transfer

UCLA women’s basketball team has added some star power as its revamped roster begins to take shape.

Former Iowa State forward Addy Brown announced Thursday she is committing to UCLA, giving the Bruins one of the top players in the portal.

Brown averaged 11.9 points, 8.8 rebounds and 5.3 assists per game while shooting 43.1% from the floor and 33.8% from three-point distance with the Cyclones last season. She played just 21 games due to injury, but she is one of the better two-way players in the nation on the transfer market.

The 6-foot-2 forward co-starred with Audi Crooks for Iowa State the past few seasons and was a part of the mass exodus from the Cyclones’ program.

The Bruins reeled in former North Carolina junior guard Elina Aarnisalo and former Texas Christian senior guard Donovyn Hunter a few weeks ago, adding two more experienced players to the depleted starting lineup after a record six UCLA players were selected in the WNBA draft.

UCLA also signed Arkansas sophomore guard Bonnie Deas earlier this month. She is likely to start at point guard for the Bruins and is one of the best rebounding guards in the nation.

Along with returner Timea Gardiner, the Bruins are starting to form somewhat of a core to defend their national championship. Gardiner was a starter during UCLA’s 2024-25 Final Four run, but missed all of this past season with injury and has one season of eligibility left.

A lineup with Deas and Aarnisalo in the backcourt, Hunter at the three and Gardiner or Brown at the four and adding another big or Sienna Betts at the five would be a competitive lineup in the Big Ten.

Before going to TCU, Hunter played two seasons at Oregon State where she earned All-Pac-12 Defensive Team honorable mention and All-Pac-12 Freshman team honors. This past season with a Horned Frogs team that went to the Sweet 16, she was third in scoring with 10.2 points per game and averaged 3.2 rebounds per contest. She also shot 45.7% from the field and was 33.7% from beyond the arc.

Aarnisalo played her freshman year in Westwood after she originally committed to UCLA in 2025. Due to injuries from point guard Kiki Rice at the start of the 2024-25 season, she was forced into action early her freshman season and finished the year averaging 5.1 points per game.

The Helsinki, Finland, native averaged 10.2 points per game for the Tar Heels as a sophomore last season while shooting 47.3% from the field and 40.3% from the arc. The Bruins will desperately need to replace the three-point production lost with the departure of Rice, Gianna Kneepkens and Charlisse Leger-Walker.

UCLA coach Cori Close said she wanted to sign five players from the portal. She probably needs one more guard and a little more forward depth coming off the bench following the departures of Gabriela Jaquez and Angela Dugalic.

Lena Bilic and Amanda Muse are returners coming off the bench who got a little bit of playing time in the tournament and should have much larger roles, but they are still relatively unproven in late-game situations. They will get a chance to develop as backups with some more Power Four experienced starters now in the fold.

Additionally, it said the applications, “through a wholly-owned and financed government club”, were part of an “aim of facilitating transfers of allegiance and enabling those athletes to represent Turkey at future international competitions, including the Los Angeles 2028 Olympic Games”.

It added: “Given the common features across the applications, the panel assessed them together and determined that such an approach is inconsistent with the core principles of the regulations.

“As a result of the decisions, the athletes are not eligible to represent Turkey in national representative competitions or other relevant international events.”

The other athletes were Catherine Relin Amanang’ole, Brian Kibor, Ronald Kwemoi and Nelvin Jepkemboi from Kenya, Jamaica’s Rajindra Campbell, Jaydon Hibbert and Wayne Pinnock plus Nigeria’s Favour Ofili and Russian Sophia Yakushina.

April 11 (UPI) — After an about-face by the Trump administration, Britain said it is pausing a plan to transfer ownership of the Chagos Islands to Mauritius because it cannot complete the deal without U.S. support.

Britain on Friday said it is abandoning a deal to return sovereignty to the islands, which would have permitted the both countries to continue using the military base in Deigo Garcia they have operated since the 1970s, because there is not enough time for the U.K.’s parliament to pass a legislation on it, The Guardian reported.

The islands have been controlled by Britain since the 1800s, though in 1968 it granted independence to Maritius — which it also had controlled — but kept possession of the Chagos Islands.

President Donald Trump had in 2024 offered support for Britain to return the islands in return for continued use of the base, which includes billions in annual payments for doing so.

Trump withdrew his support for the deal earlier this year, calling it a “great act of stupidity,” less than a year after Secretary of State Marco Rubio and the Trump administration called the deal an “historic” achievement, at least partially because it kept the Diego Garcia base in use.

The change in opinion came, however, weeks before the United States and Israel started the war in Iran at the end of February because, he said at the time, the U.S. military may need to use the Diego Garcia base, The Hill reported.

“The U.K. had two objectives, one was to comply with international law, the second was to reinforce the relationship with the United States,” Simon McDonald, a former permanent secretary in Britain’s Foreign Office.

“When the president of the United States is openly hostile, the government has to rethink, so this agreement, this treaty, will go into the deep freeze for the time being,” McDonald said.

The deal to return the islands to Maritius stems from an overall effort by Britain to reckon with its colonialist history, as well as a 2019 international court decision that said it had acted illegally by separating the Chagos from Maritius in the 1960s.

The military base on Diego Garcia, which dates to a 1966 treaty between Britain and the United States — which the two countries cleared people living in the area from in order to construct it — was to give the two nations a 99-year lease to continue operating the base.

While the Trump initially supported the deal, it has long been controversial in Britain, with Kemi Badenoch, leader of Britain’s Conservative Party, said it took too long for the current U.K. government to give up on it.

Badenoch said the government had dragged its feet on dropping the deal, calling it a “damning indictment of a prime minister, who fought to hand over British sovereign territory and pay $47 million to use a crucial military base which was already ours.”