California Atty. Gen. Rob Bonta and other Democratic attorneys general are suing the Trump administration over imposing what they contend are “unlawful” conditions on federal grants intended to help states prepare and respond to disasters.
The lawsuit, filed in federal court in Rhode Island on Thursday, argues that the Department of Homeland Security and Federal Emergency Management Agency have been using their control over billions of dollars in federal grants to operate what the attorneys general see as an aggressive “campaign of coercion” to adopt the Trump administration’s preferred voting and immigration policies, according to the complaint.
“Congress never gave DHS or FEMA authority to rewrite state election law, require cooperation with federal immigration agents, or terminate federal funding streams at any time and for any reason,” the lawsuit stated. The legal action was filed by a coalition of 24 attorneys general and Kentucky Gov. Andy Beshear and Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro, both Democrats.
A spokesperson for the White House did not respond to a request for comment.
At the crux of their legal complaint are two federal programs: the Homeland Security Grant Program, which was established by Congress as a response to the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, and the Emergency Management Performance Grant Program, which helps states pay for emergency management staff who plan for and respond to natural disasters and mass casualty events, as well as software programs used by state emergency operations centers.
For the homeland security grant, the Trump administration has attached “radical” new terms based on Trump’s preferred policies, the states contend.
These terms include verifying the citizenship of all individuals in state voter databases, transitioning their voting systems to equipment that reads hand-marked paper ballots and conducting post-election audits “according to nonexistent guidelines to be set by the Secretary of Homeland Security,” according to the complaint.
And the Department of Homeland Security and FEMA have threatened to make states “promise to devote their scarce resources to the federal government’s own task of civil immigration enforcement” in order to receive both the homeland security and the emergency management grants, according to the complaint.
At a news conference Thursday, Bonta laid out the stakes.
“These grants help communities prepare for emergencies before disaster strikes,” he said. “They support emergency management personnel, strengthen disaster response capabilities, improve coordination among first responders, and help protect our residents when they need government the most.”
The Trump administration restrictions would mean “our communities would have fewer resources to prepare for wildfires, earthquakes, floods, terrorist threats, and other emergencies,” Bonta stated.
“Time after time, courts have told Trump’s corrupt administration that it can’t coerce California into doing its bidding by threatening to withhold public safety funding,” Gov. Gavin Newsom said in a statement. “Yet, they’re coming back for more. This time they’re demanding states rewrite their own election laws to access money that pays for public safety readiness and response, and that Congress already approved. We simply won’t allow it.”
The Senate was also expected to vote on War Powers resolution, in largely symbolic move attempting to reign in Trump.
Four Republicans in the United States House of Representatives have again joined Democrats in voting to constrain President Donald Trump’s power to wage war against Iran.
The resolution passed on Thursday, nearly a week after three US military personnel were killed by an Iranian attack on a base in Jordan, with a 214-208 vote. Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer has said Democrats will also force a War Powers vote in the Senate on Thursday.
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Both the House and Senate had previously passed a resolution in June that called on Trump to seek congressional approval before launching further attacks. However, because the resolution was passed as a so-called “concurrent resolution”, it was not sent to Trump’s desk.
Even if the measure had been passed as a joint resolution, requiring it to be sent to Trump for approval, the president could veto it. Overriding such a veto requires a two-thirds vote in both chambers.
Democrats have said the latest resolution sends an important message that lawmakers oppose Trump’s approach to the war, which has re-escalated after a ceasefire broke down in early July.
Both the US and Iran have traded 12 days of consecutive attacks, with some analysts warning an even greater US escalation may be on the horizon, as Trump has repeatedly threatened attacks on civilian infrastructure and a possible ground invasion.
“This is a vote that requires us to find the strength to do what is right for the American people, and to send the clearest, even stronger message to this president of the United States that the United States Congress, the House of Representatives, is reasserting our authority over war,” Representative Pramila Jayapal said from the House floor on Wednesday.
“This war must end,” she said.
Under the US Constitution, only Congress can declare war, something it has not done since World War II, although presidents can commit forces in instances of pressing self-defence.
Trump has argued that the culmination of Iran’s actions since 1979 represents such an imminent threat, a claim many constitutional law experts have rejected.
Under the 1973 War Powers Act, presidents must receive congressional approval within 60 days of committing troops. While the US-Israel war with Iran began on February 28, the Trump administration claimed that hostilities had “terminated” following a temporary pause in fighting reached in April.
War powers experts and some members of Congress have said the attempted workaround flouts the law. The administration again notified Congress that fighting had resumed before the most recent round of attacks.
In a statement on Thursday, David Janovsky, acting director of The Constitution Project at the Project On Government Oversight (POGO), said the House vote “reaffirmed what people across the country have been saying all along: We want no part in an illegal war”.
“Contrary to the administration’s claims, the latest hostilities are not a new war. We’re now months past the constitutional deadline for the administration to end this unauthorised war,” he said.
He also noted that the House on Tuesday approved a sprawling $1.15 trillion defence bill that includes tens of billions more in funding for the war. The Senate has not yet voted on the package.
“If Congress is serious about bringing an end to this prolonged conflict, it must also refuse the administration’s request to fund it,” he said.
Inflation has fallen both in the UK – down to 2.6% in the year to June helped by slowing diesel and petrol prices – and in the US to 3.5%.
But questions remain whether the slow down will prove short-lived due to the renewed conflict in the Middle East.
New data released on Thursday showed that UK petrol prices have risen by 5p a litre since the beginning of July, hitting reaching almost £1.56.
Diesel is at £1.72 a litre, on average, according to the RAC.
Average gasoline prices in the US have surpassed $4 a gallon once more, up from $3.92 a month ago, according to motorist advocacy group AAA.
“More expensive fuel and energy can ripple through the wider economy, increasing costs for businesses and ultimately feeding through into the price of food and other goods,” said Jonathan Raymond, investment manager at Quilter Cheviot.
“This creates another headache for central banks as they continue their battle against inflation.
“If energy prices remain elevated, policymakers may come under pressure to keep interest rates higher for longer or even raise them. This would come as a blow to mortgage holders and borrowers already feeling the strain.”
The Bank of England, which sets UK interest rates, has held them at 3.75% in its last four meetings.
Paul Dales, chief UK economist at Capital Economics, said he believed the Bank will “almost certainly” hold them again. But he said analysts still expected that interest rates could be cut next year if energy price rises ease.
Kevin Warsh, the newly-appointed chair of the US Federal Reserve, last week told Congress that the central bank had “no tolerance to persistently elevated inflation”.
US President Donald Trump had pushed Warsh’s predecessor, Jerome Powell, to cut interest rates.
Trump has made it clear he expects Warsh to fulfil his demand for reductions in borrowing costs for Americans.
But the Fed held US interest rates between 3.5% and 3.75% at Warsh’s first meeting last month. He also told Congress that he was committed to “restoring price stability” in the wake of the Middle East conflict impacting prices.
When a pitcher purposely throws high and inside, the batter has four choices.
He can stare down the pitcher. He can charge the mound. He can get revenge by walloping the next pitch for a hit.
Or he can ignore the intimidation tactic and continue as if nothing happened.
The last choice is the wimp’s way out, since the batter will lose his teammates’ respect, while opposing pitchers will consider him a pushover and fire more brushback pitches at him.
Ever since the Dodgers visited the White House last spring to commemorate their 2024 World Series win, President Trump has launched a barrage of metaphorical fastballs trying to hurt Los Angeles — in the courts, in speeches and on social media, but especially via his deportation deluge that’s starting to simmer again.
So how have the Boys in Blue responded in defense of the metropolis they wear on their jerseys and the community that has sustained them for nearly 70 years, making Dem Bums one of the most valuable franchises in baseball?
They’re scheduled to visit the White House today so Trump can use them as a photo op and bask in their 2025 championship.
That’s like staying in the dugout during a bench-clearing brawl after a pitcher plonks a batter, then offering the offender a handshake the next inning.
Winning back-to-back titles and blazing through this season has brought Angelenos much-needed happiness during a terrible stretch for the city — but winning is what the Dodgers are supposed to do. They’re also supposed to do more.
This is the team of pioneers like Jackie Robinson and Sandy Koufax, Glenn Burke and Fernando Valenzuela. The squad whose mythology insists it’s a franchise apart from the rest of professional sports because the Dodger Way is kinder, braver and more willing to take moral risks that transcend baseball and make society better.
And yet manager Dave Roberts told Times sports columnist Bill Shaikin in February that he would gladly accept another White House invitation “to continue to try to do what tradition says and not try to make political statements, because I am not a politician.”
Well, thank God the Dodgers broke baseball’s longstanding tradition of segregation long before Roberts, who is Black and Japanese American, was born!
Manager Dave Roberts of the Los Angeles Dodgers looks on from the dugout during a 2025 game against the San Diego Padres at Petco Park in San Diego, California.
(Sean M. Haffey/Getty Images)
Most of the Blue Crew fans I know — who are mostly Trump haters, by the way — roll their eyes every time a wokoso member of Dodger Nation complains about the team’s White House visits or the failure of players, coaches and executives to speak out more forcefully against Trump’s anti-immigrant campaign. Politics have no place in baseball, my friends and family members will say.
But standing up for L.A. by snubbing Trump or calling out his war against us isn’t political at all.
Angelenos need a champion on the Dodgers to say what needs to be said: The City of Angels is wonderful, and Trump is wrong to target it. If you can’t stand up for the simple belief that we don’t deserve to be Trump’s personal piñata, then you have no place playing for the Dodgers.
Only two players have announced they’re not going to the White House: superstar Mookie Betts and fan favorite Kiké Hernández. The latter, a native of Puerto Rico, endeared himself to the Dodger faithful last year during the height of the immigration raids with an Instagram post that read, “I cannot tolerate watching our community continue to be violated, attacked, abused and separated. ALL people deserve to be treated with respect, dignity and their human rights.”
This time around, Hernández told the Times that he’s not going so he can focus on a rehabilitation stint in the minors. When pressed by reporter Maddie Lee, he said, “I’d rather take a day off than do team activities.”
Nice way to rhetorically strike out, Kiké.
Betts, meanwhile, said he wants to spend time with his newborn child — as legitimate a reason as any. But then he sat down for a short interview with Fox News.
“I don’t know why the world sees athletes as political figures or these people that can make change,” Betts said. The future Hall of Famer, who like Roberts owes a lot to Robinson for paving the way for him and other Black players, hemmed and hawed as if he didn’t quite believe what he was saying.
Dodgers past and present haven’t been averse to political stands — they just usually happen to be of the conservative variety.
After his retirement, Robinson campaigned for Richard Nixon’s unsuccessful 1960 presidential bid but left the GOP eight years later, accusing Nixon of “prostituting himself to the bigots in the South” to win the presidency.
Other Dodger legends, from former owner Peter O’Malley to Steve Garvey to Tommy Lasorda, were proud, vocal Republicans as well. Reliever Blake Treinen pitched in a game with “Charlie Kirk” written on his hat after the assassination of the far-right commentator — you know, the guy who lambasted L.A.’s response to Trump’s immigration hammer as “open rebellion to American sovereignty and authority … in a corrupt blue city.”
Treinen — who skipped the Dodgers’ 2021 White House visit when Joe Biden occupied the Oval Office — was at it again this year when he and teammate Alex Call declined to wear Pride Night-themed caps, choosing instead to play with the standard-issue one. They followed the example of Dodgers titan Clayton Kershaw, who wore a Pride cap last year but adorned it with a verse from the Book of Genesis commandeered by MAGA Christians to accuse LGBT+ people of appropriating rainbow colors to celebrate their supposedly wicked ways.
Dodgers management didn’t browbeat Treinen and Call, and that’s fine — ballplayers should be entitled to share their personal thoughts, however noxious. I even understand why the team might want to ham it up with Trump this week — that’s what multimillionaires seem to want to do these days, after all.
Federal agents stage outside Gate E of Dodger Stadium on June 19, 2025.
(Myung J. Chun / Los Angeles Times)
What offends me most is that Dodgers owner Mark Walter knows what Trump is doing to L.A. is wrong, even if he’ll never publicly say anything.
Last June, the team announced that it had prevented Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents from entering the Dodger Stadium parking lot — the feds denied that this happened. The Dodgers also announced they would donate $1.1 million to nonprofits to assist people affected by the immigration raids — a response to community disgust about video of federal agents in front of a Dodger Stadium gate with people who had been detained at a nearby Home Depot.
Soon after, the Dodgers were hit with a federal civil rights complaint, filed by a legal group co-founded by Stephen Miller, accusing them of discrimination because of their diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives. This year, Walter’s investment firm rid itself of all shares in GEO Group, which runs immigrant detention centers on behalf of the federal government.
Yet now, the Dodgers are going to the White House.
Enjoy the trip, fellas. Hey, maybe one of you will shake Trump’s hand and tell him that multicultural, immigrant, Dodgers-blue Los Angeles is all right.
Hey, maybe the Angels will win the pennant.
Toltek/iStock via Getty Images
U.S. wheat futures closed above $7 per bushel Wednesday for the first time since late 2023, driven by surging tensions in the Black Sea and hot weather in crop-growing areas around the world, including the U.S. Plains and Western Europe.
Groundbreaking new Christopher Nolan film The Odyssey stars a familiar soap legend.
EastEnders star Himesh Patel stars in the epic, which has already broken records with its cinematic release.
Former soap legend Himesh is a face familiar to many after he played Tamwar Masood, the slightly geeky son of the Masood family, on EastEnders between 2007 and 2016.
As the first Muslim family to live in Albert Square since the Karims in the late 80s, and the first Asian family since the Ferreiras in 2003, the Masoods brought a fresh perspective to the long-running BBC soap, and they quickly rose in popularity.
During his time in Walford, Tamwar was seen helping his family with their business and putting his Oxbridge dreams on hold. Eventually, he left Walford to travel the world with Nancy Carter (Maddy Hill), whom he later married, but the couple ultimately divorced.
In 2016, after nearly a decade, Himesh decided to leave his role on EastEnders to pursue new opportunities in his acting career. It seems to have been a very wise decision, as he is now a movie star with his latest role in the blockbuster movie The Odyssey.
Sir Christopher Nolan’s new movie, an adaptation of Homer’s Ancient Greek epic, stars Matt Damon as Odysseus, the Greek King of Ithaca, on his perilous 10-year journey home after the Trojan War.
The highly anticipated film, released on Friday, July 17, is the first-ever feature film shot entirely with IMAX cameras.
It has brought in a huge $264.1million (£196m) worldwide in its first weekend, surpassing the $249million (£185million) opening of The Dark Knight Rises (2012), which went on to be Nolan’s highest-grossing film, exceeding $1billion.
In the film, Patel plays Eurylochus, Odysseus’ trusted second-in-command. He’s not only fiercely loyal, but he also calls out Odysseus and serves as his conscience as they try to make their dangerous trek home to Ithaca.
The Odyssey features a star-studded A-list cast alongside Himesh and Matt Damon, including Zendaya, Tom Holland, and Robert Pattinson.
“Everything I’ve done in the last seven to eight years has been beyond my wildest dreams, but this movie was such a singular experience,” Himash told the Radio Times.
“There is only one guy who makes movies like this. I don’t know where my career is going but even if I have the privilege of working with Chris [Nolan] again, it won’t be this story, it won’t be this sort of thing.”
Since his EastEnders exit, Himesh has taken on significant roles in several notable films, including Danny Boyle’s Beatles-inspired film Yesterday (2019) and Christopher Nolan’s time-manipulating film Tenet.
In addition, he played the part of Jennifer Lawrence’s character’s romantic partner in the Netflix disaster film Don’t Look Up.
The Odyssey has already received rave reviews, and taking to Rotten Tomatoes, one viewer dubbed the movie “phenomenal”, while another added: “This is a cinematic masterpiece. Guaranteed Oscars sweep this year!”
A third chimed in: “Film. Of. The. Year. Possibly the decade”, while another added: “A cinematic masterpiece”, while another added: “Got to be one of the best adaptations of all time.”
“The Odyssey is an absolute masterpiece and my favorite movie of the year so far. Christopher Nolan delivers a visually breathtaking epic that had me glued to the screen from beginning to end,” added another.
The Odyssey is available to watch in various cinemas across the UK
Clint Reilly, a Bay Area milkman’s son who rose to manage the campaigns of California’s most influential political figures, has died at age 79.
A savvy political consultant, Reilly spearheaded early winning campaigns for some of the most recognizable names in California politics: former U.S. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, Sen. Barbara Boxer and Sen. Dianne Feinstein.
Brandon Heist, Clint Reilly Organization’s head of business operations, said in a statement to The Times that Reilly died over the weekend in San Francisco. He died surrounded by family, which requested privacy. The San Francisco Examiner newspaper, which Reilly bought in 2020, earlier announced its owner’s death Sunday.
“I will always be grateful for Clint’s friendship and counsel over so many years,” Pelosi said in a statement. “As the manager of my first campaign for Congress in 1987, he brought his unmatched strategic mind to help create and amplify my slogan: A Voice That Will Be Heard.”
In a 1987 article, The Times attributed the success of Pelosi’s congressional bid to money — her campaign spent $1 million, more than her 13 opponents combined — and a sophisticated voter turnout program devised by Reilly. At the time, Pelosi was a 46-year-old mother of five children and a party activist known for raising large sums for Democratic candidates.
Reflecting on Pelosi’s rise last November, Reilly wrote in a San Francisco Examiner op-ed, “The mystery of being a political consultant is that you never know how your winning candidate’s career will turn out.”
Reilly’s legacy went beyond catapulting politicians into office.
He helped transform modern campaigning, said Oakland political consultant Jim Ross, who worked for Reilly throughout the ’90s, including on the election and reelection campaigns of San Francisco Mayor Frank Jordan.
In the ‘80s, Reilly was among the first consultants to merge grassroots organizing with new technology: using voter roll data to segment and target pivotal voters for turnout and persuasion, Ross said.
“It was a way to make sure that he spent resources effectively,” Ross said.
Reilly’s data-driven voter targeting tactics helped Feinstein, then-San Francisco mayor, beat a recall effort in 1983. They later had a public falling-out in 1989 during Feinstein’s failed campaign for governor.
Reilly’s portfolio wasn’t strictly Democratic. In 1993, he coordinated businessman Richard Riordan’s successful campaign for Los Angeles mayor by targeting homeowners’ anxieties about unemployment, crime and other symptoms of urban decay. When elected, Riordan became the first Republican mayor of Los Angeles in 36 years — and no Republican has been elected to that office since.
Reilly also advised the California insurance industry.
In 1988, he led the insurance industry’s losing $60-million initiative campaigns for Propositions 104 and 106. The pair of insurance industry-sponsored measures was designed to compete with Propositions 100 and 103, initiatives backed by trial lawyers and consumer advocates who wanted to reform the industry.
Voters ultimately passed Proposition 103, which promised insurance rate roll-backs and created the elected state insurance commissioner role. But Ross said it was one example of how Reilly would search for creative ways to achieve his client’s goals.
“Clint really pioneered in that election the idea of running competing ballot measures,” Ross said. “The reform measure was extraordinarily popular, it was going to pass, so instead of going at it directly, he ran a competing measure.”
A 1994 profile in The Times, from when Reilly was running Democrat Kathleen Brown’s bid for governor, described him as “one of the most powerful–and feared–political operatives in California.”
“When the opponent knows you have (him) on your side, a chill goes up their spine,” former San Francisco Mayor Frank Jordan told The Times. “He’s certainly better to have inside the tent than outside.”
Born in Oakland in 1947, Reilly was drawn to politics from an early age. He ran successfully for class president during fifth grade, with a campaign slogan his sister devised: “Take a Hint, Vote for Clint.”
Reilly’s relationship with Eugene Boyle, a Bay Area Catholic priest and liberal activist known for supporting the Civil Rights Movement, shaped his political views. He was passionate about supporting “the underdogs,” Ross said.
Reilly spent nine years in seminary before switching to pursue politics. His big break came in 1979, when he ran San Francisco Supervisor Quentin Kopp’s campaign for mayor. Kopp lost, but Reilly’s name stuck.
He soon developed a reputation for charging top dollar for his campaign strategy services and for his heavy campaign spending. In 1982, after Reilly brought Boxer to a decisive primary victory in her first congressional race, she fired him over excessive campaign spending, the Times reported in the 1994 profile.
As a boss, Reilly was “extraordinarily demanding,” Ross said, adding, “I reread pieces of direct mail five and six times now because of him.”
He also had a generous side, Ross said. Reilly spent time teaching young staffers the art of campaigning, a rarity in politics. Even after he left political consulting and shifted his focus to real estate, Reilly continued to help candidates with fundraising and messaging.
Reilly ran unsuccessfully for San Francisco mayor in 1999 and later turned his attention to local media and philanthropy, founding a nonprofit in 2008 to offer scholarships for low-income students to attend private college-preparatory high schools.
Reilly’s passing will not change the structure or current operations of the Clint Reilly Organization, Heist said. The organization’s media division includes the San Francisco Examiner — which Reilly acquired in 2020 alongside its now-defunct affiliate SF Weekly — and the Nob Hill Gazette, which he bought in 2016. The organization also has a hospitality company and real estate division.
“The organization’s commitment to its employees, partners, and the community remain firmly in place,” Heist said.
Condolences poured in from leaders across California on Monday.
Gov. Gavin Newsom and his wife Jennifer Siebel Newsom in a statement honored Reilly as a “San Francisco institution” with a brilliant mind and generous heart.
San Francisco Mayor Daniel Lurie said on social media the city “lost a civic leader who left a lasting mark on our city.”
Reilly is survived by his wife Janet and two daughters, Jill and Ava. Memorial arrangements will be announced later.
NEW YORK — The WNBA has grown at an exponential rate during Cathy Engelbert’s tenure as commissioner, a stewardship that at times has been tumultuous during her nearly seven years at the helm.
Engelbert, the second-longest tenured WNBA president or commissioner, helped negotiate a transformative collective bargaining agreement this past spring that gives the WNBA its first core of million-dollar player salaries.
“There’s not a lot of jobs where you can make over 30-plus millionaires instantly, right?” Engelbert said in a phone interview with the Associated Press heading into this weekend’s WNBA All-Star festivities in Chicago. “It just doesn’t exist in most companies, except if you’re like a stock-option company, and your stock does really well. Most of them are under the age of 30 and there are more to come.”
Even with the financial gains, the WNBA’s growth has come amid a strained partnership between the commissioner and players. Engelbert has been criticized for how she has handled various situations, including for being out of touch or not doing enough to help combat social media vitriol.
Engelbert will meet with the executive committee of the players’ union on Tuesday to discuss the recent uptick in online hatred and threats directed toward players.
New York Liberty All-Star Breanna Stewart, vice president of the WNBA players’ union executive committee, said there is a respect for Engelbert among the players, just not much of a relationship.
Her Liberty teammate, Sabrina Ionescu, said she talks more to NBA commissioner Adam Silver than Engelbert.
While the commissioner continues to try and strengthen her relationship with players, the business of the WNBA has thrived.
Engelbert was involved in talks that led to a record media rights deal worth over $3 billion. The league has had record ratings, attendance and team valuations, and will expand to a record 18 teams by 2030.
“We’ve been in hypergrowth mode now for two or three years and companies, if you look back in time, you are not in hypergrowth mode forever,” Engelbert said. “We’re preparing ourselves now for the next version of ourselves, which probably isn’t as hypergrowth.”
From a business standpoint, though, the league has grown, including navigating the coronavirus pandemic that could have crippled the WNBA.
“Give Cathy credit, as she advocated for the season,” Seattle Storm owner Ginny Gilder said. “We had no idea what was going to happen. People had to make decisions. Cathy pushed the Board of Governors to not only have a shortened season, but to fully pay the players. Don’t bicker. We were going to figure out the finances.”
Expansion fees have gone up five-fold over the past few seasons. Golden State paid $50 million to join the league and Cleveland, Detroit and Philadelphia — all joining the league over the next four years — each paid $250 million.
“Look at the financial side in such a short period of time — Cathy with all the work she did and the staff she hired deserves a tremendous amount of credit for that,” Gilder said. “If you look around the league from 2015 to 2020 to now, you know it is a completely new day.”
Valuations of teams were around $5 million to $10 million a decade ago and now the average is around $460 million, Engelbert said.
“When you’re CEO, when you’re commissioner, you’re going to have good days and bad days. But if you just looked at the overall scorecard, you’d have to say we’re doing great,” Washington Mystics owner Ted Leonsis said.
It’s nearly impossible to turn on a major sporting event over the past few years without seeing a WNBA player featured in a commercial. From Gatorade to State Farm, Nike and CarMax, product ads feature some of the league’s top newsmakers, including Caitlin Clark, Angel Reese, A’ja Wilson and Sabrina Ionescu.
Engelbert said when Clark was drafted, it created a “domino effect, because they started seeing the value of putting players in their ads and then separately endorsing the players. I’m really proud of that because when I came to the league, absent a few sneakers ads, I don’t remember any players in spots. Maybe there were a few.”
The commissioner has seen the trend continue with younger players coming into the league, including Paige Bueckers, Azzi Fudd and Olivia Miles.
“Everybody sees the W is here to stay,” the commissioner said.
Engelbert deflected questions about her future other than to say she’s turning 62 this year and that was the mandatory retirement age at her old job at Deloitte, where she was the president.
“I haven’t given it a ton of thought. We’ll think about it,” Engelbert said of how long she will stay in her current role, adding she is “focused on the whack-a-mole that is our season. I always tell people don’t focus on me, focus on the rest of my team.
“You always want to leave an organization better than you found it. Internally we’re proud of the team we’ve built.”
Silver said in Las Vegas that he supports what Engelbert is doing.
“I think Cathy continues to do a strong job building that league,” the NBA commissioner said. “We’ll have ongoing discussions about what the future looks like.”
With media rights stable for the next decade as well as labor peace achieved and expansion finished for the immediate future, Engelbert said her list of priorities includes a look at officiating, with WNBA referees finding themselves at the center of questions from frustrated players, coaches and fans. She also wants to help teams with lower attendance improve those numbers, and expand the league’s international footprint.
Feinberg writes for the Associated Press.
Aaron Rodgers recently shared photos of himself with his parents and one of his brothers on social media.
While that’s something that a lot of people do, the Pittsburgh Steelers quarterback is a very private person who has never even posted a photo of his wife online.
Rodgers also has been estranged from his parents and brothers for quite some time now.
Those relationships appear to be on the mend, however, after the 22-year NFL veteran took to Instagram on Monday and posted several seemingly recent family pictures — including one of him with his arm around his father Ed, another with his arm around his mother Darla and others of him interacting with older brother Luke.
“Another bonding week,” Rodgers wrote, adding the hashtag #fam.
It was only his fourth Instagram post in more than two years. Luke Rodgers responded in the comment section with two heart emojis.
Rodgers spent 18 seasons with the Green Bay Packers, winning Super Bowl and four league MVP awards before playing two seasons with the New York Jets. The upcoming season will be his second with the Steelers and, he has said, his final one in the NFL.
The rift with his family members was made public in 2016 when younger brother Jordan Rodgers was a contestant on “The Bachlorette.” On one episode, Jordan Rodgers told his now-wife JoJo Fletcher that his famous brother has chosen to live his life in a certain way, “I chose to stay close with my family and my parents and my [other] brother.”
On another episode featuring other members of the Rodgers family (with a conspicuous absence), Luke Rodgers said: “It pains both of us, like, not to have that relationship [with Aaron] — we miss our brother. I trust that God brings things full circle and that everything would just get back to us being a family.”
Weeks later at Packers training camp, Rodgers was asked about the subject.
“I’ve always found that it’s a little inappropriate to talk publicly about some family matters, so I’m just —I’m not going to speak on those things,” Rodgers said, “but I wish him well in the competition.”
He added: “I haven’t seen the show, to be honest with you, so it hasn’t really affected me a whole lot.”
Ed Rodgers confirmed to the New York Times in 2017 that Rodgers hadn’t spoken to his family since late 2014, soon after the quarterback started dating actress Olivia Munn (the couple broke up in 2017).
In the 2024 Netflix docuseries “Aaron Rodgers: Enigma,” the 10-time Pro Bowl selection said he had never been “super duper close” with anyone in his family, except for Jordan Rodgers earlier on. He attributed the rift to a number of things, including his parents’ religious beliefs, sibling rivalries and his family’s reaction to his fame.
“I don’t wish any ill will on them at all,” Rodgers said. “It’s more like this, we’re just different steps in the timeline of our own journeys.”
The ice seemed to have started to thaw between the family members in recent years. According to the 2024 biography “Out of the Darkness: The Mystery of Aaron Rodgers” by Ian O’Connor, Ed Rodgers bought a ticket to a 2023 celebrity golf tournament in Lake Tahoe with the hope of possibly coming face to face with his son, who was a participant in the event, for the first time in nine years.
Rodgers saw his father in the crowd and tracked him down. The two of them embraced and said, “I love you.”
“That was a special moment,” Aaron told O’Connor.
O’Connor wrote Tuesday on X that Rodgers invited his parents to his Pleasant Valley High (Chico) Hall of Fame induction in April, then introduced them to the crowd and thanked them for their support.
Take all the time you want, LeBron. It’s your life.
Yes, it’s annoying to have to hear about it every day, but it’s your decision when to tell us where you’re going to play your 24th season of pro ball.
So, go ahead, keep NBA schedule-makers on pins and needles. Savor having workers at my local Trader Joe’s discussing your future on a Monday in the middle of July. Enjoy your twilight limelight.
But don’t tell us, on podcasts and in public appearances, that the factors you’re prioritizing are A) whether a team is built to win now; B) the proximity to your home in L.A.; and C) not money, but overall happiness — and then signal it might be the Golden State Warriors.
The Cleveland Cavaliers? They check all the boxes. That’s “home” for real. And the Cavs are ready to win with a veteran difference-maker such as LeBron. Absolutely, it would be a happily-ever-after conclusion to the LeBron epic.
The Miami Heat and Philadelphia 76ers? Nowhere close to home, but they check a box too: They’re both set up to win — and in the Eastern Conference, where they won’t have to go through the San Antonio Spurs or Oklahoma City Thunder to reach an NBA Finals.
The Warriors, though?
They check no boxes. Not a one. Not in 2026.
That would be a … choice. But let no one act like this would be LeBron leaving the Lakers for a more competitive situation. It wouldn’t be LeBron landing in a more desirable locale.
Line up Cleveland, Philadelphia, Miami and Golden State and it’s like seeing three diamonds and a square on “Sesame Street.” A 3-year-old could tell that one of those is not like the others. But that’s the third-most likely destination, as of Tuesday morning, according to the DraftKings Sportsbook.
Sure, once upon a time, a starting lineup of Stephen Curry, Jimmy Butler, LeBron James, Draymond Green and Kristaps Porzingis would have beaten almost anybody. But even those guys — besides 30-year-old Porzingis, they’re all in their late-30s or early 40s, with a ton of NBA mileage — aren’t beating Father Time.
Remember when the Lakers put together a roster awash in washed-up stars in 2021, and how disastrous that was? Turns out pairing Carmelo Anthony, Trevor Ariza, Dwight Howard, Rajon Rondo, DeAndre Jordan and, yes, Russell Westbrook was a recipe for a truly awful 33-win team.
And the Warriors? They couldn’t get out of the play-in tournament last season, when Curry played only 43 games and Butler played only 38. Also, remember, for the first time in LeBron’s career, the now 41-year-old wasn’t available to start the season. He missed the first 14 games with sciatica.
Maybe Golden State could conjure up some magic in a playoff series — but over an 82-game regular-season marathon? No way, LBJ.
Former Lakers star LeBron James (23) and former Warriors forward Draymond Green, who opted out of his contract this summer, could team up with Golden State. Or maybe not.
(Wally Skalij / Los Angeles Times)
It could be that winning isn’t everything for LeBron. The man’s legacy is locked. He’s won four NBA titles, three Olympic gold medals, 1,229 NBA games and counting. And he’s winning this summer’s engagement game too.
Perhaps it’s come to a point that he just wants to play with his friends, and after earning $53 million with the Lakers last season, he’s willing to sign a deal with Golden State for between $3.9 and $6 million — which is what the Warriors could pay him, according to ESPN cap expert Bobby Marks — to do that.
That’s lovely, but it doesn’t change the fact that LeBron wouldn’t be happy losing.
And losing when he’s the addition to Steph’s team — and make no mistake, the Warriors are Steph’s team — really wouldn’t be fun.
The superstar wars that will be fought between both players’ infamously, uh, passionate fandoms wouldn’t be fun.
The daily drumbeat of criticism from talking heads who tuned into all of those televised games — not fun.
But the commute! It’s only 380 miles or so from Brentwood to Chase Center, and that’s much closer than Cleveland or Philly or Miami.
That makes sense — if you forget there are two NBA teams in the very city where LeBron’s family lives. And on paper, they’re both better than the Warriors. And his son plays for one of them!
But one of those teams is the Clippers and the other has moved on from LeBron.
Oh, the irony.
The Lakers, if they weren’t the ex-team, would check all the boxes. They’re going to be competitive. They’re a group LeBron enjoyed playing with. They are home. And LeBron would check a pretty big box for them too, if money really isn’t a deciding factor.
But the Lakers have replaced LeBron with Walker Kessler, the 24-year-old defensive center who is the perfect complement to Luka Doncic. They’ve put in place the pillars for their future, though they do still happen to have a LeBron-sized hole at forward that isn’t going to be filled by LeBron.
And that’s OK. The next chapter will start eventually, and likely it will be set in a location where LeBron can compete and have a good time, and that he and his family can feel good about.
Or in San Francisco.
JENNIFER Lopez’ ex-husband Marc Anthony has become a dad for the EIGHTH time aged 57 after his fourth wife Nadia Ferreira, 27, welcomed their second child together.
Singer Marc and model Nadia – who also share three-year-old son Marco – took to social media to reveal their happy news, telling fans they’d welcomed a baby girl named Myla.
Their caption, translated from Spanish, read: “What a great blessing to be able to share with you the arrival of our precious MYLA.
“You can’t imagine the happiness we have at home, we are over the moon.”
Marc and superstar JLo, 56, who split in 2011 after 10 years of marriage, are parents to 18-year-old twins Emme and Max.
He is also dad to Chase, 35, and Arianna, 31 – who he shares with ex-girlfriend Debbie Rosado – and Cristian, 25, and Ryan, 22, from his first marriage to Dayanara Torres.
Marc and Nadia tied the knot in 2023 in a star-studded ceremony at Perez Art Museum in Miami.
In 2014 – three years after he and Jennifer called time on their marriage – Marc married model Shannon Di Lima.
But he filed for divorce less than two years later.
The news came just weeks after Marc kissed JLo on stage at the Latin Grammy Awards.
They reunited for a performance and ended with a kiss after she presented him with a career achievement award.
JLo told the crowd at the time how Marc would “always be many things in my life — a mentor, a soulmate, a father”.
OASIS have officially landed the UK’s biggest selling studio album of all time.
New lists revealed today have shown how the band’s epic reunion last year has prompted their iconic studio album, (What’s The Story?) Morning Glory, to become Britain’s biggest seller.
The 1995 record has seen brothers Noel and Liam leapfrog The Beatles‘ 1967 album Sgt. Pepper – previously the long-standing biggest studio album.
Oasis now sit at number three overall – with ABBA and Queen’s compilation records in first and second position.
A source told The Sun of the epic achievement: “This milestone cements Oasis as the UK’s most influential and successful band.
“After their Oasis Live ‘25 shows last year, that album sold like hot cakes.
“With their 2027 dates due to be announced next month, the sales are only going to skyrocket.
“Noel and Liam should be cracking out the champagne.”
The Official Charts Company confirmed the rankings today as they marked 70 years of compiling Britain’s music.
Sitting behind Oasis at number four is Adele’s 2011 record, 21, which has managed to push The Beatles’ 1967 effort into fifth place overall – with those three records making up Britain’s biggest studio albums of all time.
The 1970s take over sixth and seventh position with Fleetwood Mac‘s ’73 album, Rumours, in sixth followed by Pink Floyd’s 1973 effort, The Dark Side of the Moon.
Michael Jackson sits in eighth with 1982’s Thriller followed by Bob Marley’ ’84 record Legend in ninth and Dire Straits’ 1985 release, Brothers in Arms, rounding out the top ten.
THE Only Way Is Essex stars Dan Edgar and Chloe Lewis have been spotted together for the very first time – following a year-long secret romance.
Dan, 36, reportedly reconnected with former co-star Chloe, 35, at Georgia Kousolou and Tommy Mallet‘s second wedding in Majorca.
The pair stepped out together at Tonic Terrace in Bournemouth and posed for the camera.
The venue posted on Instagram: “Amazing to have @chloelewis91 & @danedgar pop in and see us on Saturday night 🤍
“Hope you enjoyed your cocktails and come back and see us soon!”
Speaking on his new girlfriend Chloe, who was on the show between 2015 and 2019, Dan said previously: “She’s very understanding and very grown up as a person anyway.
“She’s done the show before and she’s understanding of how it all works.”
It comes as Dan and Chloe previously soft-launched their romance back in May.
Dan shared a slew of images on Instagram and captioned them: “A very different few days in ibiza mixed with a first look at some newness we have coming from the brand. Recharged and ready to go.”
In what appeared to be their first interaction on social media, Chloe replied with a sweet heart hands emoji beneath Dan’s post.
Fans were then thrilled when Dan liked her post and flocked to comment.
One wrote: “Love this love you 2.”
Another said: “Finally, a confirmation.”
A third added: “Love Chloe and Dan together. @chloelewis91 is stunning, and seems like such a kind person too.”
Thirty years ago a teenage boy, traveling abroad and without parents for the first time, came upon a scene of staggering destruction.
At Pompeii, when Tom Hiddleston saw the casts of the bodies killed by the explosion of Mt. Vesuvius in AD 79, he wasn’t just horrified, he was mesmerized, even excited; amid all that death it felt like the past was alive.
“Until that point, it had existed in books in the classroom, but I felt like was going back in time, walking into the past,” he said in a recent video interview about “Pompeii: Out of Time With Tom Hiddleston,” his new series that’s a hybrid of travelogue, documentary and extensive dramatic reenactments (with a meta touch).
“I was knocked sideways by the quality of the preservation,” he recalled of that teenage visit. “You can hear that these buildings carry the echoes of the lives they contained because of the frescoes, the mosaics, the furniture. You feel 2,000 years compress and collapse. It’s like magic.”
Hiddleston knows something about magic and time travel. After studying classics at Cambridge, his acting career led to the Marvel Cinematic Universe and the role of Loki, the god of mischief and “the boundary crosser.” Loki’s movie misdeeds get him “removed from the timeline of history,” and in the “Loki” spinoff TV show, he faces his past while bouncing through time.
One place Loki lands is Pompeii. Hiddleston was actually on a set in Atlanta, but there he was speaking Latin and revisiting his own past. “I felt this extraordinary confluence of my passions.”
Tom Hiddleston in a scene from the series, where he speaks to experts about Pompeii and how the eruption of Mt. Vesuvius unfolded.
(Christian Black / National Geographic)
Hiddleston had been talking with producer Kevin R. Wright about his fascination with the ancient world, and after seeing Hiddleston in fictional Pompeii, Wright got the ball rolling on “Out of Time,” co-writing and helping to produce the series, which debuts Wednesday on NatGeo and Thursday on Hulu and Disney+.
On the show, Hiddleston travels back to Pompeii and the lip of the volcano, speaking to experts of Pompeii’s history and volcanoes but also one in surviving disasters to help him understand people’s behavior as the sky was falling on them. “It’s about trying to gather as much evidence from different disciplines,” he explained.
Hiddleston’s enthusiasm for the project is evident throughout our interview: Each question earned a five-minute response, all delivered with passion (and incredibly articulate with no verbal fillers or talking in circles) and fascinating digressions — he broke down the Greek and Latin roots of the words “democrat” and “republican,” mentioned the classical references in the architecture of the New York Stock Exchange and British Museum, and tied in the relevance of Christopher Nolan’s “The Odyssey.”
Here, for instance, is a portion of his answer to my first question about whether the driving force of the series was the importance of facts in understanding history, using storytelling and imagination to create empathy for the people of Pompeii, or to show the way our past still has lessons to offer today:
“I wanted a series with an original dynamism, which could be immersive and propulsive and emotional, and bring the story of Pompeii and its people back to life in a way that could be different and innovative. I wanted to evoke for the audience the feeling that I had when I first went to Pompeii.
“At university, I had teachers who taught me to live in the question and that our relationship with the past is a two-way street. One cannot examine the past without acknowledging that we look back from the perspective of where we stand. We tell stories to understand something about ourselves — we need to know who we were to think about who we are now.
Darius Arya, an archeologist and historian, with Hiddleston in the ancient city of Herculaneum. (Paolo Verzone/National Geographic)
Human remains inside of boat sheds, where people took shelter from the eruption of Mt. Vesuvius. (Paolo Verzone/National Geographic)
“The engine of my commitment was centered on empathy, trying to honor the lives of the people of Pompeii. If we could gather enough evidence, enough fragments of truth, they might add up to a picture of history, which would generate great reserves of feeling and compassion so we could see ourselves in their predicament, their instincts, their choices, their capacity to help each other. And that experience of empathy and compassion would connect us to a thread across time to people experiencing a terrifying and traumatic event, and to see that in our world now.
“But we were very careful about the idea that the truth matters. In writing history, there must be intense rigor — evidence is important and if you have evidence that should counteract any bias or hypothesis.
“But the evidence here is incomplete so at some point, you have to take an educated guess, a leap of imagination. The past is a two-way street with the present, but it’s also an eternal mystery and all of our questions will never be answered so there’s that joy of living in the question.”
When the publicist said our time was up, Hiddleston stepped out of time and took one more question. And then another and another, nearly doubling the time allotted, thrilled to be exploring the connections between past and present.
While many people think that the city’s population was wiped out, the vast majority actually escaped and modern research has found the names and details of hundreds of survivors. Hiddleston notes that “one great gift of Pompeii is that the Romans didn’t have paper, so the walls, the columns, the houses, the public buildings are covered in writing: deeds, business contracts, advertisements, gossip, doodles.”
In this behind the scene photo, director of photography Jim Jolliffe runs with a camera, following Frankie Treadaway playing Avianius, a teenage boy whose story is reenacted in the series.
(Darrin Zammit Lupi / National Geographic)
The three episodes track the stories of a teenage boy, a successful businesswoman and a soldier in the nearby town of Herculaneum, with a sprawling cast and special effects bringing those scenes to life. “We thought that in the words of Pliny the Younger, ‘their lives were worthy of our memory.’ ”
While there have been other more traditional Pompeii documentaries, Hiddleston felt he had something distinctive to offer, thanks to his “day job.”
“I take a piece of writing and a character, real or imagined, and research as much as I can, and then imagine it and try and breathe life into a person,” he says. “Even when I’ve played real people, I’ve run out of evidence. That’s when you just have to extend your empathy and compassion, your knowledge of human beings and the breadth and range of human experience, the things we all share and can connect with to find an internal world of variety and depth.”
Hiddleston wanted to extend that to the people of Pompeii. “They were three dimensional people with rich lives,” he says. “We follow the trail of breadcrumbs as far as we can, and then try to bring them to life with empathy and compassion.”
MUNICH, Germany — Nicholas Brownlee had just fallen in love with opera and was eager to see if his emerging bass-baritone voice could handle Richard Wagner’s music. It did not go well.
“I kept reading how you have to wait to sing this big repertoire,” Brownlee said. But there was one bit of Wagner — Wolfram’s “Song to the Evening Star” from “Tannhäuser” — that’s “a little bit lighter. I figured it was more appropriate.”
So he brought it to his teacher, Thomas Rowell, at the University of South Alabama and asked what he thought.
“I just laughed at him and told him to go away,” Rowell recalled. “He knew that big voice was there, and he was so eager to try on the clothes, but they didn’t fit for a while. It was still a very young instrument.”
Reminded of that exchange nearly 20 years later, Brownlee smiles. “I was a bit ambitious,” he said. “But this was just me.”
Now that ambition — what he calls “a fire in my belly that burns brighter every day,” — has helped propel Brownlee to the very top of his profession at age 37. And he’s done it by singing a lot of Wagner.
Brownlee recently made his debut as Wotan, embattled king of the gods, in “Die Walküre” at the Bavarian State Opera House, part two of a complete “Ring” cycle directed by Tobias Kratzer. He had previously sung the role in “Das Rheingold,” the opera that opens the cycle.
The critics reached for superlatives. “A heroic baritone straight out of a textbook,” wrote Markus Thiel in Merkur, “with a powerful, resonant voice, a force of nature.” Carlota Moseguí in Platea Magazine praised his voice and said Brownlee “possesses all the qualities to become the definitive Wotan of his generation.”
Next, Brownlee heads to the Wagner shrine in Bayreuth, Germany, where he will star as the title character in “Der Fliegende Holländer” (“The Flying Dutchman.”) And his upcoming season is one Wotan after another.
“It’ll be ‘Siegfried’ time in Munich, then ‘Walküre’ time in Buenos Aires, then ‘Rheingold’ time in Barcelona,” he said. Add to that two of the “Ring” operas in Frankfurt and then two complete cycles next summer back in Munich.
“It’s a once-in-a-lifetime thing to have a student who goes that far, especially from a small regional state university like ours,” said Rowell, who remains close friends with Brownlee and officiated his wedding to mezzo-soprano Jennifer Feinstein. “I have to pinch myself. I’m enjoying it vicariously.”
Does Brownlee worry at all about damaging his voice from so much heavy singing?
“I don’t think you’re supposed to say this, but no, not really,” he replied. “We like to put this big stamp on Wagner and say ‘Be Careful!’” But he said he finds the demands of each opera different enough to help him avoid burnout.
Still, he promises that his roles the following season will be more varied, including a return to one of his favorites — Baron Scarpia in Puccini’s “Tosca.” And down the road are two Verdi roles — the villainous Iago in “Otello” and the comic Falstaff.
Of the latter, he said, “I want to flex a different muscle. I talk fast, I’m a bubbly, fun guy, but what I do on stage is so serious all the time. Boy it would be fun to just be a jolly fat guy!”
Just how did a boy from a working-class family in a small town outside Mobile, Ala., become one of a handful of go-to singers in the world for these demanding roles?
His first success as a vocalist actually came as the youngest grandchild in a large extended family, performing Conway Twitty imitations to grab attention. Classical music had to wait until he fell under the spell of his high school choral director.
When he went to college, he planned to study conducting, but Rowell heard him sing and cajoled him into joining the Mobile Opera chorus.
“I went in the first day and I hated it,” Brownlee recalled. “I said, this is in Italian, who cares? That’s for stuffy elite people, not for us blue-collar fellas.”
Still, his curiosity made him determined to figure out why some people loved the art form. So he sat by the side of the stage one night to watch the emotional final scene of Verdi’s “La Traviata,” when the heroine dies after being reunited with her lover.
“When she said, ‘O, gioia!’ and she fell into his arms, and now she’s dead, Alfredo’s weeping over her, and Germont is feeling half-responsible, I was weeping uncontrollably,” he said. “And I didn’t even know what they were saying.”
That’s when he started taking voice lessons, and from there followed years of study and apprenticeships both in the U.S. and later in Germany. Along the way he competed twice in the Metropolitan Opera’s National Council Auditions.
The first time, still in his early 20s, he made it to the semifinals in New York. “I did not go on to the finals, which was absolutely correct,” he said. “Failure is a great lesson.” (Coincidentally, one of the winners that year was Ryan Speedo Green, who performed Wotan in May at Walt Disney Hall and will bein the Met’s upcoming “Ring” cycle.)
Brownlee returned in 2015, and this time he took home one of the top prizes. Other awards have followed, including in 2025, best male singer at the International Opera Awards and the Richard Tucker Award for most promising American singer.
Yet this American singer is still barely known to most opera audiences in his native country. Brownlee’s career has so far been largely in Germany, where he and Feinstein are raising their two daughters and are currently applying for dual citizenship.
“I can perform anywhere in Europe and be home in two hours to see my girls,” he said. “In America that’s just not something you can do.”
He may be rooted in Europe for now, but major U.S. houses are beckoning with increasing urgency.
When he appeared at Chicago’s Lyric Opera this past spring as the prophet Jochanaan in Richard Strauss’ “Salome,” general director John Mangum called his performance “absolutely thrilling.” He said Brownlee is “definitely going be at the top of our list” as the company charts its future Wagner performances.
And Peter Gelb, the Met’s general manager, who heard him sing a major role for the first time during the Munich run of “Walküre,” said “I was blown away. … We’ll definitely be offering him big roles at the Met in upcoming seasons.”
Silverman writes for the Associated Press.
Argentina were beaten 1-0 in the final by Spain in what has been rumoured to be Lionel Messi’s final World Cup game.
Published On 21 Jul 202621 Jul 2026
After what may have been his final World Cup match, Lionel Messi was in tears on the field on Sunday in East Rutherford, New Jersey, ruing a missed chance to win a second consecutive title for Argentina.
Messi, without hinting whether his World Cup career was officially through, congratulated Spain, who beat Argentina 1-0 in the final, and said the memories would last, in an Instagram post on Monday evening.
list of 4 itemsend of list
“The pain is immense, and this wound will take time to heal,” Messi wrote in his native Spanish alongside a photo of him bearing a silver medal.
“But I also hold onto all the good things… The matches we turned around by giving it our all – moments that will remain in our memories forever – and the support of an entire country which, combined with this group’s hard work and effort, brought us back among the world’s elite once again.
“It is hard to fully appreciate our achievement right now, but this group reached two consecutive World Cup finals.”
Argentina defeated France on penalty kicks following a 3-3 draw in the 2022 final in Qatar, earning the last piece of major hardware Messi had yet to win in his illustrious career.
Argentina were once again one of the best teams in the 2026 tournament in North America. They rallied past England in the semifinal before coming up against a Spanish defence that held them without a shot on goal.
Messi turned 39 during the tournament and will turn 43 during the 2030 World Cup, which will be held in Spain, Portugal and Morocco.
“Thank you from the bottom of my heart for every greeting and message,” Messi wrote. “Once again, we managed to unite as a country and stand together, sharing the immense pride of being Argentine.
“I also want to congratulate Spain on winning the championship.”
Messi broke Miroslav Klose’s record of 16 all-time World Cup goals early in the tournament, and he finished with 21, though he was caught and surpassed by Kylian Mbappe (22).
The French star also denied Messi a Golden Boot, finishing with 10 goals to the Argentine’s eight.
ESPN reported on Monday that Messi and his national team and club teammate Rodrigo De Paul will not play the next two regular-season matches for Inter Miami, nor participate in the MLS All-Star Game, as they rest and recover from the World Cup.
Reading List
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This month, “Cool Machine,” a riff on 1980s New York in the form of a tightly plotted crime novel, arrives from Colson Whitehead. It concludes his Harlem trilogy, they say. If you’d told readers two decades ago that Whitehead would become a bestselling crime novelist, they might have thought you were kidding. He started out writing innovative novels with such intellectual and stylistic punch that the MacArthur Foundation gave him a fellowship in 2002.
His written output is fun, fearless and fantastic. Where to start? Here’s a cheat sheet.
For N.Y. lovers
With “Harlem Shuffle,” Whitehead begins his crime trilogy in the 1960s in a furniture store with stylish midcentury stock whose owner, Ray Carney, is trying not to be a fence. Love the evocation of Harlem as a place with a cool interconnected community. Worry about that cousin who’s always trouble. The follow-up, “Crook Manifesto,” is set in the 1970s. All of New York City is at a nadir; Ray is on the straight and narrow, but needs an influx of cash (for Jackson Five tickets for his daughter). Then comes “Cool Machine,” secrets to be revealed when it hit shelves this week . And as a bonus, his essay collection “The Colossus of New York,” which is vivid, episodic and yet still a story: “Talking about New York is talking about the world.”
To break your heart
The novel “The Underground Railroad” comes from an imagined misunderstanding, logical for anyone who grew up riding subways: that the path to freedom for enslaved people that we call The Underground Railroad was in fact underground. In Whitehead’s hands, that imagining takes us through both time and place while making visceral the horrors of enslavement. The book won the National Book Award and the Pulitzer Prize and was adapted by Barry Jenkins into a limited series.
In a rare feat, Whitehead won the Pulitzer Prize a second time for his novel “The Nickel Boys,” another work of historical fiction dealing with the devastating effects of American racism. Based on the true story of a reform school where Black boys went missing, the novel pairs the stories of two teens, one a troublemaker and the other caught up by mistake. Barack Obama called it “a necessary read.” Cleverly structured, it seemed difficult to adapt, but director RaMell Ross made it into a brilliant film.
To blow your mind
In Whitehead’s debut novel, the not-realistic “The Intuitionist,” a Black female elevator inspector faces powerful forces aligned against her. Inflected with Thomas Pynchon-like wordplay and situations, it’s both ambitious and funny. So is “John Henry Days,” mixing narrative forms while telling the story of a Black journalist around the year 2000 going to every press junket he can, unmaking the myth of John Henry all the while. And “Apex Hides the Hurt” is a comic novel about the conflicts that arise in a small town when they hire a name consultant for a possible rebranding.
To eat your mind
Just around the time they started staggering onto TV, Colson Whitehead published a zombie novel. “Zone One” is a smart take on the shuffling hordes and pandemic survivors who try to take Manhattan back.
To beat the odds
Whitehead, an enthusiastic amateur poker player, wrote the nonfiction book “The Noble Hustle” about his entry into the World Series of Poker in Las Vegas. It was a luxurious time in media, circa 2011, when ESPN’s Grantland paid his $10,000 entry fee and said he could keep his winnings. The book, expanded from what he wrote for them, includes his training, pending divorce, joking asides and playing for high stakes.
To take to the beach
“Sag Harbor,” set in the mostly Black, affluent beach community in the Hamptons, is the closest Whitehead has come to writing a coming-of-age story. Taking place during the summer of 1985, Benji and his teenage friends banter about culture and get their first taste of freedom.
Colson Whitehead’s latest foray into the bent world of “reluctant fence” Ray Carney — “Cool Machine,” the third and final installment of his Harlem Trilogy — is an American epic disguised as a heist novel. It’s a dizzyingly brilliant measure of the versatility and depth of the acclaimed author’s literary talent.
Book Review
Cool Machine
By Colson Whitehead
Doubleday: 368 pages, $30
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After writing two books dealing with monstrous historical trauma and institutional abuse — “The Underground Railroad” and “The Nickel Boys,” for which he won two successive Pulitzers — Whitehead pivots to an entirely new genre, subverting it, toying with it, making it wholly his own. And while the Harlem novels, too, have a great deal to say about serious subjects such as systemic racism, corruption, and crimes and misdemeanors of various proportions, they often lean on humor to get the message across.
In fact, it’s easy to envision the author at his laptop, as exhilarated as his prose, cracking himself up over how he bends language, employs slang, and forges descriptions like this one about a bar where Carney and a partner in crime conspire over how to fence a stolen diamond necklace: “He met Flinch Wilson at the Marlin, a narrow dive on 110th and Broadway with a decor inspired by an old leather shoe that lived in a drainage pipe.” Or this about a rival who has it out for Carney and his cohorts: “Buzz struck him as a plumber, one who comes back when you aren’t home to strangle your parakeet if you stiff him on the bill.”
“Cool Machine” is set in the 1980s, and Carney is still in the picture. It’s the Reagan era, and predatory capitalism rules, as does Mayor Giuliani, who’s waged war on the mafia and the homeless. What Whitehead dubs the “churn” roils the city and his protagonist. It’s that “churn” that beckons Carney to break his promise to himself and once again divert from his legit furniture store business. The excuse this time is that his wife Elizabeth wants to open her own travel agency, and can’t get a bank loan. Despite the couple’s closeness, for all these years her husband has managed to conceal that he’s a part-time crook. He desires respectability, but savors the buzz, the camaraderie — the honor among thieves. Carney falls in with criminal mastermind Uncle Rich and signs on to his outrageous plan to break into the Waldorf Astoria; the goal is to liberate Jesse Owens’ Olympic gold medal from those who forced him to cash it in.
The intricacy with which Whitehead details the planning and execution of this caper marks him as a top-tier researcher — he’s drawn on many primary sources to ground this work of fiction in historical fact. (There’s also his obsessive use of Pinterest.) The scenes set in the bowels of Grand Central, where there’s a secret train track leading to the Waldorf, are thrilling enough to read for their action, but the atmospheric descriptions are equally delectable: “Track 23’s next departure pulled into the station. One commuter joined Carney and Uncle Rich on the platform, a deflated man in a pinstripe suit with shiny elbows, then another businessman who sagged on one side, as if his briefcase was filled with lead weights.” One of the marvels of this novel is how effortlessly such sentences land, despite being honed to perfection. It would be a spoiler to say anything further about whether the thieves’ mission impossible yields their reward.
Part two of the novel shifts downtown, into the heart of the ’80s East Village art scene. A preoccupation of Whitehead’s — Jean-Michel Basquiat — is the inspiration for a fictional graffiti artist whose omnipresent scrawls capture the pretensions of the burgeoning wheelers and dealers, who, like uptown crooks, are relentless strivers, albeit with sleeker facades. Their snobbery is juxtaposed with Carney’s friend and colleague Pepper’s unsettling bluntness and eyeball to eyeball stare. He’s on the trail of a psychopath-for-hire dubbed “the Melancholy Hitman,” while battling stomach issues that have him downing Pepto-Bismol and coughing up blood in random bathrooms. In this section, Carney plays a supporting role to Pepper’s lead; “Escape from New York” is the enveloping soundtrack.
In the novel’s final act, Carney reemerges from straight life and Pepper from retirement in Delaware to rescue Carney’s nephew, Robert, who’s on the mob’s hit list for a murder he witnessed. Political corruption is rampant, and the revelation of who’s on the take has rattled a lot of cages. Robert is unwittingly entrapped, and has absconded with something mob bigwig Lombardi wants revenge for. Carney dons his best furniture salesman hat to make the pitch of a lifetime, a deal that could save Robert’s life, or take Carney’s. As Carney drives to the meet-up, he reflects on New York’s evolution: “Crime transformed the city by degrees. He thought of what John [his son] told him about rap music, where it came from. Rap was part of the New York environment now, barging from boom boxes and windows. They created something new from the spoils, the theft of turntables from record shops, the rip-off of a musical line or riff from another song — a crooked art.”
For those who enjoy knowing how an author’s inspiration arrives, it’s amusing to note that in the case of the trilogy that kicked off in 2021 with “Harlem Shuffle,” Whitehead told the New Yorker: “I was staring off into space and thinking about how much I like heist films and how much fun it would be to write a heist.” That sounds simple enough, but “Harlem Shuffle” turned out to be years in the making. The idea initially came to him around the same time he was writing “The Underground Railroad,” which was published in 2016. It wasn’t until after the release of that book, and then “Nickel Boys,” that Whitehead decided to lighten the mood by composing a crime novel set in New York City in the 1960s. And while he usually avoids staying on the same topic or voice from book to book, in the midst of writing “Harlem Shuffle,” Whitehead found he was still imagining further escapades for his main character, this time in the 1970s, with the city on the verge of bankruptcy, and incendiary conflagrations between the NYPD and the Black Liberation Army trending. As he envisioned what would become “Crook Manifesto,” Whitehead thought: “Why not make it three?”
Carney is part poet. Part crook. Part salesman. Part philosopher. To my knowledge, Carney’s creator is neither crook nor salesman, but Whitehead can lay claim to those other two mantles. His vocabulary appears boundless, as does his apparent love for the city he grew up in, where he still lives. “Cool Machine” is a modern masterpiece and an ode to New York, no matter that rats skitter and cockroaches scamper underfoot. When Carney has the chance to move anywhere in the world he wants, he ponders the appeal of fresh air. “Fresh was nice,” he reflects, “but so was other stuff. Noise, dirt, and struggle.” After escaping Manhattan, he wonders, “Where do you go? There’s no place else. It was like going on the lam from yourself.”
Whether or not New York is your jam, or a place you have escaped from or to, Whitehead’s Harlem Trilogy is destined to live on as an American classic. Never mind the rats and cockroaches — it’s the churn.
Haber is a writer, editor and publishing strategist, and co-founder of the Ink Book Club on Substack. She was director of Oprah’s Book Club and books editor for O, the Oprah Magazine.
HOLLY Willoughby has admitted she knows “what real fear is” after a terrifying kidnap plot as she opens up on experiencing a “really difficult time”.
The presenter, 45, is gearing up to relaunch her career with her brand new show on YouTube.
But the last few years of her life haven’t exactly been plain sailing after she was the victim of a horrific kidnap, rape and murder plot back in 2023.
Security guard Gavin Plumb was charged in October of that year for soliciting murder and inciting kidnap and rape and was sentenced to life in prison with a minimum term of 16 years.
Speaking about the difficult time of her life, she told Grazia in a new interview: “Everybody knows what happened and it was difficult. It was a really difficult time.
“It did set me back and made me realise, ‘Right, well of course you haven’t got everything figured out. Of course life is going to keep throwing challenges at you.”’
READ MORE ON HOLLY WILLOUGHBY
“When something like that happens, suddenly everything else gets put into perspective and you know what?
“I don’t fear what people think because I know what real fear feels like.”
Last month, The Sun on Sunday reported that Gavin was caught with a sinister stash of pictures of her in his prison cell.
The disturbing haul was found by prison officers hidden under a mattress.
A source said: “Plumb is still obsessed with Holly. The pictures were taken from magazines.
“He should not have been allowed access to images of her.”
Despite everything she’s been through, Holly is focusing on the next chapter of her life as she moves on with her career relaunch.
Her new YouTube show ‘Holly Willoughby Together’ is set to launch on July 28.
Speaking at her launch event earlier today, she said: “The YouTube idea obviously I’ve been away for a little while and my kids, watching my kids how they use stuff now, you know they watch stuff on YouTube they watch stuff on Netflix that’s how they do things.
“I was like right how am I watching stuff now and I was walking the dog and I’d be listening to Spotify or a podcast and I’d come in and I’d start cooking lunch and then I’d be like oh watch that now.”
“You suddenly realise that the way you see and view things and watch things is very very different.
“I don’t feel like it’s just me, I feel like everybody’s doing the same sort of thing,” added Holly.
The mum-of-three explained she feels as though mainstream TV isn’t the only place that can breed success.
She said: “You see what Gary Lineker has just done with the World Cup, you know collaborating with Netflix and with music, people will go on Radio 2 but then they’ll also go on a podcast.”
Holly added: “I think being a little bit braver and not just going for the obvious options, is the thing that really got me and then I thought ‘yes.’
“I thought ‘that’s it, that’s what I want to do.’”
Holly stepped down from This Morning in October 2023 and despite appearing briefly on Dancing On Ice the following year, she has largely taken a break from the spotlight.
Her glitzy lifestyle YouTube series, which starts on July 28, has a similar format to ITV‘s This Morning.
She will drop two episodes every week, and they will include sections on cookery, lifestyle, fashion, beauty and real life stories, as well as celebrity guests.
The telly legend has already confirmed appearances from actor Stanley Tucci, Spice Girl star Emma Bunton, All Saints singer Nicole Appleton, and comedians Joanne McNally and Katherine Ryan.
LEE Andrews has been FREED from jail for a second time – but his dad remains behind bars in Dubai.
Conman Lee’s father Pete joined him in the notorious Al Awir prison last week after being reported to officials by a third party.
But according to our sources, Katie Price‘s husband has now been let out.
An insider told The Sun: “Lee Andrews has today been released from Al Awir prison.
“He was set free this afternoon following a short-stint behind bars.
“His dad Pete, who has been caught up in Lee’s misdemeanours, remains behind bars.”
During their stint in jail, together, father and son were understood to have seen one another inside the jail, with both believed to be facing allegations of fraud.
Sources said that Lee had to raise funds to pay off his debts, before he could be released, from where he faces extradition.
He now hopes to return to the UK, to be with his wife.
Last week The Sun revealed how sources said patient Katie has finally snapped – and is now “at the end of her tether”.
A pal said: “It is quite astonishing – you really couldn’t make this up.
“Whether poor Katie will be there to greet him on the other side remains to be seen.
“Right now she is furious with it all, and fed up with all the drama and white noise her husband is bringing.”
Lee has had a raft of damning allegations levelled against him, including ex-girlfriends who have gone on the record to share their horror stories at his hands.
He has also been accused of conning people out of thousands of pounds – claims he denies.
Lee and Katie married in January, just 10 days after meeting.
In May, he was taken by cops and, he claims, taken to a black site for questioning.
It was later discovered he was in Al-Awir prison, where he remained for one month before being released and having an emotional reunion with wife Katie.
If Oxnard to you is just a freeway sign on the way to Santa Barbara or Ojai, you’re missing out on a few things. Like an extensive harbor with none of the traffic or showy affluence of its southern cousins. Miles and miles of white sand where you won’t find another family right next to you as soon as you lay down a towel. A diverse, chilled city with an energetic subculture (Nardcore, anyone?) and some pretty decent tacos.
There are a bunch of ways to spend your time here. Take an architecture tour around Heritage Square, perhaps, or taste your way around September’s Chowderfest at the Maritime Museum. On the water, you can paddleboard ‘til you drop, commune with whales on a boat excursion or skip off to the Channel Islands on a whim.
It’s the only California Cultural District in Ventura County, an honor bestowed by the California Arts Council, which says that “from Guelaguetza and Fiestas Patrias to Juneteenth celebrations, Nardcore punk shows, lowrider cruises, fandangos, and Ballet Folklorico, the district’s cultural life is exuberant and deeply rooted in community.” Rapper/producer and Oxnard native Anderson .Paak named his third album after the city and has hosted the .Paak House music festival in the region.
And Oxnard is a summer home to Netflix darlings the Dallas Cowboys Cheerleaders. For two decades, the Cowboys have held their training camp in the city, and this time around, the cheerleaders will join the scene for Oxnard Fan Night on July 31, the opening ceremony Aug. 1 and toa dance clinic Aug. 2.
Oxnard may not be overly polished, which of course adds to its charm. To get to know the community, you’ll have to veer a few miles off the 101 — but the detour makes for a vibrant SoCal weekend.
BEIRUT — President Trump long railed against forever wars.
For years, whether as president or candidate, he flayed electoral opponents and previous presidents with his signature barbs, calling their entanglements a “complete waste of time” (Afghanistan), “the worst single mistake ever made in the history of our country” (Iraq) and “stupid” (Ukraine).
Yet he now appears to be stumbling into a forever war of his own.
From the first days of the U.S.-Israeli campaign against Iran, Trump and his officials insisted their adventure abroad would be the exception, that the conflict would end in a matter of weeks.
Now, 4½ months later, after a torturous, start-stop vacillation between truce and war, the U.S. is pressing on with a fight that has no end in sight — or even a clear definition of what an acceptable end would be.
In the last week, the ceasefire collapsed, with the U.S. and Iran trading daily waves of strikes, leading to the deaths of two American servicemen on Friday when Iranian ballistic missiles struck Muwaffaq Salti Air Base in Jordan, where U.S. assets and personnel are stationed.
On Sunday, as the U.S. and Iran launched more air assaults, the U.S. announced that a service member was killed Saturday in Iraq during the controlled detonation of unexploded ordnance from a downed Iranian one-way attack drone.
On March 9, the remains of U.S. Army Sgt. Benjamin N. Pennington, 26, of Glendale, Ky., then the seventh U.S. service member to die in combat during the Iran war, are transferred at Dover Air Force Base, Del.
(Julia Demaree Nikhinson / Associated Press)
The deaths in Jordan were the first combat fatalities since the U.S. and Iran agreed to a ceasefire. One soldier remains missing, according to a statement from U.S. Central Command.
Including the most recent casualties, 17 U.S. service members have been killed and more than 430 wounded since the war began, the Pentagon says.
In Iran, at least 57 people have been killed and more than 517 injured in U.S. attacks in the last three weeks, according to Iranian health authorities. The death toll since the beginning of the war has surpassed 3,500, and more than 27,000 have been wounded.
The U.S. and Israeli militaries have — in the telling of Trump and various officials — decimated Iran’s navy and air defenses, eviscerated multiple layers of its leadership and bombed tens of thousands of targets across the country.
Despite that military pressure, and Trump’s insistence that members of Iran’s leadership “want to make a deal” (he’s said that an accord was on hand no less than 46 times since the start of the war), Tehran has refused to surrender its nuclear and missile arsenals and continues to support its regional militia allies.
Iran has also created a new pressure point to use against adversaries by blockading the Strait of Hormuz, the vital waterway through which a fifth of the world’s oil and natural gas flowed before the war. And it has widened the war’s footprint by targeting countries hosting American military assets.
Trump has vowed to expand bombings to include civilian infrastructure such as power plants and bridges in what he says is a bid to force Iran into negotiations once more.
Trump thought wars in the Middle East would be like Venezuela: a big in-and-out without a prolonged war. And the reality is that it’s backfired
— Vali Nasr, Middle East expert
He has also brought additional forces to the Middle East. According to Centcom, there are now 50,000 troops in the region, along with 20 naval warships and hundreds of warplanes.
U.S. Central Command, which oversees operations in the region, declined to comment on the deployments, though on Sunday the New York Times reported that the U.S. was sending to the region F-16 fighter jets from Germany and stealthy F-35 jets from Britain.
For observers, those moves signal that Trump is falling into an escalation trap.
“From Trump’s perspective, the easiest way to demonstrate resolve and power is by just bombing Iran and seeing what that brings about,” said Andreas Boehm, a Middle East expert and lecturer on international law at University of St. Gallen in Switzerland. Although those strikes seem tactically impressive, they have not helped him strategically, he said.
“In reality, it doesn’t change the situation because the Iranians won’t budge. And if you confuse tactical and strategic success, then you’re not going anywhere in any kind of war,” Boehm said.
An escalation on Washington’s part is also certain to spark a similar reaction from Tehran, said Vali Nasr, professor at the Johns Hopkins University School of Advanced International Studies.
“Iran gets a vote here,” Nasr said, adding Iran could up the ante by closing Bab al Mandab, the vital strait connecting the Red Sea to the Indian Ocean. It could also widen attacks on infrastructure in Persian Gulf countries — moves that would trigger an even bigger ripple effect across global markets.
“Trump thought wars in the Middle East would be like Venezuela: a big in-and-out without a prolonged war,” Nasr said, referring to the Trump administration’s strike that saw U.S. forces abduct Venezuelan leader Nicholás Maduro and force the remaining members of his government to submit to U.S. control.
“And the reality is that it’s backfired,” he said.
Trump is not the first American president to think a foreign engagement wouldn’t last long. Whether in Vietnam, Afghanistan or Iraq, U.S. leaders dispatched troops on operations they thought would last weeks or months, dismissing warnings that they would be bogged down in years-long occupations.
Iran would be an especially sticky quagmire if Trump were to commit ground troops.
The country’s area — about 636,000 square miles — is more than double the size of Afghanistan, almost four times the size of Iraq, and five times the size of Vietnam — all nations where the U.S. struggled to prevail against adversaries not as well equipped and arguably less ideologically motivated than its adversaries in Iran.
Meanwhile, for a president whose central foreign policy campaign promise was no more wars, the growing number of casualties, along with the escalating damage inflicted by Iran on U.S. assets and allies, has exposed cracks in the support the Teflon-like Trump has enjoyed from his advocates.
Onetime MAGA acolytes, including flagship conservative figures such as Tucker Carlson, Megyn Kelly and Alex Jones, have already turned on the president over the war and other issues. And Republican figures who had tied their star to Trump fear a drubbing in the midterms so long as the war continues.
If negotiations were to resume, it’s unclear whether Trump and his coterie of negotiators have the stamina or the foreign service expertise to bring about an accord.
After all, the 2015 Obama-era deal aimed at reining in Tehran’s nuclear program took 600 days and hundreds of diplomats and technical experts to negotiate.
With Trump relying on unconventional fixers such as his son-in-law Jared Kushner and real estate investor Steve Witkoff, not to mention his evisceration of the diplomatic corps, an agreement of that scale appears unlikely.
“Everything is dependent on the mood of one man,” Nasr said.
“It’s not the system that’s making the decision; it’s not the country making the decision,” he said. “It’s one man, and it depends how he feels like at one particular point in time.”
Tehran too may be less amenable to negotiations with Trump, given his history: During his first term, he pulled out of the nuclear deal and ordered the assassination of Qassem Suleimani, a leading Iranian general.
In his second term, he launched bombing campaigns on Iran during negotiations — twice. And Iran accused the U.S. of repeatedly violating the April ceasefire and the memorandum of understanding signed in June.
Asked on NewsNation on Sunday about Iran’s announcement that it would no longer abide by the memorandum, Trump said, “I couldn’t care less.”
Such factors, said Ali Vaez, the Iran project director for the International Crisis Group, lead to a formula for prolonged conflict.
“It’s a forever war in the making, and the reason why is that Trump has proven he’s impossible to negotiate with,” Vaez said.
If an agreement as superficial as the memorandum of understanding — which deferred thornier issues for late negotiations — was derailed, then there’s little option other than repeated cycles of violence.
“Once you’ve proven that diplomacy doesn’t work,” he said, “then there’s only war.”
