At least 10 people have died and 17 remain trapped, including rescuers, after a suspected gas explosion caused a tunnel collapse at a hydropower project in northeast India.
Published On 21 Jul 202621 Jul 2026
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ONCE the golden couple of Hollywood, Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie’s multi- million-pound divorce battle rumbled on longer than they were man and wife.
And ten years since proceedings first started, the bitterness between those involved shows no sign of slowing down.
Brad, 62, watched in horror this week as the final steps were taken to remove any trace of him from the once-glorified “Brangelina” clan.
In a brutal move, his children Maddox, 24, and Zahara, 21, have both filed court papers to officially change their surname from Jolie-Pitt to just Jolie.
Siblings Shiloh, 20, and Vivienne, 18, have already turned their backs on the Pitt name, while Knox, 18, has also dropped it from informal documents and is estranged from Brad.
This leaves only Pax, 23, still using the Pitt surname.
Insiders say that Brad has been left privately “devastated” by the decision.
A source said: “One by one, his children, who he was once so close to, have removed their connection to him.
“He really wonders if he’ll ever rebuild bridges with his shattered brood now.”
It is the latest twist in the family saga, following on from allegations of physical abuse, financial coercion and severe family PTSD as well as a Father’s Day Instagram post from Pax calling Brad a “world-class a**hole”.
It all helps cement Brad and Angelina’s divorce as perhaps the most toxic the entertainment world has ever seen.
In September, it will have been a decade since Maleficent star Angelina, 51, first filed for divorce from movie heart-throb Brad.
Their relationship started not long after they met on the set of 2005 film Mr & Mrs Smith, when Brad was still married to Jennifer Aniston.
They wed in 2014 but, less than two years later, in September 2016, they split in explosive fashion.The former couple had previously adopted Maddox, Zahara and Pax before having Shiloh, Vivienne and Knox.
But Brad, who was once inseparable from all six kids, has now been well and truly frozen out.
Legal notices published in the Los Angeles Daily Journal yesterday reveal that both Maddox and Zahara have filed petitions to change their surnames.
If approved, the changes will become official in court, with Maddox’s hearing set for September 14 and Zahara’s two weeks later.
Zahara has publicly gone by Zahara Jolie since starting university.
Shiloh legally dropped “Pitt” after turning 18 in 2024, while Vivienne was credited simply as “Vivienne Jolie” as a production assistant for the Broadway show The Outsiders.
Pax is the only one still using the Pitt surname, but he has an incredibly difficult relationship with his dad, who he once claimed made his younger siblings “tremble in fear”.
Brad’s relationship with his children seemed to change for ever after an ill-fated flight in 2016, which also marked the end of the high-profile showbiz marriage.
The couple are said to have tried to keep their blistering rows from the children, but that became impossible in the confines of a private jet.
In a report filed by the FBI about the incident, Angelina claimed Brad yelled at her before pulling her into the toilet, where he pushed her against the wall and punched the ceiling repeatedly.
It is also alleged that when one of their kids tried to protect their mum, Brad “choked one of the children and struck another in the face”.
It has long been rumoured that it was Maddox who was assaulted.
The report said Brad then poured beer on his family as they tried to sleep.
The incident led to an investigation by children’s services, with Angelina being awarded temporary full custody and Brad only allowed supervised visits. He was later fully cleared.
Just days later, Angelina filed for divorce, citing irreconcilable differences.
Pax’s private Instagram post on Father’s Day 2020 suggests the kids experienced problems before and after the plane incident.
He wrote: “You time and time again prove yourself to be a terrible and despicable person.
“You have no consideration or empathy toward your four youngest children, who tremble in fear when in your presence.
“You will never understand the damage you have done to my family because you’re incapable of doing so.”
Brad later confirmed that his boozing had become a problem, revealing he had visited Alcoholics Anonymous groups.
He said: “I had taken things as far as I could take it, so I removed my drinking privileges.
“You had all these men sitting around being open and honest in a way I have never heard.
“It was this safe space where there was little judgment, and therefore little judgment of yourself. It was actually really freeing just to expose the ugly sides of yourself.
“There’s great value in that.”
The confession did nothing to quell the animosity between the parties, though.
And while the divorce might have been finalised in 2024 — after eight agonising years — another legal fight is still rumbling on.
The former lovers are locked in an acrimonious $350million court battle, known as the War Of The Rosés, over Angelina’s decision to secretly sell her stake in their Chateau Miraval vineyard and home for $64million to Russian booze tycoon Yuri Shefler in 2021.
Brad then sued her in a bid to void the sale.
The couple bought the 1,300-acre Miraval estate in Provence, southern France, in 2008 and married there in 2014.
Angelina claims she originally wanted to sell her stake to Brad, but he demanded she sign an $8.5million non-disclosure agreement as part of the deal.
Her legal team argued it was a coercive tactic to prevent her talking about his alleged abuse.
A trial has been scheduled for February 1 next year.
Insiders have claimed that Brad’s partner of four years, Ines de Ramon, 33, has tried to persuade him to end the hostilities.
A source said: “Ines wants to have a life together — with possibly children in the future — without the albatross that is the eight-year War Of The Rosés.”
While Angelina’s attorneys have filed explosive allegations in court, she has kept a mostly dignified silence.
In 2020, the actress turned human rights advocate addressed the ugly split in a rare interview with Vogue.
She said: “I separated for the wellbeing of my family. It was the right decision.
“I continue to focus on their healing.”
During another interview, when asked if she worried about the safety of her children, she said: “Yes, for my family. My whole family.”
And during the Press tour for her 2021 Marvel film Eternals, in which she played Thena, a warrior battling memory loss and a fantasy-world version of PTSD, she revealed that she had been diagnosed with the condition.
She said: “I had talked to the director about experiencing PTSD myself a few years ago and my own fears about not being strong enough to protect those that I love.”
And while Brad might have moved on, Angelina, who was widely once considered one of the world’s most beautiful women, remains single.
Last month, she said: “To be candid, I haven’t dated since I divorced a decade ago.
“So I kind of get in my head that that aspect of me is not centered in my life if I’m focusing on my children, my family.”
It is true that all six children have certainly been caught up in the crossfire of their parents’ decade-long war, with the sorry saga serving as a cautionary tale to other Hollywood couples on the cusp of divorce.
Now, as the February 2027 trial over the battle for the French vineyard looms, peace still seems a long way off.
And while Brad might still be fighting over his financial future, his legacy with his family appears to be long gone.
Book Review
American Trickster: The Hidden Lives of Carlos Castaneda
By Ru Marshall
OR Books: 682 pages, $30
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The 1970s were thick with New Age spiritual fads and movements, from the benign (crystals) to the unspeakably toxic and cultic (Jonestown). Somewhere in the middle of that woo-woo spectrum lies the work of Carlos Castaneda. A UCLA anthropology grad student turned self-appointed guru, Castaneda became a counterculture icon with the publication of his first book, “The Teachings of Don Juan: A Yaqui Way of Knowledge,” in 1968, purporting to find enlightenment via psychedelic mushrooms, peyote and the cryptic musings of Don Juan, an Indigenous spirit guide.
That book, and the stream of his that followed, seduced millions of readers, plenty of them no doubt hoping that with the proper dosage they, like Castaneda, might also transform into a crow and soar across the purple skies of the dusty Southwest. That Castaneda’s books were largely flimflam isn’t in dispute. But Ru Marshall’s hefty biography, “American Trickster,” reveals the depth of his deception — and, just as potently, how easily people can be taken in by it.
“He didn’t lie out of convenience or opportunism,” Marshall writes. “He lied because he loved to. Lying was, for him, an art, and he did it exceptionally well.” This is a 1970s story, but anybody in the present can relate.
Born in Peru (not Brazil, as he often claimed) in 1925 (not a decade later, as he often claimed), Castaneda demonstrated no particular intellectual promise. But in the mid-1950s, first at L.A. City College and later at UCLA, he developed an affection for writing, philosophy and history. While pursuing a graduate degree in anthropology in the ’60s, he grew enchanted with Buddhism, Theosophy, existentialism and Native American spirituality — all key elements of the spiritualist goulash he would eventually cook up for his books. His timing was impeccable: From Timothy Leary’s LSD experiments to transcendental meditation, non-Christian religion and drugs fueled the zeitgeist. And Castaneda’s manuscript of “The Teachings” spoke effervescently about both.
Author Ru Marshall
(Allen Frame)
It hardly seemed to matter that the book also demonstrated his ignorance of both: He had little understanding of psychoactive drugs (you don’t smoke shrooms, dude), and there was nothing meaningfully Yaqui about Don Juan. Still, the book — and their follow-ups “A Separate Reality” and “Journey to Ixtlan” — were massive bestsellers. Castaneda made it to the cover of Time magazine. His work provided George Lucas with more than a little inspiration for his master-and-student space opera, “Star Wars.” And he became a target for parodists, the surest sign of fame. Donald Barthelme satirized him in his story “The Teachings of Don B.: A Yankee Way of Knowledge.”
That the ’70s American psyche, brutalized by Watergate and Vietnam, found solace in Castaneda’s sophistry isn’t surprising. More shocking is that the academic establishment tolerated it too: UCLA awarded him a PhD in anthropology with “Ixtlan” serving as his dissertation. Castaneda, Marshall writes, made an end run around the department’s Yaqui expert, with the other committee members overly impressed by his au courant melange of fieldwork and gauzy ruminations, despite the fact that his timelines and grasp of mycology didn’t make sense. “If we stop telling ourselves that the world is so-and-so, the world will stop being so-and-so,” Don Juan mused. Perversely, Castaneda’s success proved him right.
“American Trickster,” at more than 600 pages, is at once more information about Castaneda than any reader needs, and not nearly enough. Marshall (who in 2006 published a novel, “A Separate Reality,” inspired by Castaneda), has gone to ground on every element of his subject’s life, from his upbringing in Peru to his celebrity (he’d find his way into the orbits of former Gov. Jerry Brown, Federico Fellini and Oliver Stone at various points), to the years before his death of liver cancer in 1998. By that point he’d focused his attention on Tensegrity, a modified martial arts practice demonstrated at pricey workshops, and gathered a host of followers, mostly women, who he played against each other and psychologically abused in various ways.
But who did this guy think he was? How did he come to invent such a strange spiritual system, and develop the nerve to sell it both to mainstream publishers and the academic establishment? Why did he keep a box of knives under his bed? “Carlos acted in the zone where the trickery of the cult leader and that of the literary hoaxer (and the anthropological hoaxer) overlap,” Marshall writes. But all the biographical detail brings us no closer to what made him such a successful triple threat of eyewash.
Perhaps a book that couched Castaneda’s story more deeply in the context of the ’70s counterculture and the nature of cults past and present would make his story clearer. But perhaps not — his tale is inevitably something to wonder at, evidence of humans’ capacity to spin a yarn that flatters our egos and urge to understand our spiritual selves, and to buy into what’s spun.
Maybe it’s unsurprising that one of the first people to publicly sound the alarm about Castaneda was a novelist. In 1972, Joyce Carol Oates wrote a letter to the New York Times Book Review questioning a credulous review of Castaneda’s books. (The New York Times had spiked a more skeptical one, Marshall reports.) “It is quite possible that Don Juan represents a ‘non-ordinary’ reality so strange to me that I cannot accept it, and must try to reason my way out of believing,” she wrote. “But I don’t think so… I’d be very interested in whether other readers share my bewilderment.” No doubt others did. But what if bewilderment was exactly what they were seeking?
Athitakis is a writer in Phoenix and author of “The New Midwest.”
Koe Wetzel brought his brawny yet soulful new country-rock album, “The Night Champion,” to the Grammy Museum in Los Angeles on Monday night. It’s the 33-year-old Texas native’s follow-up to 2024’s hit “9 Lives,” which spun off a chart-topping single in “High Road”; it’s also his first LP since the birth last year of his daughter, Woods. After the show — in which he was accompanied by his producer Gabe Simon, who’s also known for his work with Noah Kahan — I spoke with Wetzel about the album’s inspirations and about the food-court staple that rhymes with his last name.
My favorite song, you didn’t play it: “I’ll Lock Up.” That’s a song where your vocal is mournful, but you’re resigned — it’s an emotionally sophisticated song. How’d you write it?
We kind of came into it to be as realistic as possible. When people go through stuff like that — through breakups, whatever it is — no matter what it is, I’m probably still gonna take you back at the end of the day. And I think kind of being in that situation, kind of going back on past relationships, we just took a lot of past experiences from different folks and made it what it was. The scornful sadness from it, that might have came from a couple bottles of wine that I had before I got in the vocal booth.
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You write about toxic relationships, but now you appear to be in a stable relationship with the mother of your child. Have you lost the juice?
I don’t think so — I think it’s always gonna be there. Those are the easiest songs to write. It’s really hard for me to write a love song. And who knows, maybe this is the turning of the tide. I’ve got almost 12 years of toxic relationship songs, so maybe these next 10 years is the love, happy-go-lucky songs.
You’ve talked about cleaning up your act a little bit: drinking less, eating better, working out. Was there an animating head-on-the-floor moment?
I think whenever I found out that I was gonna be a dad, that was obviously a moment for me. I’d started cleaning up before she got here. And then when she got here, it was like, “All right, you got to get your s— together.” Not to say that I’m completely reformed — I still have my nights.
Back in your dark days, best bar in L.A.?
I never really went out a whole lot.
Drinking in the hotel room, huh? Dark.
That’s where all the songs come from.
You have two bar-restaurants, Koe Wetzel’s Riot Room — one in Fort Worth, one in Houston. I want to have a salad tonight. Should I have the blackened chicken Caesar or the grilled chicken Cobb?
Grilled chicken Cobb, for sure.
OK, great.
Do we serve those at the restaurant?
Biggest mess you’ve ever gotten into as a restaurateur?
I don’t know, honestly. I’m more on the party side of things, so they don’t ask me about, “Hey, we’re gonna make this tweak to the menu — what do you think about it?” It’s more like, “What are the bottle girls wearing tonight?”
One more food-service-related question: You’re at the mall, you want a pretzel. Auntie Anne’s or Wetzel’s Pretzels?
Wetzel’s Pretzels all day, man. Go get you some — I get a little royalty there.
According to Mediabase, your song “High Road” was the most-played song on country radio in 2025. In what month did you start changing the channel when it came on?
I started changing it before it even came out. We finally got the new record out, and I’m sick and tired of it, because I’ve been listening to it for a year and a half now. But that’s pretty much how it was with “High Road.” So grateful for all the success — it’s really cool that people have jived with it and listened to it the way they have. But whenever I hear it now, I kind of turn a deaf ear to it, if that’s possible.
Your friend Morgan Wallen had a viral moment recently where he tipped over a piano. What instrument have you smashed?
Quite a few. Depending how much Jack Daniel’s I drank onstage, I was definitely smashing the bottle — glass everywhere. I destroyed the drums. There was actually a shirt we had that says “Koe Destroys Everything.” My bass player and guitar players, they know that whenever I get that stare, it’s kind of like: Protect your s—, or I’m gonna come smash it.
By my count, you say “f—” nine times on this record. Is that your favorite four-letter word?
It’s a pretty good one, man. Only nine times on the record?
Seems low to you.
I’m a big Tarantino and Scorsese fan, so I don’t know. I think it’s just such a fun word.
Last one: Your current radio single is called “Hurts Like You.” I’m gonna give you three songs that have “hurt” in the title, and you have to pick your favorite.
OK.
“Hurt” by Nine Inch Nails or Johnny Cash. “Hurts So Good” by John Mellencamp. “Everybody Hurts” by R.E.M.
“Hurt,” Johnny Cash.
I’m sorry, that’s not right.
It’s not? What is it? Is there a right answer?
Your favorite song is John Coug, “Hurts So Good.”
OK. [Sings] “Hurts so good…” Is that my favorite song?
Yeah.
All right. Let’s go, Coug.
HE is the nineties pop star who finally found his happily ever after.
But for Phats & Small singer Ben Ofoedu, the road to marital bliss was paved with a painful history of what he now describes as mental abuse and emasculation by former partner Vanessa Feltz. Something which friends of the Channel 5 presenter vehemently deny.
A year on from his lavish £100,000 Cumbrian wedding to aesthetics entrepreneur Vanessa Brown – affectionately dubbed Vanessa 2.0 by the man himself – the 53-year-old musician is practically glowing.
He is happier, healthier, and four stone lighter. But behind his beaming smile and the tales of his idyllic new life, there lies a darker, turbulent history that he is only just now ready to reveal to the world.
In a searingly honest new interview with The Sun, Ben has opened up about the toxic reality of his 17-year relationship with television and radio veteran Vanessa Feltz, making explosive allegations about the profound psychological toll of their high-profile romance.
While the collapse of his engagement to the Channel 5 presenter in 2023 was highly publicised following his admitted infidelity, Ben claims the public has only ever heard half the story. Now, after intense therapy and finding true love, he is shedding light on what really went on behind closed doors.
Through his recent charitable endeavours with his new bride, the singer has found himself reflecting heavily on his own past.
“We do a lot of charity stuff for victims of abuse, and you come across a lot of men in these situations,” Ben explains.
“Men who’ve been mentally abused, not so much physically. People think abuse means physical, but you can be abused mentally.
“Everything from emasculation to being told you’re not good enough. It’s like a self-fulfilling prophecy.”
When asked if this observation stems from his own personal experience with his famous ex-fiancée, Ben doesn’t flinch.
“Yeah, oh yeah, without a doubt,” he states firmly. “Emasculation, people referring to you as not being able to read, down-talking you, a constant barrage of insults. People don’t have to look too far to see where it came from.”
The trauma, he reveals, is deep-seated, creeping up on him over the course of almost two decades.
He recalls: “When I was out of it. When you’re in it, it’s so subtle, so gradual that you don’t quite see it happening, you don’t quite know. You question everything and ask, ‘Why did that happen? Why did I feel like that?’ When someone professional starts going through it with you, you can see the patterns and stuff like that. Yeah, I had therapy after that.”
Today, Ben refuses to even utter his ex’s name, a stark indicator of the deep freeze between the former couple.
“There is only one Vanessa,” he declares, referring lovingly to his new bride. “I don’t know that other lady. And I definitely don’t know her from the comments she’s said. I don’t know that lady anymore.”
He confirms that he has no contact with the 64-year-old broadcaster, nor does he have any desire to ever cross paths with her again.
He insists: “No, not at all, and I really wouldn’t want to. I’ve got nothing to do with her, I want nothing to do with her. People are in your life for a season, a reason, or a lifetime, and she was there for a season. It was a long season, but it was maybe a bit too long.”
The fallout from the split undeniably damaged his public reputation, painting him squarely as the villain of the piece.
But Ben is deeply critical of how his former flame handled the break-up.
“The truth is, I’m kind of a musician, and that’s kind of what it is, it’s only tied to her until something else happens and there’s a new story being written, it’s the past really, that’s what that is.
“I’ve not really much to say for her. I think she was completely classless the way she dealt with things, it’s not my sort of person, I don’t know her anymore, I don’t recognise her.”
Addressing the fallout and the damage to his reputation, Ben remains philosophical.
“Yes, completely. The great thing that happened was I got to know who my friends were,” he admits.
“I understand the general public doesn’t know me personally, but my wedding was a great testimony of the people who know me and the friends that I had, the people who really knew me. You reap what you sow; that’s all I can say. You reap what you sow. It doesn’t take a genius to see what’s going on.”
When pressed on the cheating scandal that ultimately torpedoed the relationship, Ben is defensive, taking a swipe at how his ex monetised the pain.
“Now about the infidelity, I never said that it was the way to do things,” he explains.
“For Vanessa, that was her story, and she used it and monetised it, and when it’s not working for her, she moved on to something else. I wouldn’t monetise a real relationship that had real problems. I think to tell the media that it’s over before you tell the person is not… I don’t know many situations that do that.”
When asked if his new wife worries about his history of being unfaithful, Ben is quick to shut down the narrative that he is a serial cheat.
He told me: “I don’t know if doing it once is a history, I don’t know if that constitutes a history of it. She made me look worse than I was, and it garnered a lot more attention. I don’t know if once is a history, that’s what I will say about that. There’s never been any conversation about that at all.”
He also casts doubt on whether his previous 16-year engagement was ever destined for the altar at all, bluntly suggesting the intention to actually tie the knot was not there “from the other side”.
He also has a brutal theory as to why his ex has failed to find lasting romance since their bitter split.
“I mean, I don’t know if I would want to be with a lady who’d want to discuss every single detail of their private life,” he said.
“I think how men saw me come out of that situation, they think, ‘No thanks, not for me’.”
But Ben is finally ready to reclaim his narrative. He is currently putting the finishing touches on his own autobiography, playfully titled Turnaround: Memoirs of an Ageing Boy Bander, which he hopes will hit the shelves this December.
“I’ve been writing it. I was going to put it out last year, but there were a few parts I missed out when I read through; I need to give the full context. Everything’s in the book; it’s about turnaround moments in my life, good and bad. That period of my life.”
“But it’s nice for people to see the actual context and how we got together and what happened behind closed doors, you’ve only heard her side of the story,” he adds, taking a thinly veiled swipe at his ex’s memoirs.
“I didn’t respond to anything she said in her book, and obviously it didn’t do very well, that’s the thing. I’m not doing it for that. I talk about my musical journey, it brings me up to the current day, and what a happy relationship can be like.”
He confirms no lawyers have had to get involved with his manuscript: “No, I won’t mention her name. She cleverly didn’t mention mine, she called me OHW [One Hit Wonder], but people will know.”
Asked if the book will definitely hit shelves this year, he says: “Aiming for December, but I don’t know. It’s not quite finished, I need to type two more chapters, making sure everything is real and really happened, making sure. We’re hoping for December, that’s what we’re pushing towards.”
The contrast between his turbulent past and his blissful present truly couldn’t be starker. Ben is buzzing with energy as he discusses his 30-year-old wife, Vanessa Brown.
The couple, who married after a whirlwind romance, are utterly inseparable.
“I found myself again, I am buzzing,” he says. “Every day is happy, we got together, and within six months we were married, when you know you know.”
He has strong advice for others when it comes to love, formed by the fire of his past mistakes.
“These long drawn-out engagements, unless you’ve got a couple of kids and are waiting to afford the wedding, I think they’re pointless,” he says.
“You’re engaged to be married, not to be engaged. I don’t think that works, and that’s just from experience. If you meet someone, within six months, you pretty much know whether you’ll get married or not. Don’t carry on the relationship more than six months if you’re not sure you want to spend the rest of your life with that person.”
He also revealed that the couple are actively trying for a baby.
“Hopefully, by the end of the year, that’s what we’re trying to do. If Vanessa fell pregnant late this year, that would be amazing news; that’s why we’re travelling and doing all the things couples do before they have kids.
“We want as many as God provides. I come from a big family, and I know what it’s like to have brothers and sisters. I always loved that growing up.”
For Ben Ofoedu, the dark days of his past are now firmly in the rearview mirror.
He insists that with Vanessa 2.0 by his side, a tell-all book on the way, and exciting baby plans for the couple, his life is now complete.
Representatives for Vanessa Feltz were contacted for comment.
A NOUGHTIES pop star has hinted he’s quitting fame after 25 years in the spotlight as furiously ranted online.
The 42-year-old took to his Instagram to share some hard truths about the industry and told how he’d rather live a simpler live.
Lee Ryan, a star of the 90s boyband Blue, explained that he’s “been through hell and back” and said he now “hates the public eye.”
The singer found fame in the early 2000s after the band achieved massive success with their debut album All Rise in 2001.
Blue, who have three UK Number 1 Platinum-selling albums, are still going strong, with tours lined up for the rest of this year and next.
Alongside Antony Costa, Duncan James and Simon Webbe, Lee has been taking to the stage but it seems he’s not entirely happy.
He posted a picture of himself singing at a concert on Instagram and captioned it with the statement: “As much as I love my career I’ve had for 25 years singing in Blue, sometimes I just want to go home to be a husband and father to my baby’s.
“There’s no place I feel more at peace than with them. This industry sucks you in and spits you out the other end… I’ve been through hell and back in the public eye and I actually hate it now.”
Lee continued: “I don’t like the fame part of this job anymore, it’s fake and quite toxic. People use you and abuse you and use your success as a weapon.”
“Don’t get me wrong I love singing and being creative making music and seeing the fans at shows,” said Lee.
“The rest I could leave behind and never step foot into that space again happily… I have no interest in the industry bs anymore…. Rather be home being a dad and a husband x”
Fans took to the comments to support Lee while some felt annoyed that they had brought tickets and could see he “didn’t want to do it anymore.”
One fan wrote: “I love blue, I still do. But at the concert I feel like I could see that you don’t really want it anymore. It‘s sad because people pay money to see the absolute best of you…”
Another fan said: “Thank you for carrying on and bless us with your beautiful voice. There is no place like home and I am sure your family is forever proud of you.”
A third fan added: “You would be missed, your voice, stage presence and banter is truly in a small minority BUT you have to do what’s best for you.”
Lee’s wife Verity also rushed to support her man. She said: “You get to do both!!! Be a pop star and come back to reality and live on the farm in the sunshine!!! We love you Mr, keep going nearly home time xxx”
The couple, who married in Gibraltar in 2022, share four children together.
Blue took a hiatus in 2004 but later reformed with the original bandmembers in 2011.
WASHINGTON — Debris from the demolition of the White House East Wing that was dumped at a nearby public golf course has tested positive for lead, chromium and other toxic metals, the National Park Service said.
An interim report by a Virginia engineering firm says the toxic metals, along with PCBs, pesticides, petroleum byproducts and other chemicals were detected at levels above laboratory reporting limits in soil at the East Potomac Golf Links, a historic golf course that President Trump plans to renovate.
The park service began dumping debris from the East Wing onto the golf course in October, and more than 810,000 cubic feet of excavated soil had been transported to the site as of last month, the report by Jacobs Engineering Group Inc. said. The report was requested by the park service.
The nonprofit DC Preservation League has sued the Trump administration, arguing that the dumping was unlawful and possibly hazardous. The group also is challenging the Republican administration’s takeover of the golf course, about two miles southeast of the White House, and others in the city.
The suit is one of several legal battles challenging Trump’s extraordinary efforts to put his mark on public spaces in the nation’s capital, including renaming and shuttering the Kennedy Center and building a 250-foot-tall triumphal arch near the Lincoln Memorial.
At the end of last year, a separate group of preservationists filed a lawsuit seeking to prevent the administration from demolishing the East Wing so it could build a ballroom, a project slated to cost $400 million.
A spokesperson for the Interior Department, which oversees the park service, said in an email Tuesday that the soil removed from the White House “was tested multiple times by multiple parties, and this project passed all standards set by law.”
Although the agency does not comment on litigation, “this thorough process was followed to ensure the transfer was safe for the public,’’ the email said.
The Preservation League’s executive director, Rebecca Miller, said Tuesday that experts were still analyzing the engineering report. The group also is concerned about whether the Trump administration is complying with federal laws including the National Historic Preservation Act and the National Environmental Policy Act, she said.
Debris from the East Wing demolition is so prevalent that it causes golfers to detour around piles of it, Miller said. “If you Google you’ll see lots of photos of golfers walking past it,” she said in an interview.
The Trump administration’s plans to renovate the 105-year-old course to make it a professional-level course would permanently alter its historic character and layout, Miller said.
A federal judge told the government on Monday not to cut down more than 10 trees without first providing notice amid the legal dispute.
U.S. District Judge Ana Reyes said during a remote hearing that she wasn’t going to issue a temporary restraining order just yet, but she indicated she would take a harsh view of any major alterations made without prior notice.
Democracy Forward, a national legal organization that is co-representing the Preservation League, said in a press release that “further scrutiny will be required related to potential toxins that were dumped at East Potomac Park by the administration as part of the destruction of the East Wing of the White House.”
Test results released by the government “suggest the Defendants dumped a cocktail of contaminants — and despite indications of the refuse’s contents, they continued dumping it,” the group said.
Kevin Griess, the superintendent of the National Mall and Memorial Parks for the park service, said during Monday’s court hearing there was no immediate plan to begin tree removal but added that a safety assessment was underway.
Trump, an avid golfer, also plans on renovating a military golf course just outside Washington that has been used by past presidents going back decades.
In its statement, the Interior Department said it is “committed to continuing the relationships we have built with the local golf communities to ensure these courses are safe, beautiful, open, affordable, enjoyable, accessible, and world-class for people living in and visiting the greatest capital city in the world.”
Daly and Fields write for the Associated Press.
