. He revealed in April that he has a live-in nurse and that it’s an “ongoing” effort to manage his health. He said “everything that could go wrong with me did go wrong.”
“I got COVID in hospital, my kidneys started to back up, you know, everything that could, all seemed to sort of converge at the same time,” he said, adding that he had undergone five operations on his knee.
Collins also admitted in April he’d “probably been drinking too much” and that he recently celebrated two years of sobriety.
Collins spoke in his most recent interview about his desire “to be in love again,” revisited his controversial love life and spoke about mending his relationships with Piers Morgan, Paul McCartney and daughter Lily Collins after various rifts that played out in the media.
“I don’t like people going around thinking I hate them,” he said.
The achievement is breathtaking. Recognition is growing. The fastest known time is hers.
Ultrarunner Sophie Woods will have more to say after a few well-deserved full night’s sleep. For now, consider her unvarnished secret to traversing a mountainous 1,242-mile trail network through Italy, Slovenia, Austria, Germany, Liechtenstein, Switzerland, France and Monaco in 28 days, 17 hours and 59 minutes — nearly a week faster than anyone else has been known to do so.
“Just one step. That’s all you have to do. Just one step forward,” Woods said on Instagram.
Woods earlier reported the record time as 29 days, but corrected it in an email to The Times on Monday, saying she and her husband George “were all so exhausted they hadn’t calculated correctly.”
The Via Alpina course follows the length of the Alps with elevation equivalent to climbing Mount Everest a dozen times. The length is a nice round number in kilometers — 2,000. The total elevation climbed was roughly 110,000 meters, an average of 12,000 feet of daily vertical ascent per day.
Yet another number is equally impressive: Woods is 42 years old.
Woods, who competes using her maiden name Sophie Amy Grant, set off on July 4 in Trieste, Italy, and finished on the Mediterranean coast of Monaco. She endured heatwaves, storms, wildfires and a swarm of horseflies. She ran, climbed and hiked 14 to 18 hours a day, covering 40 to 50 miles before getting a few hours of sleep in a van, tent or occasionally a hotel room.
“I am ecstatic but knackered,” she told BBC Sport. “I’m really tired.”
She ate and drank what would be expected of someone exerting herself to the nth degree. Energy gels containing carbs, electrolytes and amino acids along with a sprinkle of caffeine were essential, but Woods also splurged on McDonalds and mounds of pasta when she met up with her husband, photographer Zoe Salt and dog Nila at day’s end. She estimated that she consumed close to 7,000 calories a day.
The first week was the toughest, with Woods describing her feeling “a thousand pulled muscles,” but by halfway through the journey she told Her Sports that “things still ache now, and by the end of the day my feet are definitely ready for a rest, but I currently only have one small blister on my heel, which I’m calling a huge win. All things considered, I’m feeling really good.”
Sophie Woods runs a route on Via Alpina at Klausenpass by Hotel Meiringen on July 20.
(Zoe Salt)
The previous fastest known time in the Via Alpina was 35 days, 21 hours by British runner Jake Catterall, 34, in 2024. Tessa Caspers, 33, set the fastest women’s time for the route at 38 days, 2 hours last year.
Catterall might need to update his website, which claims not only the Via Alpina record but others including an arduous mountain trek in North Africa and a 3,500-mile mad dash across the entire length of Europe, from Norway to Andalusia, Spain.
He knew all about Woods’ effort, however. On day 20 of her journey, Catterall met her in Switzerland after she had traversed “a particularly spicy descent on a sketchy section of via ferrata,” according to Woods’ Instagram.
“Safely back at base camp, she was met by a brilliant surprise,” the post read. “Waiting to cheer her on was @jakecatterall — the current Via Alpina FKT holder — who had gone out of his way on the journey to his own adventure just to support Sophie. It was such a thoughtful gesture, and one that gave everyone a real lift.”
FKT is short for the “fastest known time” that a person or small group achieves on a particular course, usually somewhere it would be difficult or impossible to host an actual race.
To submit an FKT, the route must be at least five miles long or have at least 500 feet of climbing. Some are very short — the Manitou Incline in Colorado is less than one mile long but climbs 1,900 feet and begins at 7,000 feet of elevation. Others such as the Via Alpina and the Appalachian Trail are thousands of miles long.
For verification, GPS information must be submitted to the FKT website. The route can be linked by uploading it to Strava, Garmin Connect or another online training platform. FKT has not verified Woods’ record yet.
Woods’ mark likely will be tested by another runner, although someone else her age and gender completing the Via Alpina in fewer than 29 days would be a challenging feat.
Woods is from New Zealand and she and her husband spent a decade in London before living in their camper van for years while traveling throughout Europe, finally settling in Andorra, a tiny principality situated in the Pyrenees mountains between France and Spain.
And it is there Woods will rest for a spell.
“I’m absolutely ecstatic,” she said on Instagram a day after she completed Via Alpina. “I still can’t believe that we did it.”
Welcome back to the Times of Troy newsletter, where summer break is over, USC’s preseason camp is underway and we are officially back in your inbox with news, notes and analysis on the Trojans every Monday morning from now through football season and beyond. I hope you had a lovely, peaceful summer. Because this fall, the stakes will have never been higher for Lincoln Riley, who’s entering his fifth and most consequential season yet as USC’s football coach, one that could decide the direction of the Trojan football program for years to come.
We’ve got a lot planned for the Times of Troy this season, including a very exciting announcement to come later this month. But over the next four weeks, before USC kicks off the 2026 season, we’ll take a close look at the team and season ahead.
Fight on! Are you a true Trojans fan?
Get our Times of Troy newsletter for USC insights, news and much more.
By continuing, you agree to our Terms of Service, which include arbitration and a class action waiver. You agree that we and our third-party vendors may collect and use your information, including through cookies, pixels and similar technologies, for the purposes set forth in our Privacy Policy such as personalizing your experience and ads.
This week, we start with the Trojans’ offense, which, in four years with Riley as coach, has consistently remained among the best in the sport. Say what you will about Riley as a play-caller or an overall CEO type, but only one team in college football ranks better in average opponent-adjusted efficiency (FEI) on offense over the course of Riley’s tenure (sorry, it’s Oregon). And only once, in four seasons with Riley, has USC fallen out of the top seven nationally in that efficiency rate.
USC finished third in the nation in offensive FEI last season. And there’s a legitimate case to be made that the offense should be even better in 2026. Two cases, really.
The first path is probably obvious and will no doubt be the source of every preseason TV segment about USC. The road to success for Riley has always run through the quarterback. And Jayden Maiava has all the tools necessary to be that guy. He took a huge step forward last offseason, and if he continues that trajectory, he should be one of the best quarterbacks in the country this season.
But Maiava has also been surrounded by seasoned receivers the last two seasons, including one who just got picked in the first round of the NFL draft. His top returning receiver, Tanook Hines, is sitting out with an injury to start camp, while the rest of the pass-catcher two-deep is made up of either freshmen or transfers. We don’t know how long Hines will have to sit out, but any amount of time isn’t ideal. It’ll be on Maiava to build chemistry in the room and make it all work on the fly.
I suspect he’ll do just fine in that regard. But if USC is really going to reach its offensive potential this season, I believe it’ll be the run game that gets them there.
Riley earned his reputation as a passing savant at Oklahoma for good reason. He had two Heisman Trophy-winning passers and one runner-up in his first three seasons with the Sooners, and all three are now starting NFL quarterbacks. There’s no college coach with a resume even close to comparable when it comes to passing. But what’s often lost about those Riley teams is that Oklahoma also had a stellar rushing attack, one that had to be accounted for at all times, and, in turn, made the passing attack all the more explosive.
USC’s run game hasn’t been bad since Riley took over, not by any stretch. In fact, in terms of expected points added per rush play, the Trojans have ranked among the 15 most efficient run games in college football in each of Riley’s four seasons. They just haven’t run the ball nearly as much as that efficiency suggests they would.
This season would be a great time to shift that ratio. Because this is the best backfield Riley has had at USC.
Before he got hurt last season, Waymond Jordan was on his way to being seen as one of the best backs in the Big Ten, if not the country. He averaged 6.55 yards per carry, which ranked 15th among qualifying running backs in the country, but better yet, he picked up more yards on average after contact (5.15) than all but one other running back in the nation.
Assuming he’s fully healed from his ankle injury last October, Jordan should immediately remind everyone that he’s bound for stardom. And his backfield mate may not be that far behind.
King Miller scores on a 41-yard run against UCLA last season.
(Gina Ferazzi / Los Angeles Times)
King Miller didn’t get regular carries until Week 6 last season, after Jordan went down. But he ended up busting 26 rushes of 10 yards or more anyway. That’s once every six carries. That’s bonkers, even before you consider that Miller is formerly a walk-on.
The pairing of those two backs, plus the threat of Maiava’s legs, gives USC a varied backfield capable of breaking a big play at any moment. Better yet, in the Big Ten, it gives Riley and his offense the ability to extend drives and wear down opposing defenses. That’s too often been missing from USC’s offense since coming to the Big Ten.
But there’s no excuse not to lean more on the run this season. Throw in the fact that USC is deeper and more talented on the offensive line than at any other point in Riley’s tenure, and it’s not hard to envision a Trojan offense dynamic enough to dominate teams on the ground and through the air.
Offense has never been a problem for Riley at USC. But we also haven’t seen Riley’s offense at the full extent of its powers just yet. And if USC is going to make the Playoff for the first time under Riley, that’s going to have to change this season.
Preseason MVP pick (non-QB): Waymond Jordan … Back from injury, I’m betting Jordan is better than ever.
Breakout pick: Kayden Dixon-Wyatt, freshman wide receiver … Take your pick of top prospects at the receiver position, but I think Dixon-Wyatt could be the big-play threat USC needs alongside Hines.
Biggest question mark: Wide receiver/tight end … So much talent, but so little of it is proven. Don’t be surprised if someone you’re not expecting breaks out at the position.
Bold prediction: Freshman tight end Mark Bowman leads the team in touchdown catches.
—USC‘s top projected cornerbacks are both cleared ahead of camp. We didn’t see Jontez Williams all spring, and we haven’t really seen Chasen Johnson at all since he was injured almost a year ago. So it’s easy to forget how touted both cornerbacks were coming out of the transfer portal. I’m particularly high on Williams, who was clearly the team’s top target in the portal this offseason. I expect both will start on the outside, unless Marcelles Williams makes a serious push to play there in camp.
—Riley is strongly in favor of the 24-team College Football Playoff. That’s been the official Big Ten Conference stance for months, so it’s no surprise to hear Riley echo those feelings. “This is something that’s not going to diminish the game in any way,” Riley said. “Having more teams in a tournament to determine a champion is not going to make it worse.” Of course, Riley’s concern isn’t the overall health of the game, but rather the fact that more playoff spots mean more chances for him to check that box. I don’t blame any coach for feeling that way. But there’s a reason why they shouldn’t be in charge of these decisions.
—Some weight fluctuations … The biggest change since spring belonged to offensive tackle Elijah Vaikona, who lost 25 pounds to open the fall at 360, while two players, tight end Walter Matthews (now 305) and defensive back Carrington Pierce (now 185) each added 20 pounds to their frames. A couple other notable changes: Veteran defensive lineman Jide Abasiri is down to 280 and could play more on the outside this season, while young edge rusher Jadyn Ramos bulked up to 250, after joining USC at (generously) 220 pounds last spring. Freshman five-star tight end Mark Bowman is also up to 245, which should help keep him on the field.
—Grant Govel spurned the Pittsburgh Pirates to return as USC’s ace. The Trojans were one of the big winners of the MLB draft deadline, as their No. 2 starter will now return to take over the top of the rotation. Govel had a 2.87 ERA and an opponent batting average of .203, which made him one of the better pitchers in the Big Ten. But Mason Edwards’ amazing year overshadowed, in some regard, the success Govel was having. That won’t be the case in 2026-27.
—Bloom Football Performance Center is having its grand opening this week. The football team already moved in a couple weeks ago, but the new state-of-the-art facility will get its close-up later this week. The media will be doing a tour Thursday, so be sure to follow along on social media for photos and videos from inside the facility.
The Best Thing I Watched This Summer
Anne Hathaway and Tom Holland in “The Odyssey.”
(Melinda Sue Gordon / Universal Pictures)
It’s not exactly an original take to sing the praises of a movie that’s become a global phenomenon. But “The Odyssey,” more than any blockbuster in recent memory, is worthy of piling on. I caught the film in its intended 70mm IMAX format, and I can confidently say it was the most amazing cinematic experience I’ve ever had.
The sheer scale of the movie is something to behold, even before you consider just how difficult it is to adapt an ancient epic poem into an interesting movie script. And on both counts, Christopher Nolan does not disappoint. The performances are outstanding, the score is beautiful, and the themes that Nolan pulls from the poem somehow manage to give a fresh take on a 3,000-year-old story.
I look forward to watching it again, as soon as I can, in IMAX 70mm. Though, judging by the current ticket situation, that might have to be at 3 a.m. on a Tuesday.
That concludes today’s newsletter. If you have any feedback, ideas for improvement or things you’d like to see, email me at ryan.kartje@latimes.com, and follow me on X at @Ryan_Kartje. To get this newsletter in your inbox, click here.
EXCLUSIVE: Sadie King’s return to Emmerdale is almost here, and now actress Patsy Kensit has told the Mirror her ‘terror’ over her ITV soap comeback after 20 years
00:00, 03 Aug 2026Updated 00:01, 03 Aug 2026
There’s not long to wait until Sadie King returns to Emmerdale(Image: ITV)
There’s not long to wait until Sadie King returns to Emmerdale, after 20 years away.
But while fans are excited, actress Patsy Kensit, 58, confessed she was utterly terrified reprising her iconic role. “I was shaking like a leaf,” she told the Mirror. “It’s been a long time. I’ve done so much work in between, but this… I phoned up Mark Charnock actually, who plays Marlon Dingle.
“I told him, ‘I’m really scared,’ and he said it would be weird if I wasn’t, and that it’s only because I care. But I’m in the swing of things now, and I’m definitely settling in.”
Emmerdale are keeping quiet, for now, on what triggers Sadie’s shocking return, and when the scenes will air. What we can reveal is that she brings trouble to the village in classic Sadie fashion, and there’s some big secrets waiting to be discovered too.
She shared: “We will find out what’s happened to her and it’s interesting. It’s not just a one-note portrayal. Things have happened to her over the last 20 years, and we get older, but I can’t say too much.”
Patsy revealed her role isn’t a full-time return to the Dales. She’s only there for six months, with her set to wrap up filming in December. There’s plenty of drama on the way though before she leaves again, with village residents left reeling over her out-of-the-blue return.
It’s hardly surprising, after her devious antics during her two-year stint on the show between 2004 and 2006. From teaming up with Cain Dingle to con her own family, to her involvement in the deadly show home collapse that left three characters dead, she’s earned her status as one of the soap’s most ruthless characters ever.
But the big question is, has Sadie King changed? “Well, obviously it’s been 20 years,” Patsy told us. “We would hope she’s evolved slightly.
“It was quite easy to slip back into Sadie’s shoes, and it’s really interesting the way that it’s been written. She sort of comes in and causes trouble. People will be unsure if she’s a different person now.”
Patsy was thrilled to be asked back by bosses, first confiding the news in her two sons, James, 32, whose father is Simple Minds frontman Jim Kerr, and Lennon, 26, who she shares with ex-husband, Oasis star, Liam Gallagher.
Patsy beamed: “They were really happy. They thought it would be a really great thing for me to do, and they have been really supportive.”
While Sadie isn’t expected to get a warm welcome when she steps back into the village, the same cannot be said for Patsy who was welcomed back with open arms.
“It’s been exceptionally nice,” she told us. “It’s a wonderful place to work. The pastoral care here is incredible, the cast, crew, everyone, every department. They really, really put their arms around me and looked after me.”
Patsy loves playing Sadie, so she jumped at the chance to be her again. But she admitted Sadie isn’t someone she’d be keen to know in the real world.
“Oh gosh, no, she’s awful,” laughed Patsy. “But, no, I do love her. You can’t play a character, really, that you hate.
“I think you’ve got to find something in there. Her sheer capability… I’m pathologically polite, and she will say and do things that I would never do in a million years, and get away with, so I can kind of live vicariously through her at times.”
Justin Halpern had a best-selling nonfiction book, co-created “Harley Quinn,” is co-showrunner for “Abbott Elementary” and has recently published his first novel, “Get Lost.”
But today he wants to mostly talk baseball. He recalls rooting for the Mets as a child in San Diego because he was so enamored with Dwight Gooden’s “electric” fastball and his disappearing curve. He spills about the big game he blew as a tween when a simple throw to first went horribly awry, about the two no-hitters he threw at Point Loma High School, how his dreams of stardom went south while at San Diego State, about feeling bitter toward the game and then rediscovering his love for it.
This wasn’t just idle chatter. Baseball is integral to Halpern’s own character arc and to “Get Lost” both on the page and behind the scenes. Take that terrible error when Halpern was 12. Afterward, his father didn’t console him with platitudes. He told the boy to dismiss the “it’s just a game” pity from his coach and accept that for Justin it was a big deal and it made sense to feel awful, but that also meant he had something he felt passionate about.
On the Shelf
Get Lost
By Justin Halpern Cardinal: 256 pages, $29
If you buy books linked on our site, The Times may earn a commission from Bookshop.org, whose fees support independent bookstores.
That paternal talk helped less in the moment than down the road: Halpern’s struggling writing career exploded when he started tweeting his dad’s life advice and then, with his writing partner, Patrick Schumacker, turned those “S—My Dad Says” tweets into a best-selling book. (He’s acutely aware of how lucky he got but also says he and Schumacker were well prepared to capitalize on that opportunity.)
And that particular story, Halpern says, was “foundational” for “Get Lost.” The novel follows Lila Dixon, an acerbic, cynical baseball scout living a dreary and closed-off life in her 30s. When her mentally ill mother goes missing, yet again, Lila must return to the hometown she loathed to search for her, but this time she must also deal with her estranged father, John “Dix” Dixon. Dix was a baseball prodigy too cocky and flashy for his own good who now coasts through life on his long-ago heroics coupled with charm and an undeserved diet of luck.
Halpern’s father’s message resonated for this novel because Lila, who was neglected, abandoned and ultimately shuttled off to foster care as a kid, “has been wandering the planet without finding anything she gives a damn about. Now she needs to find something.”
Halpern quit baseball in college after an injury and the realization that he’d never make the majors. “Aside from talent, you have to be willing to do all these tiny little boring things every single day,” he says. “You have to be obsessive. I worked hard but I wasn’t willing to do that.”
The team’s assistant coach told Halpern it was the biggest mistake of his life and he’d “never make a penny writing” but writing was the one thing where he was willing to tackle the tiny little boring things needed to keep improving.
The adaptation of “S— My Dad Says” for television failed but he felt he improved with each successive show. He also didn’t give up when his first two attempts at novels were “terrible” with “nothing salvageable” in either attempt.
He learned to stop imitating his favorite writers. “I was trying to copy authors more skilled than I was and wasn’t taking the time to find my own voice.” And he strived to break the habits of writing for TV (although he’s quick to acknowledge that “Get Lost” remains dialogue heavy), including working alone. A perpetual collaborator who describes himself as “codependent,” going solo “was a huge challenge that almost shut down the novel a couple of times.”
He contemplated calling friends to run ideas by them when he got stuck but ultimately resisted. “If I didn’t figure out how to solve things myself I was never going to finish this novel anyway,” he says, adding with a laugh, “I’m definitely still codependent, but the novel forced me to venture into waters that I never would have gotten into on my own.”
The deepest of those waters came from learning he does not like exploring his emotions. “My wife probably learned this many years ago,” he says wryly. “Every time I need to sit in a feeling, I try to wiggle my way out of it and that’s probably really annoying for the people in my life. To make “Get Lost” work, he had to burrow into the “complex emotional stew” of Lila’s multiple traumas and make her journey feel earned. Each morning he’d take “epic walks” with his dog. “I’d just talk in the voice of the characters in my head, without it having anything to do with the plot.”
Creating Lila’s flippant father came easily, which is why Halpern refused to settle on Dix as the main character. He didn’t want to make Dix loathsome, but he also didn’t want to glamorize his behavior, thinking back to how he felt “The Wolf of Wall Street” made the sleazy finance bros seem too cool to many in the audience.
Writing a female protagonist, especially one who had so many reasons to be guarded, he didn’t want her to be too likable or to be sexualized or to have solutions come easily. “I didn’t want Lila to need to lower expectations of her father and just love the man for who he is but to realize the limitations of this man and not let that affect how she feels about herself.”
It’s easy to read “Get Lost” hearing Aubrey Plaza in Lila’s sardonic tone, and Halpern heard her voice, and others, while writing but kept reminding himself that he’d have no talented actress to add humanity to his dialogue.
“I knew there’d be no Aubrey Plaza here to save my ass,” he says, although he and Schumacker are now planning a movie adaptation. “I had to figure out how to create this complicated character myself,” Halpern tells me via video from the writers room in L.A. for “I Suck At Girls,” an upcoming Netflix series loosely based off another of his nonfiction books. Schumacker came in and dryly praised “Get Lost” by saying: “Justin knows words that I didn’t think he knew.”
Halpern is more self-aware than he lets on as becomes clear when analyzing his baseball journey — when he quit he admits he felt resentful. “I’d given so much time to the game and it owed me something, but hadn’t given me what I’d asked,” he reflects.
Several years later, he realized he needed to embrace the game for what it offered, not what he wanted. He started playing in adult leagues and became so invested that in his mid-30s, when a surgeon told him he’d torn his labrum, he said, “Is my career over?”
The surgeon asked, “Aren’t you a writer?”
Halpern recovered and, when he’s not joyfully coaching his kids’ Little League team, he’s still heading for the mound at age 45, thrilled with the challenges of outsmarting hitters and reveling in the social aspect of being on a team. “Even with a bunch of older people, there’s just something about sports that still really takes me to a higher place,” he says. “I’ve had a super blessed writing career, but the highest highs I’ve ever had are on a baseball field.”
Miller is a freelance writer in Brooklyn, N.Y., who frequently writes about movies.
“RuPaul’s Drag Race All Stars” winner Alaska Thunderf— will step into the spotlight this fall as the newest star to take on the title role of Mary in Cole Escola’s Tony Award-winning comedy “Oh, Mary!”
“You know how when in the ’90s in the Olympics, they would ask the winner ‘What are you gonna do now that you won the gold medal?’ and they’d say ‘I’m going to Disneyland.’” Alaska said in a recent interview. “I literally feel like that.”
Even after being cast, Alaska said it didn’t fully sink in until she began doing press for the production. Now, she’d celebrate with a flip if she could do one.
“It’s really happening, it’s just the best role, in the best play ever and I’m honored and I’m excited and I’m thrilled and I can’t wait,” she said.
The dark comedy follows a miserable Mary Todd Lincoln in the weeks leading to the assassination of her husband, who will be played by the Tony Award-winning actor J. Harrison Ghee. The one-act play reimagines the forgotten life of Mrs. Lincoln with absurdist comedy.
Since its 2024 premiere, the play written by comedian Escola — who also originated the title role — has become a Broadway sensation, earning $1 million in a single week and breaking its own box office record 13 times.
“RuPaul’s Drag Race” star Alaska will play Mary Todd Lincoln in “Oh, Mary!” at the Ahmanson Theatre this fall.
(Shaun Vadella)
The stage production received critical acclaim and earned multiple Tony Awards including best direction of a play for Sam Pinkleton and best actor in a play for Escola.
Alaska is joining a list of famed comedic actors who have played Mary Todd Lincoln, including Maya Rudolph, Meg Stalter, Tituss Burgess and Jane Krakowski. She isn’t letting the hype surrounding the show make her nervous, and said she remains focused on embracing the role.
“I’m really excited to wear the sacred bratty curls and the hallowed hoop skirt,” Alaska said.
The actor, who was also a finalist in “RuPaul’s Drag Race,” earned an Outer Critics Circle Award for her Off-Broadway play “Drag: The Musical,” which she co-wrote alongside Tomas Costanza and Ash Gordon.
Alaska is thrilled to play opposite Ghee, who won the 2023 Tony Award for best leading actor in a musical for their role in “Some Like It Hot.” Ghee said in a statement that they are excited to “set the road on fire with this electrifyingly hilarious play” alongside Alaska.
“I have seen Oh, Mary! three times and relished the beauty of this show — how different people shine so brightly in these roles, and yet you see the influence of Cole all over the production,” Ghee said. “The opportunity to get a crack at Mary’s Husband is beyond a dream come true.”
“Oh, Mary!” runs Nov. 10 through Dec. 6 at the Ahmanson Theatre. Additional casting will be announced in the coming months.
Alone and engulfed in the darkness of a Madrid cinema, Javier Bardem watched Martin Scorsese’s 1991 psychological thriller “Cape Fear” after learning he’d be starring in an episodic reimagining of the crime saga for Apple TV — the series finale is now streaming.
He arranged the private screening to symbolically request Robert De Niro’s blessing to play the dangerously charismatic Max Cady, an ex-con parched for revenge against those who had a hand in his imprisonment. De Niro received an Oscar nomination for that role.
“It was my way of honoring the work he did back then and, at the same time, to detach myself from that performance and ask his permission to create my own take,” Bardem tells me in Spanish while sitting at a restaurant inside a Beverly Hills hotel.
His informal getup, a T-shirt and shorts, contrasts with the elegant environment primed for business lunches and ostentatious dinners. He exudes an easy-going air. A quintessential cool dad casually sipping on an iced Diet Coke as he shares anecdotes about his passion for acting.
Bardem, 57, agreed to play Cady because the version of the character that the show’s creator, Nick Antosca, envisioned was not only decidedly distinct from those embodied by De Niro and Robert Mitchum, the latter of whom starred in a 1962 film adaptation, but also tailored to him as a Spanish man.
Had it been a standard remake, Bardem would have passed. Still, like the films, the show also “drinks from the fountain” of John D. MacDonald’s 1957 novel “The Executioners.” What remains intact across all versions of Cady is a devilish sense of humor and a lack of self-importance. In any of his iterations, he has nothing to lose. That makes him lethal.
In “Cape Fear,” Bardem’s Max Cady is distinct from the versions of the character played by Robert De Niro and Robert Mitchum in earlier films.
(Apple)
The cerebral Cady that Bardem inhabits spent nearly two decades in prison convicted for his wife’s murder. When the discovery of new evidence results in Cady’s freedom, his new mission is to torment Anna (Amy Adams) and Tom Bowden (Patrick Wilson), the attorney and prosecutor on his case, who are now married and have two teenaged children.
Cady turns their lives into a trap of paranoia and, indeed, fear, while procuring plausible deniability to avoid consequences. It’s a malicious and relentless barrage of the mind.
“He’s a 2026 Max Cady. It’s a different way of approaching violation of privacy, and the intrusion of the characters’ psyches. The digital world has made everything very different now,” he explains. “We are hyper-aware of what is said and written about us. We are inundated with so much information that, at times, we can’t tell what is true and what is false.”
While in the 1991 film the audience is aware that De Niro’s Cady committed sexual crimes making him “an absolutely despicable character,” Bardem says this new version portrays a complex person who’s suffered at the hands of the American justice system.
“Here we understand that he was imprisoned for something he didn’t do. He may have done other things, but he says, ‘You turned me into this monster.’ It’s true. From that point on, a vengeful and destructive mindset developed,” Bardem says of his Cady.
The final episode shows the public unmasking of Cady, just before he learns he is responsible for his own son’s death. Bardem describes him as a “dying beast” who has lost control of the narrative that he so meticulously orchestrated to rebuild his image.
The character was written to account for the actor’s Spanish accent. This Cady grew up in Spain until he moved to North Carolina at 13 and learned English on the streets. Bardem worked with renowned dialect coach Tim Monich to infuse his speech with a hint of a Southern drawl, aware that his character didn’t have to sound like a native speaker.
“I’m not bilingual,” Bardem says. The statement is somewhat shocking, considering he’s worked in the U.S. for decades in numerous English-language productions.
“Acting in English is easier for me because the dialogue is set,” he says. “But when the time comes to improvise, I find it difficult. That still doesn’t come naturally to me in English.”
The Spanish actor says acting in English is easier for him but that improvising is more challenging.
(Erik Carter / For The Times)
There’s a freedom to working in English since words have less emotional significance, the Oscar-winner believes. “I can be more daring in English. I can say the words or verbalize the thoughts with much less inhibition, because I am not as emotionally attached,” he explains. “But when you speak in your mother tongue, your body tenses up a bit because you think, ‘I understand the full emotional spectrum of what I’m talking about.’ ”
At this stage in his lauded career, Bardem is interested only in roles that explore “contradictions with an underlying humanity.” He’s played one-dimensional parts in the past, but the cost of being away from his loved ones is too high.
The job has to measure up to the trade-off of precious time he’s surrendering.
The “Cape Fear” production structured the schedule for Bardem to work for two weeks followed by five or six days off, allowing him to travel back to his family, which includes his famous and just as in-demand wife, Penélope Cruz, and their two teenaged children, Leo, 15, and Luna, 13.
“Cape Fear” filmed in Atlanta and Savannah, Ga. That’s a long trip back to Spain but manageable and certainly worthwhile, he says. “One of the few things I ask for contractually is time with family, and that has always been respected; Penélope and I have always managed our projects in such a way that one of us is always present for our kids.”
Thanks to his award-winning turn as an unnerving killer in “No Country for Old Man” and the dapper cyberterrorist in “Skyfall,” audiences might associate Bardem with sinister characters (his Cady joins the ranks). And they are satisfying to portray, he says.
“It’s true that characters with that kind of darkness are very attractive to play,” he says. “The villain is always more compelling than the hero. The hero is perfectly upright. A good villain has many cracks, which is what makes him more human.”
Bardem on playing sinister characters like Max Cady: “The villain is always more compelling than the hero. The hero is perfectly upright. A good villain has many cracks, which is what makes him more human.”
(Apple)
In recent years, however, Bardem made a deliberate effort to work on projects that his children could watch, particularly when they were younger, namely the fantasy musical “Lyle, Lyle, Crocodile” and the live-action remake of “The Little Mermaid,” in which he played King Triton.
“I needed my children to see what I do,” he says. “They knew I’d leave home for two weeks and then come back, and I’d tell them about it and show them photos, but they hadn’t been able to watch any of my movies yet because they were geared more toward adults.”
Cruz and Bardem have always encouraged their children’s creative pursuits. It wouldn’t surprise them if they eventually pursue a life in the arts. “I don’t see them becoming scientists or lawyers, which makes sense. I don’t know if they will become ‘nepo babies’ or not, but we are conscious that children always feed on what their parents do,” Bardem says.
Every time either Bardem or Cruz gets an offer for a new role, the couple discuss it and then bring their kids into the conversation. It’s important, Bardem believes, that Leo and Luna know how fulfilling acting is for both of their parents.
“They know we feel immense gratitude for being able to make a living from our passion. And they understand that the way we try to live up to that gift is by doing our absolute best and giving it the full attention it deserves,” he says.
When they were younger, the kids weren’t interested in seeing their parents on screen, but that’s changed. “They have seen ‘The Invite’ three times. They love it. And they’ve watched ‘Volver’ and ‘Bandidas,’” he says. “They’ve watched me in ‘F1,’ and Leo is watching ‘Cape Fear.’ ”
In June, Bardem became part of Hollywood history when his hands and footprints were added to the entrance of TCL Chinese Theatre. The ceremony included directors Michael Mann and Denis Villeneuve and producer Jerry Bruckheimer.
“I missed my mother so much at that moment because there are so many footprints of classic actors and actresses there. I imagine my mother seeing my hands and feet next to Gary Cooper, who was one of the loves of her life,” he says.
In June, Bardem’s hands and footprints were added to the entrance of TCL Chinese Theatre: “I missed my mother so much at that moment because there are so many footprints of classic actors and actresses there.”
(Erik Carter / For The Times)
It felt surreal, Bardem says, to have Mann present at the event. They worked together on “Collateral” over two decades ago. “I was crazy about ‘Miami Vice’ in the ’80s,” Bardem says. The suit he wore in the photo shoot for this piece, he adds, reminded him of that emblematic series and film.
Bardem’s latest collaboration with Villeneuve, “Dune: Part Three” hits theaters in December. He recalls the joy of shooting the film’s opening sequence, a battle where the cast was covered in mud. It reminded him of childhood play. “Denis would laugh and say to me, ‘But why are you laughing?’ And I’d say, ‘This is what I used to do in the schoolyard, but now it’s for real. Now I look to my right, and I have 50 guys under my command,’ ” he says.
“I was lucky enough to shoot some scenes with Timothée [Chalamet]. I saw him playing a Paul who is very different from the Paul in the second film,” Bardem continues. “Years have passed, and Paul is now wielding power and is a victim of that power.”
Outspoken about the ongoing plight of Palestinians, Bardem wishes more people could apply the lessons they mine from fiction they consume to the world in turmoil.
“We root for the rebels in ‘Star Wars’ and want them to defeat Darth Vader, or we side with the Fremen in ‘Dune.’ We always take sides in fiction. Yet, when we witness oppression, abuse and the violation of the most fundamental rights by an oppressor in real life, we seem to struggle to stand with the oppressed,” Bardem explains. “That cannot be.”
Even while attending matches at the recent World Cup, where Spain won the title, the actor advocated for an end to the carnage. A viral video shows him engaging with a Palestinian man at a match. “Existence is resistance,” Bardem tells him. On social media he’s shared images of Lamine Yamal, one of his national team’s stars, waving the Palestinian flag.
“The impunity Israel enjoys regarding these crimes, both legally and in terms of international support, creates a profound sense of powerlessness,” he says.
Bardem admits he’s been asked, whether directly or indirectly, to tone down his vocal support. But he doesn’t fear backlash. On the contrary, he’s never felt more support from everyday people who share his mindset.
“If I’m so privileged to have a good life where I work doing what I love and can provide my family with stability and security, how could I not use that privilege to denounce those things that I think are wrong?”
Come 2028, the Democratic presidential campaign promises to be a banger, with all sorts of intrigue and subplots layered within a wide-open fight for the nomination.
In the meantime, Democrats have seemingly resolved at least one 2028 fight, a fracas marked by snarking, backbiting and plenty of acrimony — all the things that make our politics such a grand and glorious endeavor.
We speak of the contest to determine which state will hold the first vote of the 2028 nominating process. And the winner is … South Carolina!
This was a blow to Nevada, the runner-up in the calendar sweepstakes, and not a very sporting one at that. The state Democratic Party issued a huffy news release, insisting Nevada will be the candidates’ first true test of 2028 — emphasis added — reprising the argument over which state offers the best starting path to reclaim the White House and, thus, deserves the coveted lead voting slot.
(California, a perennially frustrated onlooker, is not set to vote until March 7, several weeks into the balloting, which is supposed to start Jan. 22.)
Iowa went first, holding its quaint and quirky precinct caucuses — neighbors gathered in church halls, school libraries and the like as they worked through arcane rules involving “realignment” and “viability thresholds” — followed by New Hampshire’s first-in-the-nation primary.
The change set off a free-for-all this time around, as a dozen states bid for the chance to vote first.
(The two major political parties set the rules for choosing their presidential nominees, independent of one another. Republicans are expected to stick to the traditional lineup, starting with the Iowa caucuses and New Hampshire primary, followed by contests in Nevada and South Carolina.)
Last month, after nearly a year of consideration, the Democratic Party’s Rules and Bylaws Committee voted for six states to hold their contests in a window between late January and the end of February. They are, in order, South Carolina, Nevada, New Hampshire, New Mexico, Michigan and Virginia. The lineup will be presented to the full Democratic National Committee to be voted on and finalized later this month.
Doubtless, you — a normal person — have paid little or no attention to any of this. You’ve got more important things to do, like binge-watching “Widow’s Bay,” or not melting.
But party leaders and political insiders take the process extremely seriously. At stake: bragging rights, a modest economic boost and the chance for local analysts and office-holders to make frequent appearances as experts on the cable-TV chat shows.
The jostling grew particularly fierce between South Carolina and Nevada.
More than 50% of the Democratic primary electorate in South Carolina is Black. In Nevada, Latinos are a substantial and increasingly powerful voting bloc. So, naturally, the competition between the two states assumed fraught racial overtones, which is unfortunate but not surprising, given Democrats’ penchant for picking at sore spots and turning on each other at the slightest provocation.
It was also rather pointless. The order of the presidential calendar is consequential, but far from determinative.
Presidential campaigns have changed drastically in the 50 years since a little-known Jimmy Carter quietly burrowed into Iowa, spent months bunking in folks’ extra bedrooms, then burst to national fame by outperforming his more prominent rivals. Today, the race is a 24/7 affair, followed by voters in all 50 states.
Obviously, the voting has to begin somewhere and the competition between states is well and good. But the trash-talking and, especially, antagonism over race and ethnicity is gratuitous and needlessly divisive. Candidates will show they have the stuff to win the nomination, or not, by building their best case and pitching it to voters.
No matter if it’s a Black church in Las Vegas or a Latino neighborhood in North Charleston. Any location will do.
Nylah Moore has been a standout flag football and girls’ basketball player at Eagle Rock High. Now comes the arrival of her freshman sister, Cinzia, which means fans in the bleachers might want to start designing and creating signs to wave each time one or the other scores a touchdown or makes a basket. It will be great exercise for the arms considering how many times the two figure to come through this season.
Nylah, who is 5-foot-11, is Eagle Rock’s versatile quarterback and scoring guard. She helped Eagle Rock to a 20-2 record last season, passing for 51 touchdowns as a junior. The basketball team went 10-0 in the Northern League. She averaged 15 points.
With the Moore sisters, Eagle Rock deserves the favorite’s role to win the City Section Open Division flag football title and compete with Birmingham and Westchester for an Open Division girls’ basketball title. Cinzia, who is 5-9, also excels in both sports.
Their mother, Christine Moore, was principal of the year at Luther Burbank Middle School in 2023 for Region 16. Coaches remember her bringing a young Nylah to sporting events years ago. Her biggest challenge will be finding time to watch her two daughters perform in two sports in her new job serving as region director for the Eagle Rock/Highland Park Network.
Official Nelson Bae explains the new rule this season in flag football that allows the losing team to get the ball after a score on the 20-yard line with one play to get a first down at the 40 to keep the ball. pic.twitter.com/EZ8K8p8JL4
Eagle Rock’s rise in flag football is no surprise. The school has been able to attract multisport athletes with speed and versatility. Basketball is where this season a surprise could happen. Coach Julie Wilkins has her biggest team ever after the arrival of 5-10 Marlborough transfer Amelie Cash. She also has a 6-1 player. Since Wilkins coaches both flag football and girls’ basketball, she’s always looking for “volunteers” to play both sports (wink, wink).
That’s how the successful teams in flag football have emerged — getting players from softball, soccer, track and field, and volleyball to join the sport. And it’s working.
Monroe had 20 players come out last season. This year, at least 36 have been practicing. Coach Jose Ruiz always asks Leo Hernandez, the track and field and cross country coach, for recommendations on his athletes as potential flag football players. Now that middle schools feeding Monroe have flag football programs, the numbers are expected to continue to rise.
NAME a better spot to camp than right by the beach?
Well, at an award-winning holiday park, you can now pitch up your tent just a few metres from the sand, this summer.
Aber Bay Holiday Park has launched camping pitches right by the beachCredit: � 2026 REBECCA DOUGLAS, all rights reserved.Each pitch costs £30 per nightCredit: Not known, clear with picture desk
Aber Bay Holiday Park near Aberystwyth in Wales will be launching beachside pitches from August 1, costing just £30 per night – which works out at £7.50 per person, per night.
You’d be right by Clarach Bay Beach, which is a sheltered, sand and shingle cove that stretches a mile long.
Sign up for the Travel newsletter
Thank you!
The beach is a great spot for kids with rock pools to explore and there is also a walking trail that heads over the cliffs.
One recent visitor said: “The beach is located right at the front of the park, it’s a sandy/stone beach with a stream running through the middle ideal for the younger children to explore/build dams etc! Beach is beautiful and always very clean.”
Another person added: “The bay itself has a beautiful gorgeous beach and facilities for children, the dogs loved it!”
A third person commented: “A lovely little beach front which is safe for children. The beach front also has a nice cafe which serves a good breakfast and tasty fish and chips.”
Guests also get to use all the facilities at the holiday park including an indoor heated pool, a games room, outdoor play area, restaurant, bar, shop and entertainment.
The park also recently opened a rooftop terrace which overlooks the coastline.
Guests get access to all the facilities in the park too including a heated swimming poolCredit: Toby Gray
The holiday park was named the best in Wales last year by the Welsh Hospitality Awards, making it one of the best holiday parks in the UK.
If you didn’t fancy camping, you could stay in one of the park’s caravans, lodges or glamping pods with their own hot tubs, instead.
A four-night break in September costs as little as £215 in a caravan sleeping up to eight people – that’s £6.72 per person, per night.
One recent visitor said: “Absolutely lovely location,right on the beach and so peaceful, loved waking up to the noise of the sea and will definitely be coming back for another stay.”
If you are over the age of, say, 14, you might not be familiar with daughter-father duo Salish and Jordan Matter. But if you are a parent of a Gen Alpha kid, it can feel like you hear about nothing but Salish and Jordan Matter. Their YouTube videos — a high-octane mix of zany challenges, games and hijinks — are admittedly hard to resist, which may be why they rake in millions of views as soon as they blast into the social media universe.
In Sunday Funday, L.A. people give us a play-by-play of their ideal Sunday around town. Find ideas and inspiration on where to go, what to eat and how to enjoy life on the weekends.
Sixteen-year-old Salish was in elementary school when she started appearing in her father’s YouTube videos and the channel is like a time capsule of her childhood — or, well, the most public, heavily produced version of it. There’s the day Salish turned her house into a waterpark (73 million views) or the night she had a secret sleepover in a mall (31 million views) or the time she survived 100 babysitters in 24 hours (61 million views). “A blessing and a curse for me is that we’ve documented it all,” says Jordan, whose background is in photography. “I have these beautiful videos of her when she was 10. I was just watching them 30 minutes ago and was like, oh wow, it feels like yesterday.”
Now their creator journey is taking a new turn. Salish and Jordan recently signed a deal with Netflix to develop, produce and star in original projects — it’s the largest such creator partnership for the streaming giant. Their show, “Salish & Jordan Matter,” reached Netflix’s Top 10 this month. Beyond the screen, the duo co-founded the popular teen skincare brand Sincerely Yours. (The launch of one glossy lip balm brought 2,000 fans to the Santa Monica Pier earlier this summer.)
It’s been a wild ride for the pair, but despite their snowballing fame, they swear they’re like any other dad and daughter who bicker, joke around and simply enjoy each other’s company.
“I think we’re pretty chill, right?” Jordan says.
“Yeah, we’re pretty chill,” Salish agrees.
Here they share what they’d do together on a Sunday Funday around their South Bay home, noting that a perfect day would involve the whole family, including mom Lauren Matter and Salish’s 20-year-old brother, Hudson Matter.
This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
10 a.m.: Wake up and debate the day’s options
Jordan: Salish, what time would you actually wake up?
Salish: Probably like 10.
Jordan: OK, so we’re sleeping in until 10. Then why don’t we go get breakfast? We’ll go to Ocean Diner in Hermosa Beach. We’ll both get huevos rancheros and fresh orange juice. And then I would love to go get coffee at Boy and the Bear in Redondo Beach.
Jordan: Well, if we go to Two Guns, Salish would get the avocado toast.
Salish: No, the chai! It’s so good!
Jordan: OK, well, if Salish has an opinion, that’s what we’re doing. But later today, one thing I would love is a bike ride on the beach. Are you still down?
Salish: [High-pitched voice] Yeah.
Jordan: Did you hear that voice?! That tone is like, “Yeah, but not for much longer.”
Salish: [Laughs] No, I like doing bike rides with you! It’s just that I don’t know how much of a “biker” I am.
Jordan: You’re not one.
Salish: I’m not.
Jordan: But you have an electric bike! You just have to go like [makes e-bike revving motion] vvrrrrrruurr.
11:15 a.m.: Shopping and soup dumplings
Jordan: The next thing we’re going to do is …
Salish: Go to the mall! I like picking out new outfits for him because every day he just wears a black T-shirt.
Jordan: OK, and if we’re going to go to Del Amo mall, we’ll have lunch at …
Jordan: Which means we’ll have to put our name on the waiting list.
Salish: It’s like a two-hour wait.
Jordan: So we’ll put our name down right after breakfast. And then we’ll shop for clothes before our reservation.
Salish: I’ll go to Aritzia and probably Garage. And then you’ll go to Express and Levi’s. I go to PacSun a lot too but normally I don’t find anything there. I always wear sweats and hoodies — literally just sweats and hoodies.
Jordan: Also tank tops. Salish doesn’t like to repeat outfits on videos, so she does need at least one new outfit a week.
And I’ll just follow her around. I’ll be like, ‘Oh, that looks good.’ And she’ll be like, ‘No, it doesn’t.’ And I’ll be like, ‘No, it looks really good.’ And she’ll be like, ‘You’re just saying that.’ And then she’ll ask, ‘Which color?’ I’ll say the blue, and then she’ll get the pink. And I’m like, ‘I’m glad I could be helpful.’ So that’s how shopping with Salish goes. Then finally, there’s Din Tai Fung.
3 p.m.: An afternoon by the ocean
Jordan: Then we would leave the mall because I’m not gonna be there all day. We’re gonna go paddleboarding in Long Beach, in the Naples Canals area. We love anything with water, right? We love vacationing in Lake Tahoe, swimming and boating.
Then we would probably go for a bike ride along the Strand. I would vote for pulling over and having dinner. There’s a really good taco place right near the Hermosa Beach Pier called Palmilla Cocina Y Tequila.
Salish: [Winces slightly] I’m not gonna lie. I don’t really like tacos.
Jordan: Salish is an absolutely impossible eater. All she eats is Chipotle. She’s a vegetarian but she’s a picky vegetarian, so that combo makes it almost impossible for her to find food anywhere. But she’d get the black beans and rice and tortillas and cheese and mix it all together.
Salish: Yeah.
Jordan: See, I basically know everything about you.
Salish: And you would get the chicken!
Jordan: Yes.
Salish: I knew it. But you have to make sure it’s white meat.
Jordan: White meat chicken, mole, enchiladas — yum!
8 p.m.: Family hang time
Jordan: Now if there’s a good horror or suspense movie out, I might convince Salish to go. But that would be a tough sell. So maybe we’ll go back home. We just got a pool, so that’s exciting. And late nights in the pool has become a thing. We might play ping pong or a board game.
Salish: Then my brother and I would probably just chill and talk in one of our rooms. He doesn’t live here so we try to talk as much as we can while he’s home.
Jordan: Our family isn’t looking for big things to have fun — just time together. We just talk and hang out. With Salish, we talk about work but I’m also super interested in what her everyday life is like. You know, from the time she was young, I feel like I treated her like an adult in a way and we’ve always had real conversations. That’s made it easier as she’s grown up. It feels comfortable having these types of conversations.
Salish: Also, I’m a great kid, so like …
Jordan: Of course, of course. You are such a great kid. But you were a spitfire when you were little, I’ll say!
Salish: [Laughs]
Jordan: It’s a joy. It’s a joy to be with her every day.
George and Amal Clooney evacuated their 425-acre Provence wine estate in southeastern France amid the wildfires spreading across Europe.
The “Jay Kelly” star revealed the news in a letter to Didier Bremond, the mayor of the town of Brignoles, east of Marseille.
“Dear Didier, [a]t this point we have no idea whether our beautiful home makes it through this terrible moment,” the letter read.
“As we evacuate Brignoles we want to emphasise 2 things, first we hope you and the people of our city are safe and second that Amal and [I] are committed to making sure that whatever happens to our village, we are part of this community and we’ll be part of making it whole.
“We love Brignoles and our friends who live there.”
The fire near Brignoles sparked on Wednesday and burned about 250 acres. The Brignoles fire was significantly smaller than the massive wildfire that recently ravaged southwestern France near Bordeaux, where 84,000 evacuees were allowed to return home Thursday as firefighters gained control over flames that had burned an area four times the size of Paris.
In December, the French government announced that the Clooneys, including their 9-year-old twins, Ella and Alexander, were awarded citizenship.
The Clooneys bought property in France — a farm, he recently told Esquire — in August 2021 for $8.3 million, when their twins were 4. He said it was a “much better life” there for the children.
“Yeah, we’re very lucky. … A good portion of my life growing up was on a farm, and as a kid I hated the whole idea of it. But now, for them, it’s like — they’re not on their iPads, you know?” he said in the interview, published in the magazine’s October/November issue.
“I was worried about raising our kids in L.A., in the culture of Hollywood. I felt like they were never going to get a fair shake at life. France — they kind of don’t give a s— about fame. I don’t want them to be walking around worried about paparazzi. I don’t want them being compared to somebody else’s famous kids.”
George Clooney and Amal Alamuddin, a human-rights lawyer, tied the knot in September 2014 in Venice, Italy.
The Associated Press and former Times staff writer Christie D’Zurilla contributed to this report.
Jared Leto faces allegations of criminal sexual conduct by several women who allege the sexual incidents with the musician and Oscar-winning actor occurred when he was in his 30s and 40s and they were teenagers.
In a BBC documentary titled “Jared Leto: Hollywood’s Dark Secret,” multiple women spoke about their experiences with the “House of Gucci” star and Thirty Seconds to Mars frontman, detailing allegations of inappropriate text messages, sexual assault and statutory rape from 2002 to 2016. Among the allegations, one woman said she was 17 years old when Leto sexually assaulted her in a motel bathroom. Another woman alleges Leto continued to sexually pursue her in Los Angeles despite knowing she was 17 years old, younger than the age of consent in California.
Leto, in a statement shared with The Times on Wednesday, denied the allegations raised by the BBC documentary: “I have never sexually assaulted anyone in my entire life,” he said. “These claims are absolutely and categorically false.”
Journalist and documentarian Jessica Sartenaer said in the segment published Wednesday that the BBC began its investigation into allegations against Leto after noting an Instagram story from a prominent DJ based in Los Angeles. In a since-expired Instagram story, DJ Allie Teilz, resurfaced a 2012 Facebook post in which she accused Leto of trying to “force himself” onto her backstage at a concert. Teilz captioned her repost: “Jared Leto was a creep then..still a creep now, going on 15+ years of being Hollywood’s most persistent predator,” according to the BBC documentary.
Numerous social media users reportedly responded to Teilz’s posts with their own claims about Leto’s alleged predatory behavior, many noting they were subject to Leto’s misconduct when they were teens. A woman identified as “Etta” told the BBC she was 14 when Leto approached her outside of a modeling agency and invited her to an Oscars party. Etta provided email correspondences to the outlet and said the “Morbius” actor encouraged her to stay in contact via text after the invite. Text messages turned into phone calls and conversations about her modeling career quickly turned sexual, according to the documentary. Leto allegedly asked Etta about her virginity, her kinks and sexual capabilities.
Etta said in the documentary that Leto’s legal team allegedly contacted her and urged her to sign a nondisclosure agreement about her relationship with the actor, though she never did.
The documentary portrays Leto as a celebrity who leveraged his fame to connect with young fans and control them. The woman who alleged she was sexually assaulted by Leto at age 17 in a motel bathroom told the BBC she met Leto in 2002 at a mall in Las Vegas. Leto would have been in his early 30s at the time. He invited her to meet him at a nearby motel. She waited in the room while he stepped into the shower, but he eventually called her over and began kissing her, according to the BBC. The woman, identified as “Isabelle,” accused Leto of forcing her hand to his genitals and using her hand to masturbate. Isabelle pulled away and moved to leave the room, but Leto allegedly looked outside the motel room for any potential bystanders before letting her out, she recalled to the BBC.
The BBC also published allegations by “Clara,” the woman who said Leto knowingly had sex with her when she was 17 — he was 34 at the time — at his house in California. Clara said she connected with Leto after his associate requested her phone number. She and her friend were invited to spend time with the band at the Chateau Marmont in Hollywood, where the age of consent of California became a topic of conversation. Leto, who allegedly shrugged off the conversation, invited Clara and her friend back to his home and told the friend to wait in another room while he had sex with Clara. Clara visited Leto’s home a total of three or four times, according to the BBC. She also alleged that Leto often requested that she call him “daddy” and that she pretend to be a little girl.
Leto in 2013 allegedly invited another woman, named Alex, to his band’s concert at London’s O2 and to an after-party. She was 19 at the time but told Leto she was younger out of a need to protect herself, the BBC reported. Leto allegedly replied: “Age is just a number, and anyway, we’re in Europe.” Alex alleges Leto threatened to sexually assault her in a hotel room later that evening.
The BBC also spoke to men who who worked closely with Leto’s band, Thirty Seconds to Mars. One man said Leto was often texting girls to invite them to spend time with the band. Leto also allegedly asserted control by ignoring the girls he invited and speaking to them rudely. The man also recalled that Leto took one fan, who was dropped off by her parents, “off to the bedroom.” Afterward, she called her parents to pick her up.
Leto has long faced quiet scrutiny for his alleged behavior with women and girls. In 2005 the New York Post published a story accusing the actor of “aggressively pursuing many” teen models. Last year Air Mail published accusations against Leto of impropriety by nine women, though he denied those claims at the time.
Still, the actor-musician has moved on from those allegations seemingly unscathed. Leto, who won his Oscar in 2014 for “Dallas Buyers Club,” most recently appeared in “Masters of the Universe” and is set to tour with his band next year.
Resources for survivors of sexual assault
If you or someone you know is the victim of sexual violence, you can find support using RAINN’s National Sexual Assault Hotline. Call (800) 656-HOPE or visit online.rainn.org to speak with a trained support specialist.
The K-pop megastars BTS will not submit music for next year’s Grammys. The news comes despite — or perhaps because of — a new category specifically designed to honor Asian pop.
The seven members of BTS — RM, Suga, Jin, J-Hope, Jungkook, V and Jimin — each shared the same message across their social media Wednesday, announcing the news and saying, “We hope our music can be heard and loved for what it is, rather than being divided by region or language. We thank Army and everyone who has always stood by us.”
The Grammys’ new Best Asian Pop Music Performance category “recognizes artistic excellence in Asian pop music performances originating from or widely recognized within Asian markets, including but not limited to K-pop, J-pop and C-pop, with meaningful use of one or more Asian languages. Awards are presented to the performing artist(s).”
BTS’ comeback album “Arirang,” its first after the band members’ mandatory South Korean military service, was widely expected to compete for the award. The new category came as part of a bevy of added or tweaked awards and nominating rules that will debut at next year’s ceremony on Feb. 7.
BTS has a mercurial relationship with the Grammys, having been nominated five times in various categories since becoming the first K-pop group nominated in 2019, and performing for the live telecast. They have never won.
The band joins the Weeknd and Drake as high-profile artists who, at least for some time, declined to submit their music to the Recording Academy in protest of its policies or nominating processes.
COLUMBIA, S.C. — The Washington powerbroker Sen. Lindsey Graham returned home to South Carolina for the last time Wednesday for his funeral and burial.
After Graham was eulogized Tuesday in the nation’s capital as an indefatigable dealmaker by the president, vice president and others, mourners in Columbia prepared to remember him Wednesday as the son of pool hall owners who never forgot his roots.
Graham seemed to know every small-town mayor and police chief and the location of every Chick-fil-A across South Carolina. His PAC made sure Republicans had money to run in legislative and local elections across the state.
Graham died suddenly on July 11 at his home in Washington, likely of an aortic tear, according to preliminary findings. He had just returned from a whirlwind trip to a NATO summit in Turkey, where he celebrated his 71st birthday, and a visit to Ukraine as he negotiated punishing sanctions against Russia. Senators voted late Tuesday to advance the package as a final gesture for their colleague.
Wednesday’s funeral was at First Baptist, the giant downtown church where his predecessor Republican Sen. Strom Thurmond was honored 23 years ago.
Graham’s body was first brought to the South Carolina Statehouse, where he started his political career in 1993, for a law enforcement ceremony and a flyover by military jets. A horse-drawn caisson then carried his casket to the church, where his family followed members of his family carrying it inside.
Graham’s burial Wednesday near his home in Pickens County was planned as a private ceremony.
On Tuesday, Graham’s flag-draped casket was at the U.S. Capitol, where the Republican spent more than 30 years talking and laughing and badgering his colleagues into action.
President Trump then joined foreign leaders at the Washington National Cathedral, a testament to Graham’s stature on the global stage.
Trump called Graham “a giant of the United States Senate, a true American original who left us much too soon.”
Graham’s death has created opportunities for change in South Carolina. Graham had already won the Republican nomination as he ran for a fifth term. Gov. Henry McMaster named his younger sister Darline to hold his seat until January. Darline Graham then surprised many by deciding to run for the full six-year term herself.
State law has Republicans holding a special primary in two weeks to decide the new nominee. Eight others are competing, including former Gov. Mark Sanford and U.S. Reps. Ralph Norman and Russell Fry.
Kinnard and Collins write for the Associated Press.
TOURISTS are set to be given the chance to see Stonehenge up close and free of charge for the first time in over a century.
A select number of visitors will win the opportunity to get VIP access to the iconic UK tourist attraction.
Some people are set to be given rare access to one of the UK’s most iconic sightsCredit: AlamyMost people only ever see Stonehenge from behind a barrierCredit: Alamy
A select few visitors to Stonehenge will be able to experience a once-in-a-lifetime private viewing of the epic spectacle.
The prehistoric site in Wiltshire sees around 1.4 million tourists every year – but the stones are usually viewed from afar and behind a barrier.
Sign up for the Travel newsletter
Thank you!
Now, English Heritage has confirmed that a lucky number of people will be able to win special access every day in August for nothing.
Since a fee to see Stonehenge was introduced back in 1901, free entry to the inner circle of stones is usually reserved for VIPs like high profile celebrities or political figures.
As part of the special competition, one booking will be selected at random every day to be given private access free of charge.
The chosen groups will have the privilege of seeing the stones’ “delicate carvings” and coatings of rare algae and fungi coating known as “lichen”.
Georgia Butters, English Heritage’s head of operations for Stonehenge, said: “Stonehenge is one of the world’s most recognisable landmarks and a bucket-list destination for millions of people across the globe – but very few people have ever experienced the monument in complete peace and quiet.
“This is genuinely a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to stand within the ancient stones with no one else around, soaking up the atmosphere and spirituality of this remarkable place,” she added.
“There’s a certain stillness and tranquility about that space. It’s sort of mind-blowing and puts you right back in touch with our ancestors.”
To be in with a chance of nabbing the daily tour, visitors must make their booking on the official English Heritage website at least 72 hours in advance, so that winners can be contacted 24 hours before the visit.
The winning booking groups will be given the private half an hour tour at 9am, before any other tourists arrive.
They will then be treated to a breakfast roll and a hot drink, before being able to go off and enjoy the attraction in their own time.
She even told Junior about her hopesCredit: ITVThe former couple have never been in the same room since their divorce – but that could soon changeCredit: Getty
Princess said to her: “For my official launch, I will probably just invite close family and friends.”
Katie went quiet as she replied: “Yeah… I mean, I still haven’t met up with your dad face-to-face yet.
“It is weird, isn’t it?”
Princess agreed before adding: “But everything happens for a reason1”
Katie then appeared to take a swipe at Peter and their split as she added: “Does it?
“I think some things could have been avoided but it is what it is and you just move on.”
Princess nevously smiled after her mum’s comments before the conversation drew to a quick close.
Later on, Princess told brother Junior of her latest plan.
Before their chat, Princess told the camera: “It is so important for me that for my official launch, I have as many friends and family there as possible.”
She then said to Junior and his girlfriend: “Mum and Dad are in a truce now so I am just gonna invite Mum and Dad and whoever wants to come, comes.
“It might be quite awkward though.”
Junior appeared unconvinced by the plan as he replied: “Yeah, their first time in a room?
“When I used to perform, I never invited mum and dad to one show so it could be good and they’ve got a truce.
“And it is about you and supporting you so yeah, I love that.”
