Note:City Section Finals Thursday, Nov. 12 at Palisades (Division I at 5 p.m., Open Division at 7 p..m.);Southern Section Finals (all divisions) Saturday, Nov. 14 at Mt. San Antonio College.
101 East reveals Nepal’s efforts to save lives and rebuild communities after a devastating natural disaster.
On the morning of August 26, 2026, a devastating flash flood of rock and ice thundered from a high Himalayan mountain through Nepal’s valleys, sweeping away homes, villages and bridges.
At least 1,400 people were killed and more than 5,000 people remain missing.
It was the latest in a series of natural disasters that have battered Nepal in recent years as climate change accelerates.
This programme follows the rescuers risking their lives to search for the missing and those providing aid and refuge for traumatised children and families.
101 East reveals Nepal’s efforts to save lives and rebuild communities after a deadly natural disaster.
NEW pictures have been released of the huge new UK water resort featuring three themed areas, promising Brits a tropical escape closer to home.
Set to open in 2029, Therme Manchester is set to cost £500million and will boast 10 pools, 18 waterslides and 20 saunas and steam rooms.
A new £500million water resort is set to open in Manchester in 2029Source: Therme GroupThe massive complex will feature 18 waterslides and more than 20 saunas and steam roomsSource: Therme Group
Spread across a 28- acre site in TraffordCity, there will also be outdoor green spaces surrounding the glas-s domed building.
Newly released images show the indoor and outdoor spaces, as well as the wellbeing garden.
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There will also be a new public plaza that will connect the resort to the Bridgewater Canal, where visitors can sit by the canal just metres from the resort.
Another image shows the front of the complex, where the tram will run past.
And a third image shows a central walkway through part of the complex with pools and lounge areas.
As for the green spaces, images show lots of different gardens with raised areas and hundreds of palm trees.
The complex will made up of three areas – Play, Relax and RestoreSource: Therme GroupTwo of the areas will be adults-only and the other area will be open to familiesSource: Therme Group
Previous plans included two multi-storey car parks, but these have now been scrapped with parking spread across the entire site to retain views across the resort.
The attraction will be split into three areas – Play, Restore and Relax.
The Play zone will be ideal for families with lots of fun water features, a pool, a beach, lounging areas and family dining experiences.
Then in the Relax zone, which will be adults-only, there’s a focus on “premium wellbeing experiences” with indoor and outdoor pools, waterfall showers, mineral baths, steam rooms and saunas and casual dining.
New images reveal that the resort will have multiple outdoor gardens with palm treesSource: Therme GroupAnd instead of two multi-storey car parks, the parking will now be spread across the complex to not obstruct views of the resortSource: Therme Group
And then in the Restore zone – the second adults-only area – there will be “industry leading health, nutrition and wellbeing therapies”, “sauna rituals”, experience showers, wellbeing consultations and dining.
Construction on the first pool is due to start next week and once the resort is open, it is expected to attract two million visitors each year.
The resort also recently announced that it was partnering with Marriott International with Marriott Bonvoy members being offered exclusive travel and stay packages linked directly to Therme destinations – which will include Manchester.
HIGH SCHOOL BOYS WATER POLO SOUTHERN SECTION PLAYOFFS TUESDAY’S RESULTS Second Round
DIVISION 2 Murrieta Valley 12, Palos Verdes 11 Redondo Union 7, Royal 5 Damien 13, Dana Hills 11 La Habra 13, Northwood 11 St. John Bosco 9, Pasadena Poly 5 El Segundo 18, Capistrano Valley 10 Alta Loma 13, Bonita 7 Crescenta Valley 13, Santa Monica 11
DIVISION 3 Norco 12, Camarillo 10 La Serna 9, Millikan 5 Ayala 10, Walnut 9 Troy 17, Brentwood 13 La Canada 6, Flintridge Prep 5 Elsinore 8, Redlands 7 Los Osos 14, Trabuco Hills 12 Los Altos 14, Cathedral 13
DIVISION 4 Liberty 8, San Dimas 4 Aquinas 12, Carpinteria 10 Temescal Canyon 14, Sunny Hills 11 Buena Park 8, West Covina 4 El Toro 6, Yorba Linda 5 Warren 15, Western 12 Foothill Tech 12, Pasadena 9 Laguna Hills 9, Arlington 5
DIVISION 5 Montebello 12, Keppel 5 Torrance 13, San Bernardino 5 Riverside North 10, Norte Vista 8 Anaheim 15, San Gorgonio 9 Oxnard 10, Whittier 9 Montclair 8, Lakewood 7 Hacienda Heights Wilson 10, Heritage 9 California 25, Palm Springs 9
THURSDAY’S SCHEDULE (Games at 5 p.m. unless noted) Quarterfinals
DIVISION 1 Mira Costa at Westlake Mater Dei vs. Buena, site TBA Huntington Beach at Laguna Beach Yucaipa vs. Dos Pueblos, site TBA
Note:Quarterfinals (Divisions 2-5) Friday, Nov. 6 at home sites; Semifinals (Open Division) Saturday, Nov, 7 at home sites; Semifinals (Divisions 2-5) Tuesday, Nov. 10 at home sites; Semifinals (Division 1) Wednesday, Nov. 11 at home sites; Finals (all divisions) Saturday, Nov. 14 at Mt. San Antonio College.
San Bernardino vs. Torrance at Redondo Union, 3 p.m.
Norte Vista at Riverside North
Anaheim at San Gorgonio
Whittier at Oxnard
Lakewood at Montclair
Heritage at Hacienda Heights Wilson
California vs. Palm Springs at Palm Springs Swim Center, 4 p.m.
THURSDAY’S SCHEDULE
(Games at 5 p.m. unless noted)
Quarterfinals
DIVISION 1
Mira Costa at Westlake
Mater Dei vs. Buena, site TBA
Huntington Beach at Laguna Beach
Yucaipa vs. Dos Pueblos, site TBA
Note:Quarterfinals (Divisions 2-5) Friday, Nov. 6 at home sites; Semifinals (Open Division) Saturday, Nov, 7 at home sites; Semifinals (Divisions 2-5) Tuesday, Nov. 10 at home sites; Semifinals (Division 1) Wednesday, Nov. 11 at home sites; Finals (all divisions) Saturday, Nov. 14 at Mt. San Antonio College.
Note:Second Round (Divisions 2-5) Tuesday, Nov. 3, at home sites; Quarterfinals (Division 1) Thursday, Nov. 5 ,at home sites; Quarterfinals (Divisions 2-5) Friday, Nov. 6, at home sites; Semifinals (Open Division) Saturday, Nov, 7, at home sites; Semifinals (Divisions 2-5) Tuesday, Nov. 10, at home sites; Semifinals (Division 1) Wednesday, Nov. 11, at home sites; Finals (all divisions) Saturday, Nov. 14, at Mt. San Antonio College.
Orange Lutheran vs. Huntington Beach at Westminster
Yucaipa vs. San Clemente at Vista Hermosa Sports Park
Los Alamitos at Dos Pueblos
SATURDAY’S SCHEDULE
First Round
OPEN DIVISION
Beckman at Newport Harbor, 2 p.m.
Loyola at Oaks Christian, 11 a.m.
Corona del Mar at Harvard-Westlake, 1 p.m.
Santa Margarita at JSerra, 3 p.m.
Note:Second Round (Divisions 2-5) Tuesday, Nov. 3 at home sites; Quarterfinals (Division 1) Thursday, Nov. 5 at home sites; Quarterfinals (Divisions 2-5) Friday, Nov. 6 at home sites; Semifinals (Open Division) Saturday, Nov, 7 at home sites; Semifinals (Divisions 2-5) Tuesday, Nov. 10 at home sites; Semifinals (Division 1) Wednesday, Nov. 11 at home sites; Finals (all divisions) Saturday, Nov. 14 at Mt. San Antonio College.
This road trip continues a series exploring California’s overlooked scenic highways, inspired in part by artist Earl Thollander’s 1971“Back Roads of California,” whose sketches and travel notes celebrated a slower way of traveling. After tracing Highway 127 along the edge of Death Valley and State Route 78 through the badlands of Anza Borrego, the journey now shifts to the north.
If you’ve ever found yourself driving along Highway 395, chances are good you’ve been craning your head west toward the Range of Light, staring at the formidable granite peaks of the Sierra Nevada.
I wouldn’t blame you.
The escarpment rises precipitously from the sagebrush-covered valley floor, climbing through pinyon and juniper woodlands into thick pine forests. Deep, twisted canyons cut into the mountainsides, their channels lined with aspen, before the forests give way to the exposed granite slopes and summits rising above 14,000 feet.
While I’ve spent countless days wandering that high country, camping in its meadows and watching shooting stars rip across the sky, I’ve spent the last decade driving up the 395 with my eyes fixed to the east. Here, the Sierra Nevada gives way to the sand-colored mountains and salty lakes of the Basin and Range, the arid region writer Mary Austin called the “country of lost borders.”
Much of this vast landscape is public land managed by the Bureau of Land Management, some of the least understood and most threatened public lands in the West. These are places I’ve traversed, documented and obsessed over for years, culminating in my book “The Enduring Wild.”
A view of Adobe Valley on River Spring Road off of Highway 120.
(Josh Jackson)
There are many routes that can take you east from the 395 and deep into the parched heart of these landscapes, but there is one route that stands above the rest. It’s what locals call Mono Mills Road and what road warriors nicknamed the “roller coaster highway” for its stomach-lifting undulations.
Welcome to State Route 120 East.
With the highway typically closing for the winter in December, there’s still time to experience this remarkable stretch of road before the snow arrives. The 45-mile route begins a few miles south of Lee Vining, where big sagebrush and rubber rabbitbrush paint the early miles in olive green and mustard yellow, a rich palette against the muted gravelly slopes of the Mono-Inyo Craters, a 25-mile-long volcanic chain of young rhyolite lava domes.
Soon, the highway cuts through miles of gray and white volcanic pumice and ash, creating a lunar-like landscape that manages to confuse the visual senses. Almost nothing grows here except the resilient Jeffrey pine, with its deep taproot and remarkably low metabolic demand. Each tree stands alone, as if carefully placed on the landscape. You can’t help but pull over and wander through the scratch-and-sniff trees, their bark releasing the scent of vanilla and butterscotch.
Ever present to the south, Mono Lake dominates the view from the highway. Its waters are part of the ancestral homeland of the Kootzaduka’a, whose name, meaning “brine fly eaters,” reflects their longstanding relationship with the lake and its ecology. My favorite time to visit is in late summer and fall, when migratory birds converge on the lake to feast on its abundant brine shrimp and alkali flies. For Wilson’s phalaropes, Mono Lake is often their last chance to fatten up before flying nonstop to South America.
Sagehen Summit offered spectacular views of fall foliage.
(Josh Jackson)
Wild horses roam.
(Josh Jackson)
In “Roughing It,” Mark Twain describes his visit to the lake, where he found “nothing but solitude, ashes, and heartbreaking silence.” For him, the area was “little graced with the picturesque.” You will still find solitude, but I doubt you’ll share Twain’s myopic opinion of beauty.
Twain wasn’t the last to overlook the value of Mono Lake. In 1941, the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power began diverting water from streams that feed the lake, sending it to the City of Angels via its controversial aqueduct. After just four decades, the lake had dropped nearly 50 feet, doubled in salinity and shrunk to half its original volume.
Without the formation of the Mono Lake Committee in 1978 by a group of upstart citizens, the lake might well have suffered the fate of Owens Lake, which had been drained decades earlier by the same Los Angeles aqueduct, leaving behind an eerily dry and dusty salt flat. A landmark 1994 decision curtailed LADWP water diversions, but three decades later, the lake remains roughly 10 feet below its state-established target elevation.
“We saved the lake from destruction,” Bartshé Miller, policy director for the Mono Lake Committee, told me by phone. “But we haven’t gotten the patient out of the hospital yet.” For those who want to help protect the lake, Miller suggests signing up for the committee’s newsletter to learn more about ongoing conservation efforts and ways to get involved.
Back on the highway, the road climbs steadily, surpassing 8,000 feet near mile 15. This is where Sagehen Meadows Road, a well-maintained gravel route, turns south. The 4-mile detour toward Sagehen Summit is worth your effort. In late September, the aspens covering the summit turn from green to amber gold, transforming the mountainside into an astonishing display of autumn color.
The sun kisses the mountains beyond in Adobe Valley.
(Josh Jackson)
Near the halfway point of the journey, another short dirt road leads to the BLM-managed Granite Mountain Wilderness, dominated by an 8,920-foot peak that resembles a stack of boulders glued together in the shape of a pyramid. With no trails on the mountain, reaching the top requires 1,800 feet of climbing. One sweltering July morning, two friends and I made the trek. We switchbacked up steep sandy pitches, scrambled over sections of class 3 granite, and reached the peak in the early afternoon. The summit register revealed roughly 40 names scribbled over the past decade, or what amounts to three or four people annually. Unbelievably, someone had already been there earlier that day, like a ghost we had neither seen nor heard nor felt. One of my companions added his name to the register and then wrote “sage for days.”
A few miles later, the highway earns its nickname as it quickly rises and falls over a succession of short hills that run through Adobe Valley. Between the crimson mesas rising above the flats, hidden lakes and springs, and the pronghorn and wild horses that roam the open country, this is my favorite place to venture off the highway and set up a camp chair. I would trade you a hundred Yosemite Valleys for the solitude and subtle beauty offered here at dusk, as the sun sets over the Glass Mountains and the sky turns mauve.
Forty-five miles after it began, the journey through volcanoes, salt lakes, pine forests, aspens and a valley that stretches across the horizon comes to an end at a lonely intersection with U.S. Route 6, which, improbably, runs all the way to Provincetown, Mass. I’ve made this drive a dozen times, and it’s the quiet and open spaces that always bring me back. The Sierra will always rightly command attention. But there’s an entire world waiting for those willing to turn east.
The route: State Route 120 East, between Highway 395 to U.S. Route 6
Distance: 45 miles (one way)
Drive time: 1.5 hours straight through; allow a full day for stops
Best time to go: With an average elevation of roughly 7,000 feet, the road is usually closed from December until late spring, when snowmobiles are the only way in (in 2023, the road didn’t open until July 1). You can find up to date Highway 120 closures on Caltrans website.
Fuel:
Lee Vining (Mile 0)
Benton (Mile 45)
Food/coffee:
Camping:
Lodging:
El Mono Motel: Charming, family-run boutique lodging and coffee house.
The Inn at Benton Hot Springs: Rustic elegance in a tranquil surrounding, the perfect spot to get away from it all and to relax and rejuvenate in the historic hot springs.
Lake View Lodge: Cozy lodge with basic amenities and a cafe.
Hike/Explore/Learn:
Notes:
These lands are the very definition of a landscape that requires all of us to “pack out what we pack in.” The only pit toilets are found at the South Tufa Interpretive Trail near mile 5.
Dispersed camping is allowed on BLM land and in the National Forest around Sagehen Summit. There are dozens of gravel roads skirting the area where you can pull off the highway and park/camp for the night (please look for spaces that have previously been occupied). Many of these side roads are 2WD friendly, but please exercise caution!
The story of “Small Prophets” — the gentle, magical, nostalgic British comedy streaming on Apple TV — begins and ends in a garden shed. The show’s creator, writer and director, Mackenzie Crook, and the animator Ainslie Henderson have been friends for at least 20 years. One day, Henderson went to visit Crook in the shed at the end of his garden.
It’s “a big mess of a creative little place,” Henderson said, where Crook makes things. He writes in there, but it’s a workshop too: he illustrates and he crafts. He made many of the props in the show by hand. Both the shed and his house are peppered with his “beautiful little objects.” “If I’ve got a whole day with no other interruptions, that’s where I am,” Crook said.
When Henderson walked into the shed that day, a weird, white, papier-mâché creature on the shelf caught his eye. It was, as Crook told Henderson, a homunculus: one of a set of tiny prophets, or magical spirits, who lived in glass jars full of water. They could answer any question, and they had to answer truthfully.
“Small Prophets” follows Michael Sleep (Pearce Quigley), who works in a DIY store (a British term for a home improvement store), visits his dad Brian (Michael Palin) in a retirement home, and yearns for his girlfriend Clea to come home. Clea vanished seven years ago, and Michael’s dad suggests that the homunculi — which he learned about from an Italian alchemist in Egypt — might be able to tell him what happened to her.
The show premiered on BBC Two in February, when it quickly became the BBC’s biggest new scripted launch of the year. (It was renewed for a second season in September, this time on BBC One.) In the U.K., Crook is well-known for playing Gareth Keenan in the original British version of “The Office” (Gareth’s an analogue to Dwight Schrute in the U.S. version) — and for writing, directing and starring in “Detectorists,” which won the 2015 BAFTA for television scripted comedy.
“Detectorists” and “Small Prophets” share a singular comedic sensibility, which arose from Crook’s realization that some shows at that time, like “The Office” or “The Inbetweeners,” were drawing humor from cruelty, embarrassment and awkwardness. This is how he stumbled upon his genre: gentle comedy.
“I didn’t like the word ‘gentle’ at first,” Crook said on a video call earlier this month from Leeds, Yorkshire, where he’s directing his first feature film. “It’s taken me a while to make my peace with that. But now I realize that it’s something to do with being uncynical, being optimistic, but hopefully that doesn’t mean bland or unfunny. … It’s sort of a surprise to find that this is what I do, and this is what I’ve become known for. But I’m thankful for it, as well, because I think this world does need more optimism and hope than it presently has.”
He worries that “gentle” might suggest something not particularly funny or challenging, and would like to clarify that was not his intent. It wasn’t the outcome, either: “Small Prophets” is about some of the most challenging subject matter — grief and loss — while remaining genuinely funny and rather extraordinary.
Mackenzie Crook, who created “Small Prophets,” plays Gordon, Michael’s boss at the DIY store. (Apple)
Michael (Pearce Quigley) befriends Kacey (Lauren Patel), his co-worker at the store. (Apple)
Michael has the epitome of an ordinary life, living a mundane existence in a suburban cul-de-sac, dutifully eating his Malted Squares cereal each morning, and evading his boss at the DIY store (played by a ponytailed, bespectacled Crook). He befriends Kacey (Lauren Patel) at work, a May-December friendship somewhat based on Patel and Quigley’s own (they met working on a radio play). But somehow, Michael is simultaneously “a magnet for beautiful, crazy things,” Crook said.
When oil spills from his dusty, beat-up blue car, it pools into the shape of a big, black rabbit. A shooting star, or rather a meteor, may or may not have landed somewhere inside his house. A room inside is frozen in time, forever decorated for an ‘80s-themed Christmas — a surprise that Clea never got to see. And then there are the homunculi.
The inspiration came from a short passage in “Clea,” the fourth book in Lawrence Durrell’s “Alexandria Quartet,” which references the creatures. “It just fascinated me that he put it in this novel apropos of nothing else,” Crook said. “It didn’t add to the plot.” He squirreled the idea away until he knew what to do with it. Crook is a big fan of David Lynch, and referenced an old trick of his: To make a movie, first come up with 70 ideas.
The homunculi were one of those seed ideas for “Small Prophets.” Crook knew he wanted to set the show in modern-day suburbia, in a cul-de-sac. He knew he wanted to work with Quigley, who plays Michael. And he knew he wanted to work with Henderson, his animator friend, on those homunculi. (In the early stages of design, Crook made illustrations of what the prophets might look like. “They’re like Francis Bacon paintings,” Henderson said. “They’re mad-looking things.”)
Henderson worked on the show with Will Anderson, the former as a stop-motion animator, the latter on digital animation, 2-D animation, compositing and finishing shots. (Glen Southern designed and sculpted the creatures themselves, and they collaborated with Mackinnon & Saunders, a puppet fabricator that has worked on Guillermo del Toro’s “Pinocchio,” Wes Anderson’s “Fantastic Mr. Fox” and Tim Burton’s “Corpse Bride.” There were seven total puppets for three homunculi.)
As much as possible, Crook wanted this world to feel tangible; to achieve it, the team used in-camera effects and props as much as possible, rather than CGI. “It feels a bit more authentic … when it’s stop-motion. You can see the mark of the maker in every movement,” said Anderson in a video call with Henderson. The prophet puppets float “behind this warped glass, which is slightly abstracted and a bit more magical, and separates you from them in a really interesting way with reflections and inks.”
It’s almost as if the flesh-colored prophet puppets were actors, and Henderson directed them, Anderson said, manipulating their silicon bodies into position over and over again. In this analogy, Anderson would be ironing out logistics like camera angles or lighting. He made their garments, like the queen’s billowing cape (“ethereal clothes,” Henderson called them), digitally after the fact.
Crook knew that he wanted the homunculi to be almost still, as if someone had fallen into icy water, their cold, wet clothes clinging to them, barely wanting to move. Near-stillness is one of the hardest things to animate, Anderson pointed out. But “when it’s done well, it really binds, because they are thinking, alive things; they are. That’s our job to animate.”
For many, stop-motion holds a real nostalgia, Henderson said — another theme of the show, dovetailing with Michael’s yearning. Production designer Lucy Spink wove nostalgia into “Small Prophets,” especially in the Christmas room. She texted her sisters pictures of wallpaper options. “Which one makes you cry more?” she asked. “Or makes you feel like you remember being there?”
From a production angle, creating gentle comedy is “a tonal thing,” Spink said on a video call from the Yorkshire Dales. “You know how far to take it. That it isn’t extreme fantasy, but you’re pulling somewhere back from that. And it was a visual serendipity, is what I felt was what we tried to do, which was like the world was saying there’s a little something strange going on.”
If someone described this show as magical realism, Crook would “find that a compliment.” The first time he heard the phrase was about the 1992 Mexican romantic drama “Like Water for Chocolate,” which really struck him. “I just thought, wow, OK, you can do stuff like that, impossible stuff” — like a crocheted bedspread flying in a swirl of colors for a kilometer behind a carriage — “and ask people to believe it.”
“Like Water for Chocolate” is based on Laura Esquivel’s 1989 novel by the same name, which folds recipes into its story. One is for quail in rose petal sauce, which Crook made for his girlfriend at the time, whose name was Clea. She cried because she found the tiny bird so sad.
Kacey (Lauren Patel) gazes at one of the homunculi in a scene from the series.
(Apple)
There’s a quote from “Justine,” the first novel in the “Alexandria Quartet,” that I shared with Crook. It reminded me of how he had spoken about wanting to believe in the unexplained: “We are all hunting for rational reasons for believing in the absurd.”
“I’d not even picked up on that, but that’s it,” Crook said. “I’ve never believed in ghosts, but I would love to see one. And if I did, it would flip my world upside down. I’d have to reevaluate everything, and that would be an exciting thing. And I think ‘Small Prophets’ is a lot about that.”
The “Small Prophets” finale, dropping on Apple TV Nov. 4, channels that essence of storytelling — inexplicable but undeniably real — back into a garden shed. This time it’s Michael’s, engulfed by his wild garden, built with the exact same footprint as Crook’s own.
“That spirit that’s in the show: that gentle, warm funniness — that’s what he’s like to be with,” Henderson said. “Will and I went and stayed in his house, and he made us dinner, and we sat ‘round and drank wine and had a fun time storyboarding. That’s cool. That’s how life should be when you’re making stuff with people.”
A NEW attraction with an enormous lagoon and bright white sands is set to open a few hours from the UK.
Called Alovera Beach, it’s set to open in summer 2028 and the catch is that it’s nowhere near the coast.
Alovera Beach will be just outside of Madrid with a blue lagoon and white sandsCredit: Crystal LagoonsThe inland beach will be easy for Brits to reach thanks to quick and cheap flightsCredit: Crystal Lagoons
Instead, the company called Crystal Lagoons is hoping to open Europe’s largest man-made beach just outside of Spain’s capital, Madrid.
The project itself that’s 104,000 square metres is being built at the cost of €29million (£24.3million).
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At its centre will be a 21,000-square-metre artificial lagoon which will be surrounded by 16,000 square metres of white sand which makes for the perfect sunbathing spot.
The lagoon will be suitable for swimming as well as watersports like kayaking, paddleboarding and aqua fitness classes.
There will also be children’s attractions, relaxation spaces, food outlets and cafes.
On the sand will be an adults-only beach club with separate lounges to relax in as well as restaurants.
During the summer it’s hoping to hold seasonal events too including concerts, guest celebrations and even business events.
Looking at the details on its website, it looks like entry will be through memberships and daily passes.
Plans for Alovera Beach started back in 2017 and it has just taken a huge step forward with developers signing a formal construction-start document on October 21, 2026.
If all goes to plan, work is set to complete in March 2028 with it opening to the public a few months later in the summer months.
There will be room for watersports as well as relaxation and events at the beach clubCredit: Crystal Lagoons
When it does open, the inland beach will be easy for Brits to reach as Alovera is a 45-minute drive from Madrid.
One-way flights are as little as £20 and Brits can get there in less than two and a half hours.
The company has made 1,000 projects across 60 countries including the Evermore Orlando Resort.
It has a range of accommodation including guest rooms and suites to Walt Disney World around two enormous beach areas where visitors can try out kayaking and paddleboarding.
The lagoon here is larger than 25 Olympic-size swimming pools and has has two beach areas.
Secretary of State Marco Rubio has urged Cubans to secretly work with the CIA to topple their government. His appeal followed President Trump’s threat to send warships to Cuba after the Iran war. A 10-month US blockade has led to power outages and water shortages.
CAMILA Cabello accidentally poured water over her dancer before throwing the bottle in her FACE live on stage during a performance.
The awkward moment happened as the Havana songstress, 29, was doing her thing while singing her 2024 tune June Gloom.
Camila Cabello accidentally poured water over her dancer before dropping it in her FACE live on stageCredit: TiktokThe singer was showing off her best moves on stage when she made the blunderCredit: Tiktok
Camila looked incredible as she performed the song, which is from her fourth studio album, C,XOXO, while sitting on a rotating carousel.
The star wowed in an all-white outfit and matching knee high boots.
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Half way through she started to pour water over herself.
While she showed off her sexy dance moves, one of her dancers was on the floor pushing the carousel around with her arms.
The dancer carried on like a true professional as if nothing had happenedCredit: TiktokCamila pictured at the Lucas Museum of Narrative Art Opening Night in LA last monthCredit: Alamy
After Camila had finished with all the water in her bottle, she accidentally threw it into her dancer’s face.
But like a true professional, the dancer carried on as if nothing had happened.
Shortly after the tune ended, the pair pointed at each other and smiled as the dancer walked off stage.
The fan captioned the post: “The poor dancer taking a bottle accidentally from Camila lol.”
The superstar has had a pretty successful career since shooting to fame as part of Fifth Harmony on The X FactorUSA in 2012.
The girl group, which consisted of Ally Brooke, Dinah Jane, Lauren Jaurengui and Normani, ended up placing third on the second series of the singing competition.
Fifth Harmony released songs such as Worth It, Work from Home and That’s My Girl, and have won various awards.
The band were together until 2018 and reunited last year.
But Camila decided to go solo and left the group in 2016.
Her most popular songs include Havana, Senorita, Band Things, Never Ben The Same and My Oh My.
She dated singer Shawn Mendes between 2019 and 2021, and for a few months in 2023.
Fuerteventura may be famed for its white-sand beaches, clear waters and dramatic volcanic scenery, but beyond the packed resorts an abandoned leisure complex paints a far darker picture.
Libya’s eastern-based parliament has backed a 2019 maritime deal with Turkiye already signed by the North African nation’s internationally recognised government based in Tripoli to delimit maritime boundaries in the Mediterranean Sea.
The vote on Tuesday came as Turkiye has been cultivating close ties in recent years with the eastern parliament, backed by renegade military commander Khalifa Haftar. Ankara had helped the Tripoli government, known as the Government of National Accord (GNA), push back an offensive in 2020 by Haftar’s self-styled Libyan National Army (LNA) that aimed to capture Tripoli.
Egypt and the European Union have rejected the ratification of the maritime borders agreement, calling the deal “null and void”.
On Tuesday, the Tobruk-based House of Representatives voted unanimously to approve the agreement, reversing its 2020 rejection.
Israel also condemned the move while Greece, which said the agreement violates international law, briefed the United Nations Security Council.
Turkish Foreign Minister Hakan Fidan dismissed the criticism, calling the deal “entirely legitimate”.
So what is the deal, and why has it drawn such a backlash? Here’s what you need to know:
What is the deal?
It is a memorandum of understanding that draws a sea border between Turkiye and Libya across the eastern Mediterranean.
It was signed in Istanbul on November 27, 2019, by Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan and Fayez al-Sarraj, then-prime minister of the UN-recognised government in Tripoli.
Within weeks, Turkiye sent drones and military advisers to help repel Haftar’s assault on Tripoli.
The deal allowed Ankara to claim large and potentially gas-rich areas of the eastern Mediterranean.
Turkish Foreign Minister Hakan Fidan, right, meets with General Saddam Haftar, deputy commander of the self-styled Libyan National Army, in Ankara, Turkiye [File: Handout/Turkish Ministry of Foreign Affairs]
Why does Egypt oppose it?
Because Cairo says it cuts into Egyptian waters.
Egypt’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs said the agreement “constitutes a clear infringement upon Egypt’s sovereign rights within its exclusive economic zone and continental shelf”.
It said the ratification “carries no legal consequences for Egypt”.
President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi has historically been one of Haftar’s strongest backers, but experts said their relations have cooled because Haftar allowed his territory to be used to funnel support to the Rapid Support Forces (RSF) paramilitary group, which is fighting Sudan’s military, the AFP news agency reported.
Cairo is also now a close security ally of Ankara, and in July, Egypt refrained from objecting to a maritime line drawn between Benghazi and Turkiye.
According to exclusive information Al Jazeera received in July, the rapprochement between Ankara and Haftar’s general command included agreements on developing military facilities and advanced surveillance systems.
The agreements also included training programmes in Turkiye for eastern Libyan officers with specialised Turkish defence companies participating in the projects.
Wolfgang Pusztai, a security policy analyst and former Austrian defence attache in Greece, told Al Jazeera that a possible Turkish military presence in eastern Libya was “probably more of a concern for Egypt”.
“This is not so much an issue for Greece, which has a Turkish military presence next door anyway,” he said, adding, “I doubt Cairo would accept this.”
Security forces stand guard outside the parliament building in Tobruk, Libya [File: Esam Omran Al-Fetori/AP Photo]
Why does the EU oppose it?
Because two of its member states said it seeks to take their waters.
In a joint statement on Tuesday, European Council President Antonio Costa and European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen said the memorandum infringes on the sovereign rights of third states and does not comply with the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS).
They reaffirmed the bloc’s solidarity with Greece and Cyprus.
Athens said the deal ignores Greek islands, including Crete, Rhodes and Karpathos, and therefore infringes on its maritime territory, according to a briefing document from the Greek Ministry of Foreign Affairs.
Sotirios Zartaloudis, an associate professor in comparative European politics at the University of Birmingham, told Al Jazeera that Athens and Nicosia see the deal as a Turkish attempt to block the “crucial Great Sea Interconnector”.
The planned subsea power cable, which would link Greece’s grid to Cyprus and later Israel, has been delayed by a dispute between Athens and Ankara over waters off the Greek island of Crete, the Reuters news agency reported last year. The project is estimated to cost about $2.1bn.
Turkiye has not signed UNCLOS, which means Ankara is not bound by the treaty’s rules governing maritime boundaries.
On Wednesday, EU foreign policy chief Kaja Kallas urged all countries to respect member states’ sovereign rights under EU and international law, including UNCLOS.
Zartaloudis said both countries had pushed for the EU to condemn the deal, but “so far expectations were not met”, and that “they will try to gain further support against the deal”.
He added that “the main actor in the region is the US”, which he said had not repudiated the agreement.
What does Turkiye say?
Ankara said the deal is lawful and already in force.
Turkiye’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs said the memorandum safeguards both countries’ rights on the basis of international law and “the principle of equity”.
“There are countries reacting to this. We know why they are reacting,” Fidan told state media.
“However, this is an entirely legitimate deal, both from a legal and a statutory perspective,” he said.
Why did eastern Libya change its mind?
Because Ankara has spent years courting it and its parliament has new leadership.
After Ankara struck a deal with Haftar’s LNA in July, the eastern parliament on October 6 elected Al-Salhin Abdelnabi al-Obeidi as speaker, replacing Aguila Saleh after more than 12 years.
Al-Obeidi previously chaired the Libyan-Turkish parliamentary friendship committee.
Anas El Gomati, director of the Sadeq Institute, a Libyan think tank, told Al Jazeera that the turnaround in eastern Libya was about the route to the presidency under a US mediation plan for Saddam Haftar, Khalifa Haftar’s son and deputy commander.
“Turkiye is now the most consequential outside power in Libya with leverage over Tripoli and a military presence in the west, and he needs it to get there and to stay there,” El Gomati said.
“But a ratified treaty is hard to reverse, so Ankara gets something that looks permanent in return for support that, depending on how the Haftars use it, may not be,” El Gomati said.
Does the vote unite Libya’s rivals?
Not on the issues that divide them most.
Tripoli’s GNU welcomed Tuesday’s vote, meaning both of Libya’s rival centres of power now back the deal.
But El Gomati said the “unification was never about the sea”.
“It’s about who controls the budget, the army and the electoral commission, and this vote touches none of them,” he said.
What happens next?
Athens said it would take all appropriate measures to safeguard its sovereign rights.
El Gomati said implementation now depended on institutions such as Libya’s National Oil Corporation and he expected pressure “to be diplomatic and slow”.
Pusztai said the risk of naval incidents if Turkiye or Libya act on the deal at sea was “very high”.
He said it might also lead to the involvement of the EU naval mission enforcing the UN arms embargo on Libya since 2020.
In August 2020, months after the deal was signed with the GNU, Ankara sent the survey vessel Oruc Reis to explore for oil and gas in waters Greece claims, bringing the two NATO allies to the verge of military confrontation.
Faecal bacteria are contaminating water in wells and sinkholes in Mexico’s Yucatan state, which are a vital source of drinking water, according to a report by Greenpeace, a global environmental organisation.
The report, published on Tuesday, said nearby pig farms and municipal wastewater were likely sources of the pollution in the southeastern coastal state.
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“A range of chemical and microbiological indicators reveal a complex mosaic of severe, localised organic pollution,” it said.
Greenpeace called for an immediate moratorium on new industrial livestock operations and farm expansions in the peninsular state, which was once home to the ancient Maya civilisation.
With no above-ground rivers, groundwater is the Yucatan’s only freshwater source, and the area’s porous limestone bedrock lets pollutants quickly seep into the aquifer.
Laboratory results
The global environmental watchdog group commissioned an independent laboratory to test water at 17 sites near the state capital, Merida, in August.
The sites included household and farm wells, community water points and cenotes, the natural sinkholes that dot the Yucatan Peninsula, which is one of Mexico’s most popular tourist destinations.
According to the report, every sample showed some degree of contamination likely linked to faecal waste, and several sites appeared heavily polluted. Total coliform bacteria reached the test’s upper limit in 16 of 17 samples, and faecal coliforms did so in 13.
However, the tests cannot show whether the waste came from people or animals, and leaking septic tanks and municipal sewage may also contribute to contamination.
Greenpeace said, however, that separate testing using Pig2Bac, a pig-specific DNA marker method, detected pig faecal matter in samples analysed at laboratories at Johns Hopkins University in the US and Mexico’s National Autonomous University (UNAM).
Greenpeace said the results raise “critical accountability questions” about nearby pig farms.
Maya communities joined Greenpeace in demanding action from environmental authorities over the contamination.
Industrial pig farms
A UN report published in July found that there are more than 500 industrial pig farms across Yucatan state with more than 50,000 animals, many located near the lands and territories of Indigenous Peoples.
Marcos Orellana, a former UN special rapporteur who authored the report, said waste and chemicals from industrial farms “find their way very quickly” into the water communities use for bathing, cooking and drinking. He said most farms lack required permits and that regional government initiatives “remain insufficient”.
“The contamination of the waters that have sustained Mayan culture for millennia is predominantly coming from the industrial operations of the growth of animals,” Orellana said.
But Antonio Zumarraga, vice president of the Yucatan Citizen Scientific Water Observatory, defended the local pork industry, saying the sector has invested in water treatment and supports conservation programmes. He blamed local authorities for their inaction.
“It’s an issue that, as long as it doesn’t carry political weight for the government, they won’t do anything about it,” Zumarraga said.
The Yucatan state government was not available for comment, while Mexico’s national water commission, CONAGUA, did not immediately respond to a request for comment. Merida’s Association of Pig Farmers also did not respond to a Reuters request for comment.
THE highly anticipated Therme attraction coming to Manchester has just announced some big changes.
The first-of-its-kind resort in the UK, has altered its £500million design – but it will still have indoor beaches, waterslides and relaxation zones.
Therme Manchester has altered its design to become ‘more striking’Credit: UnknownThe new design will give Therme more transport links within ManchesterCredit: Trafford Council
According to reports, Therme has tweaked its layout to create a “more striking design”.
One of the new additions will be a public plaza which will link the resort and the Bridgewater Canal – and it’s adding a 53,000sq ft wellbeing garden.
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In the updated plans, the two multi-storey car parks have also been removed to “create more open views”.
There will still be parking, but this has been relocated and the number of spaces has been reduced by around 100.
The new plan’s aim is to have better connections with local transport which includes the Metrolink station at the Trafford Centre.
Everything else about £500million Therme Manchester resort remains the same.
Inside the resort, visitors can expect a large-scale waterpark with more than 25 waterslides as well as a wave pool.
It will be heated to 33C and will have lots of spa and wellness facilities that will be split into three different zones these will eb called Play, Relax and Restore.
In the Play zone will be ‘next-generation’ water fun, a warm water pool, steam rooms, saunas as well as lounging and family dining experiences.
It will also add new links for public transport including rail serviceCredit: Therme Manchester
The Relax zone which will be adults-only with a focus on “premium wellbeing experiences”.
It will also have well as indoor and outdoor pools, waterfall showers, mineral baths, steam rooms, saunas and casual dining.
Finally, in the Restore Zone – the second adults-only area – there will be “industry leading health, nutrition and wellbeing therapies”, “sauna rituals”, experience showers, wellbeing consultations and dining.
In August of this year, the Therme Group announced it had reached a milestone of 12 tower cranes being built.
Inside will be an indoor beach, swimming pools and waterslides all split into three zonesCredit: Therme Manchester It recently celebrated a milestone in its constructionCredit: Therme Manchester
It said the progress marked “the start of an exciting new phase of construction for Therme Manchester.”
The Therme Group also recently announced it would be teaming up with Marriott International.
In terms of booking, Marriott Bonvoy members will be offered exclusive travel and lodging packages linked directly to Therme destinations – which when it opens will include Manchester.
Protesters in Guadalajara, Mexico, were seen climbing on the windows of Jalisco’s state government building on Sunday, spray painting it with graffiti. It was the second protest by residents demanding clean tap water.
Flash floods along Nepal’s Budhi Gandaki River swept away homes and bridges, forcing residents to flee to higher ground. Five people are missing, and six have been rescued, authorities said.
![Minister of Foreign Affairs Hakan Fidan met with Libyan National Army Deputy Commander General Saddam Haftar in Ankara. [Handout/Turkish MInistry of Foreign Affairs]](https://i0.wp.com/www.aljazeera.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/07/G6M_WQJWQAAIQcL-1784453011.jpeg?w=640&ssl=1)
