woman

The Villa Vie Odyssey will spend that time going round and round the world, stopping off at glamorous ports across the globe. Among those onboard in Californian resident Sharon Lane

A woman plans to spend the rest of her life on a cruise ship.

The moment that Sharon Lane stepped onto the Villa Vie Odyssey cruise ship in mid-June, she felt full of joy and relieved. The 77-year-old had been plotting to exchange her life on land for life at sea for a long time, and has now signed up to spend at least the next 15 years on the ship.

The Villa Vie Odyssey will spend that time going round and round the world, stopping off at glamorous ports across the globe. The ship is not like a typical cruise liner in that most passengers are long-term residents. Very few hop on for a quick jaunt around the Mediterranean, instead signing up for good, or at least the estimated 15-year lifetime of the vessel.

“I buy the cabin, I live in the cabin, and that’s it. And then there’s no end,” Sharon told CNN. She used her life savings to buy the cabin last year and, after a delay of several months, set sail on her new life at the end of September 2024 when the Odyssey cruised through her hometown of San Diego.

Do you have a cruise story to share? Email [email protected]

READ MORE: Terrifying Turkey wildfires rage through holiday district as 50,000 evacuated

For Sharon, she was tempted by the chance to see the world, but also to meet intriguing people. Villa Vie Residences’ CEO Mikael Petterson explained: “We have a very diverse community including a Nobel Peace Prize winner, a White House chief of staff, an astronaut, and many scientists and doctors onboard who share their knowledge and experiences.”

If you’re interested in joining them, then the good news is that there are still cabins available. The bad news is that they don’t come cheap.

The lowest cost accommodation is an ‘inside’ cabin that is going for $129,000 (£93,000) for 15 years, with an extra $2,000 (£1,495) per person monthly fee for double occupancy, and $3,000 (£2,180) for single occupancy. If those prices stay the same, a single occupancy cruiser would fork out £392,400 in cabin fees alone across 15 years.

The figure is low in comparison to the World, however, which is the only other cruise ship currently at sea. Prices for that begin at $2.5 million.

Included in the deal are food and soft drinks, alcohol at dinner, Wi-Fi, medical visits, 24/7 room service, weekly housekeeping, and bi-weekly laundry service.

“I don’t have to do my laundry anymore. I don’t have to do grocery shopping. Living on the ship is much less expensive than living in Southern California,” Sharon said.

Villa Vie owners can rent their cabin out to others, which means short-term passengers can still come and go from the Odyssey.

The Odyssey usually stops in each port for a couple of days, where optional shore excursions are organized for an additional fee. The eight-deck Odyssey can accommodate 924 people, but it has been reconfigured and streamlined to a roomier 450.

The voyage did not get off to a smooth start, as the ship became stranded in Belfast for four and a half months last year. The Odyssey arrived in the Northern Ireland capital back in May 2024 to be outfitted before it was scheduled to sail off on the 30th of that month.

READ MORE: Mum fighting for life on holiday from hell after mosquito attack and tragic accidentREAD MORE: European heatwave leaves one dead as British holidaymakers warned to ‘stay inside’

Unfortunately, due to issues with the rudders and gearbox, the vessel ended up staying put for four and a half long months. On September 30, by which point spring and summer had given way to early autumn, the Odyssey and its 125 passengers set sail. However, it didn’t get very far, docking just a few miles outside of Belfast while a few final pieces of paperwork were completed.

Finally, on October 3, the ship set sail, to the great relief and joy of passengers who will likely never forget the bumpy beginning of their once-in-a-lifetime adventure. Unfortunately, this was far from the end of their troubles…

The Writers Guild of America West has removed Randall Emmett from its “strike list” after the film producer paid $630,000 to resolve a judgment in a long-standing dispute over unpaid compensation.

The resolution comes more than five years after Emmett’s former production firm, Emmett/Furla Oasis, failed to pay health insurance benefits and other compensation to four writers on a proposed Arnold Schwarzenegger television show, “Pump,” that collapsed in 2019 when the action star bowed out.

“This was originally a financial obligation tied to former companies,” Emmett said in a statement. “However, I made the personal decision to take it on independently because it was simply the right thing to do.”

The WGA confirmed Monday that Emmett had been taken off its strike list after nearly five years, a penalty due to his former firm’s lingering debt. But a WGA representative said members should still refrain from working with him unless he becomes a signatory to the guild’s contract with producers.

Emmett/Furla Oasis has been defunct for years. His current production firm, Convergence Entertainment Group, is trying to mount a film project in collaboration with Oscar-winning director Martin Scorsese. The filmmakers hope to bring to the screen “Wall of White,” a story of a deadly 1982 avalanche near Lake Tahoe.

However, in March, the WGA warned its members to stay clear of the project, citing the unpaid debt. The WGA’s high-profile advisory clouded Emmett’s endeavors.

Emmett was the subject of a 2022 Times investigation and subsequent Hulu documentary that surfaced allegations of mistreatment of women, assistants and business partners, which he has denied.

Emmett has continued to crank out low-budget films, primarily starring John Travolta and Sylvester Stallone.

Last year, Emmett attempted to fly under the radar by using the moniker “Ives,” which is his middle name.

Emmett ran afoul of union rules in 2019 after hiring four guild writers to develop scripts for a TV series loosely based on Schwarzenegger’s early years in California.

Writers of the project previously told The Times they wanted “Pump” to be a love letter to Venice Beach in the early 1970s and the birth of the modern bodybuilding culture.

At the time, Emmett’s firm was burning through cash, according to internal documents previously viewed by The Times. The writers were also brought on board before Schwarzenegger committed to the project.

The WGA won a $541,464 judgment against Emmett/Furla Oasis in 2021 after it filed a claim on behalf of writers. The debt swelled with interest.

The “Wall of White” project draws on a 2010 book as well as a 2021 documentary, “Buried: The 1982 Alpine Meadows Avalanche.” After a heavy spring storm in Northern California in 1982, tons of snow rushed down a mountain and into a village, trapping eight people at a ski resort. Seven died, and rescuers pulled one woman from the wreckage.

Screenwriter Petter Skavlan, a WGA member, was attached to the film, according to IMDb.

Book author Jennifer Woodlief also has been listed as a screenwriter.

Emmett has been working on the project for more than a year. He introduced the Netflix documentary to Scorsese, according to a March article in the Tahoe Guide, which touted how the local tragedy was being adapted into a feature film.

The filmmakers are searching for a director.

“We expect to finalize an A-list director by this summer in preparation for a February 1st production start,” Emmett said.

The project is expected to film in Nevada, Ohio and Canada, he said.

June 29 (UPI) — A 20-year-old woman was likely bitten by a juvenile sand tiger shark while swimming off a New York beach, officials said.

The unidentified woman was waist-deep in the surf at the Central Mall beachfront of Jones Beach State Park when at about 4:15 p.m. EDT Wednesday she reported being bitten by an unknown marine wildlife, the state’s Park, Recreation and Historic Preservation office said in a statement on Friday.

Officials said the woman suffered non-life-threatening laceration injuries to her left foot and leg and was transported to Nassau County University Medical Center Hospital for treatment.

As she did not observe what exactly attacked her, an investigation ensued with biologists concluding that it was “most likely” a juvenile sand tiger shark, though “without direct observation of the animal that caused the bites a full expert consensus was not reached,” park officials said.

Swimming resumed at the beach on Thursday, after park staff and police used drones to search the area and lifeguards scanned the water from the shore.

There have been a total of 24 confirmed unprovoked shark attacks in New York state since 1837, according to the Florida Museum’s International Shark Attack File.

A woman was left almost crying as she was told she may not be able to make her journey to Paris as there was something wrong with her passport – but she had no idea there was a problem

A woman was left almost sobbing as she realised she’d made a big passport mistake when she was travelling from Sydney to Paris. Jane Lu was trying to board her flight with a passport she’d recently used on two trips to America when she was told that she may not be able to fly due to there being something wrong with it.

Over the top of the video, she wrote: “Help?! Has anyone ever had this happen?” as she explained the situation to her followers. Jane explained that she couldn’t get onto her flight because staff told her her passport was invalid due to “water damage”.

“They’re saying that I’m flying by China, and they might not let me through, and Paris might not let me through, but I’ve already flown twice with this passport to the US,” she seethed, almost in tears.

She said that because she’d gone to America twice on the passport when it was damaged, she “didn’t think it would be a problem”.

In a follow-up video, Jane explained that she had to “sign a waiver” that said if she got turned away in Paris, she’d have to make the journey back to Australia, so she was nervous about what would happen, because she had an over-24-hour journey ahead of her.

She said that she hoped they’d be “super chill” as she arrived in Paris, and it turned out they were, as she managed to get in and could complete her business trip successfully.

In the comments, someone wrote: “I think the people at the check-in in Australia are just way too thorough. This happened to my sister. They told her she had to board the flight at her own risk as her passport had a water stain. But when we landed in Singapore, they did not even notice”.

Another defended the airport, however, saying “border security is paramount”. A woman warned her to “apply for a new passport” and to ensure she “keeps it perfect,” rather than allowing it to get water-damaged.

“What I wanna know, how do SO many people get water damage on their passports? Are ya’all taking them for a swim?” someone fumed.

A travel agent shared her advice, penning: “Travel agent here – a passport is a legal document, so, therefore, it must not have any damage. If an airline sends you to a place and you are denied entry, they receive a massive fine.

“Also, you can be detained on arrival for having a damaged passport. Much better to be denied here than to be put in jail or be turned around at the other end. If it’s damaged, it needs to be replaced.

“Some countries take this pretty seriously. I had a customer detained when their family went overseas and their kid spilt water on their passport and risked it. It’s not about intention, it’s about being safe”.

According to My British Passport, if a passport is too damaged, then the owner of the passport may not be able to fly. They share that the extent of the damage determines whether it can still be used.

Minor wear and tear might be acceptable, but if the passport cannot be read or the chip is damaged, boarding may be denied.

According to the Post Office, the HM Passport Office classifies a passport as damaged if the following conditions are met: the details are indecipherable, the laminate has lifted enough to allow the possibility of photo substitution and the bio-data page is discoloured.

A woman called Caitlin bought fish and chips in Tenerife, but Brits have been left floored by the price. They couldn’t get over how it compared to similar meals in the UK

A woman bought fish and chips in Tenerife but Brits have been left astounded by the price. Caitlin, who documents her life in Tenerife online, recently visited a new food spot in Los Cristianos and decided to share her findings with social media users.

Under the name caitlincampb_, she shared her visit to the local chippy on TikTok, and people couldn’t get over how much a classic fish supper set her back. Simply called The Shamrock Fish ‘n Chippy, she decided to visit the restaurant as it’s new, and she noted there’s also a bar there that offers live entertainment too.

Caitlin opted to sample a classic fish and chips when she visited, and they looked pretty tasty. She also offered people a glimpse of the receipt, and this is what caught their attention.

The meal came in at €12.50 overall, with the cod being priced at €8.50 and the chips coming in at €4.00 for a regular portion. This is what captivated people in the comments section.

Astounded by the price, one person said: “£17 at my local in Scotland for a fish supper now.” Another added: “Was it any good?” Caitlin soon replied to this, saying: “Yeah.”

A third responded: “Went there three times in a week – was awesome. They guy server is really good.” Meanwhile, a fourth also commented: “We went there last time. In our opinion, the best on the island.”

If you’re wondering why some people were surprised by the price, Caitlin’s fish and chip supper came in at around £10.68. This varies a lot to some reported prices in the UK.

According to reports, the average price for a regular portion of fish and chips in the UK comes in at around £9.88. Prices can vary significantly though, with London being known as offering the most expensive price at £22.50 for a larger portion.

Meanwhile, in West Yorkshire, it’s said you may be able to snap up the much-loved meal for as little as £6.70 for a smaller portion. However, portion sizes also vary greatly, as some shops can serve a regular fish up to 12oz and chips up to 20oz.

If you didn’t know, the price of cod and haddock has rocketed by 75% in the past year as a result of supply chain disruptions and global factors like the Ukraine war. While the price rise could hit the pockets of punters, it appears Brits still love tucking into fish and chips.

According to average prices, a classic cod and chips will cost you around £10.92. Meanwhile, the average price of haddock and chips is slightly higher at £11.13.

Meanwhile, smaller meal portions tend to come in between £5 to £8, while larger portions can set you back around £11. If it’s high end fish and chips you’re after, the price can vary from anything to £25 to £80.

Recently, one woman left people shocked when she ordered a chippy tea in Liverpool. Suzanna ventured to her favourite chippy to sample what was on offer, and she was left pretty impressed, but the price of the dish did take some people by surprise.

She ordered a small portion of fish, chips and mushy peas, and encouraged other people to share how much they pay to sample the goods where they live. It led to all sorts of answers being put forward.

Zara McDermott has made a BBC series about stalking but was shocked by her experiences

Laura’s ex broke into her car and followed her to and from work. He bombarded her with ­hundreds of unwanted messages. She moved house to get rid of him. He found out where she lives, and stands outside at night, watching.

“This has been going on for four years,” she says. “There doesn’t seem to be an ending. When we split up, my neighbours told me that he used to turn up at my door and look through the kitchen window at seven in the morning. He was sending me 200 messages a day.

“I even had holes in my back fence and every time I covered them up, more appeared. When I went around the back, you could see straight into my living room. I had a note left at my house that said ‘caught in my trap’. Now I am checking my cameras outside all the time because he is watching me. He keeps turning up at like three or four in the morning and I catch him on my Ring doorbell.

“The person I am seeing is standing there anywhere between 30 minutes to an hour and a half. They are just stood there and then they disappear. I am convinced it is him. I cannot think of anyone else like a passer-by or a dog walker… they would not just stand there for an hour staring at the house in the middle of the night.”

Laura’s nightly reality would be enough to break most people. For Love Island star turned filmmaker Zara McDermott, one night at Laura’s place was more than enough. In her forthcoming BBC mini-series To Catch a Stalker, Zara admits: “I could not relax. I could not sleep. This is how some women live every single day. It would absolutely destroy me.

“Even the creaking sound of the house is freaking me out a bit.” Zara, 28, wanted to reflect the reality facing thousands of women in the UK who live in fear for their lives because of the actions of a stalker.

Laura’s ex has already been convicted twice for stalking and was given a suspended sentence. When Zara visited, he was out on bail having been arrested for breaching the terms of the suspended sentence.

The former reality star – who has never experienced what it is like being stalked – offers to spend the night and keep watch in case the figure returns, and is warned to dial 999 immediately if she spots someone.

Zara admits: “I want to keep her company for the evening. I am really interested in getting an understanding as to what she has been going through.

“I am staying the night to keep an eye on the door bell so Laura gets the chance for a good night’s sleep. But I almost jumped at my own reflection and I feel a bit paranoid in this house.”

Later, Zara says: “It’s nearly 2am. Laura has given me access to her cameras and I can’t relax because I am waiting for this figure to appear.” Zara is relieved to report the next morning that the figure did not appear across the street.

But she tells Laura: “I didn’t sleep much. I spent most of the night checking the camera. But it makes you realise how distinctive that figure on your ­screenshots is. It is undoubtedly someone because it is so pitch black.”

Anxious Laura struggles to hide her tears as she tells Zara exactly how her ex has turned her life upside down with his creepy behaviour. She says: “It is quite unpredictable but through the six-week holidays it was about eight times.

“I had to move here because of it. Before I’d stay at my sister’s every other weekend, just because I did not feel safe at home. Then a vehicle that is very similar to his started driving past my sister’s house at 2am.

“You know it is him but it’s not like he is knocking on the door and waving at the window – which is what the police need.

“So I think this is why it is so difficult to get him charged. I am lucky that he has already been charged with stalking but I don’t want to move again because he is just going to keep finding where I live.”

In Zara’s documentary, Laura adds: “Although I am not with him, I feel my life is still controlled around him and I think that is what I find most frustrating and quite scary ­because how can you escape?”

She tells Zara after her stay: “It is nice to have someone who has experienced it. I feel believed – which is very rare when you are stalked.”

Zara discovers Laura’s ordeal could have some positive resolution if the offender is given a stalking prevention order. The police can apply for this civil order to protect anyone at risk of stalking, and it does not require the same standard of proof as a criminal conviction.

An SPO can ban a stalker from going near a victim’s home or a place they often visit, and from contacting or approaching them.

In contrast with a restraining order, an SPO can also force a suspect to have a mental health assessment, sign on at a police station or attend an intervention programme.

The National Stalking Helpline has received over 75,000 contacts from victims of stalking since 2010. Anti-stalking charity the Suzy Lamplugh Trust, named after the estate agent who disappeared in 1986, says: “When many people hear the word stalking they still think of a stranger lurking in the shadows or a delusional fan following a celebrity. About 45% of people who contact the helpline are being stalked by ex-intimates and a further third have had a prior acquaintance with their stalker.

“Just because you know or knew the stalker does not mean that the situation is your fault – it is still stalking and it is wrong.”

A 2024 report found police forces often lack a sufficient understanding of stalking, conduct flawed investigations, fail to respond to breaches of orders and lack a consistent and effective strategy to support victims.

Latest figures say one in seven people aged 16 and over in England and Wales have been a victim of stalking at least once, with women and younger people the most targeted. An estimated 1.5 million people aged six years and over experienced stalking in the year ending March 2024. Among women, 20.2% have experienced stalking since the age of 16, as have 8.7% of men.

In the documentary, a Met Police detective tells Zara: “Many suspects have a pattern that is fixated and obsessive. He does not stop just because a victim changes her number. You can find their TikTok or Snapchat, we all leave a footprint.”

Zara adds: “The impact this crime has on its victims is truly devastating.

“I have seen women have to change their entire lives, their entire routine, but also live in constant fear.”

The documentary will be screened just days after a convicted stalker of singer Cheryl Tweedy admitted another breach of a restraining order after turning up at the singer’s home. Daniel Bannister pleaded guilty to a single charge of breaching a restraining order on Thursday.

* Zara McDermott: To Catch A Stalker launches on BBC Three and BBC iPlayer on Tuesday July 1 at 9pm.

The Oscars’ voting body is growing again with a glittering list of new recruits that includes pop superstar Ariana Grande, newly minted Oscar-winner Kieran Culkin and late-night veterans — and past Oscar hosts — Jimmy Kimmel and Conan O’Brien.

On Thursday, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences announced it had invited 534 new members across its 19 branches. This year’s class includes Oscar nominees, below-the-line craftspeople and rising international voices — among them “Wicked” star Grande; “Succession” actor Culkin, who won the supporting actor Oscar for “A Real Pain”; and late-night hosts Kimmel, a four-time Oscar emcee, and O’Brien, who hosted the ceremony for the first time this year. In all, the group features 91 Oscar nominees and 26 winners, including Mikey Madison, who took the lead actress Oscar for the best picture winner “Anora.” Madison’s co-stars Yura Borisov and Karren Karagulian were also invited to the actors’ branch.

The latest invitations reflect the academy’s ongoing push for greater inclusion, even after meeting its post-#OscarsSoWhite diversity benchmarks. Of the 2025 class, 41% identify as women, 45% as members of underrepresented ethnic or racial communities and 55% are from outside the United States. Across the total membership, 35% identify as women, 22% as members of underrepresented groups and 21% are based internationally.

After years of rapid expansion — peaking with a record-setting incoming class of 928 in 2018 — the academy has shifted toward more sustainable growth. Still, this year’s tally represents a modest increase over last year’s 487 invitees.

Other additions to the acting branch — the academy’s largest — include “The Apprentice” co-stars Jeremy Strong and Sebastian Stan, who drew nominations for their portrayals of Roy Cohn and Donald Trump, respectively, in the controversial biopic, along with supporting actress nominee Monica Barbaro (“A Complete Unknown”), Aubrey Plaza, Jason Momoa, Jodie Comer, Dave Bautista and “Emilia Pérez” star Adriana Paz. (Notably, “Emilia Pérez” lead Karla Sofía Gascón, who made history this year as the first openly transgender performer nominated in the lead acting category, did not receive an invitation — a decision that follows backlash over past controversial remarks.)

New recruits to the directors branch include this year’s nominees Coralie Fargeat (“The Substance”) and Brady Corbet (“The Brutalist”), as well as Gints Zilbalodis, who directed the Oscar-winning animated feature “Flow.” Invitees in the documentary branch include the team behind this year’s Oscar-winning “No Other Land”: Israeli and Palestinian filmmakers Yuval Abraham, Basel Adra, Hamdan Ballal and Rachel Szor.

“We are thrilled to invite this esteemed class of artists, technologists and professionals to join the Academy,” academy CEO Bill Kramer and President Janet Yang said in a joint statement. “Through their commitment to filmmaking and to the greater movie industry, these exceptionally talented individuals have made indelible contributions to our global filmmaking community.”

If all invitations are accepted, the academy’s total membership will rise to 11,120, including 10,143 voting members.

WASHINGTON — The Supreme Court ruled Thursday that states may exclude Planned Parenthood clinics from providing medical screenings and other healthcare for women on Medicaid.

The court’s conservative majority reversed the longstanding rule that said Medicaid patients may obtain medical care from any qualified provider.

In a 6-3 vote, the justices ruled the Medicaid Act does not give patients an “individual right” to the provider of their choice.

The dispute has turned on abortion. Medicaid is funded by the federal government and the states. For decades, conservative states have argued their funds should not be used in Planned Parenthood clinics because some of those clinics perform abortions.

But until now, the federal government and the courts had said that Medicaid patients can go to any qualified provider for healthcare.

In dissent, Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson said the decision “will deprive Medicaid recipients in South Carolina of their only meaningful way of enforcing a right that Congress has expressly granted to them. And, more concretely, it will strip those South Carolinians — and countless other Medicaid recipients around the country — of a deeply personal freedom: the ability to decide who treats us at our most vulnerable.” Justices Sonia Sotomayor and Elena Kagan agreed.

Planned Parenthood clinics provide cancer screenings, birth control medical screenings, pregnancy testing, contraception and other healthcare services.

Congress pays most of the state’s costs for Medicaid, and it says “any individual eligible for medical assistance” may receive care from any provider who is “qualified to perform the service.”

Lupe Rodríguez, executive director of National Latina Institute for Reproductive Justice, called the decision “an attack on our healthcare and our freedom to make our own decisions about our bodies and lives. By allowing states to block Medicaid patients from getting care at Planned Parenthood health centers, the Court has chosen politics over people and cruelty over compassion.”

Three years ago, the Supreme Court overturned Roe vs. Wade and ruled states may prohibit nearly all abortions.

Nonetheless, South Carolina continued its legal fight to prevent Medicaid patients from receiving care at Planned Parenthood’s clinics in Charleston and Columbia.

Former Gov. Henry McMaster, who issued the ban on Planned Parenthood in 2018, said he did so to protect “his state’s sovereign interests.”

Critics of the move said the state has a severe shortage of doctors and medical personnel who treat low-income patients on Medicaid.

When heading out and about, it is important to be vigilant and keep yourself and your belongings safe. One woman has come up with a hack to keep bags protected

Exploring bustling city centres or jetting off around the globe can be thrilling, but beware the pitfalls of tourist hotspots. These areas are magnets for petty crime, with purse snatching, pickpocketing, and phone theft all too common, potentially ruining your day out.

To dodge these crafty criminals, always zip up your bags in crowded spots. Many modern bags feature inner pockets that offer extra protection for your valuables. But here’s a nifty £1 trick to boost your bag’s security even further.

A savvy woman has revealed a simple yet effective method to thwart thieves from silently unzipping your bag. All it takes is a basic hair clip. The brains behind Lulu Gigi accessories took to Instagram to demonstrate this anti-theft tactic.

The post declared: “Point of view: you found a way to protect yourself from pickpockets.” In a brief video, she displays how to secure a belt bag – a favourite for festival-goers, holidaymakers, and party animals – using a charming blue flower claw clip.

For added safety, she threads one of the clip’s ‘claws’ through the zipper’s metal loop. This small act could buy you precious time to catch a thief in the act, as they struggle to undo the clip.

This clever method could be the difference between safeguarding your belongings and falling victim to theft. And if the comments are anything to go by, the public is loving this ingenious idea.

One admirer exclaimed: “So smart”, while another hailed the trick as “very clever”. Another said this trick is “when aesthetics meets security”.

In the meantime, other users chimed in with their own suggestions in the comments. One advised: “Better yet, use a metal claw clip because it won’t break.”

Another shared: “I always do that. Helps a lot. Also put some plushies or those Kpop keyrings that are heavy and you’ll notice if someone is trying to open your bag.”

Yet, not everyone was sold on the idea. A user grumbled about the difficulty of accessing the bag themselves, remarking: “But it’s a pain when you want to use it! ?” Another concurred, commenting: “It will only irritate me.”

Furthermore, some expressed concern that it might provoke thieves to take more extreme actions. One individual pointed out: “People always cut the bags and put their hands inside.”

Another voiced similar apprehensions, questioning: “Do you know they use blades to cut the purse?”.

Regardless of whether you opt to try this technique or not, it’s crucial to remain alert and keep a watchful eye on your possessions at all times.

Ever since President Trump seized control of the California National Guard and deployed thousands of troops to Los Angeles, calls from distressed soldiers and their families have been pouring in to the GI Rights Hotline.

Some National Guard members and their loved ones have called to say they were agonizing over the legality of the deployment, which is being litigated in federal court, according to Steve Woolford, a resource counselor for the hotline, which provides confidential counseling for service members.

Others phoned in to say the Guard should play no part in federal immigration raids and that they worried about immigrant family members who might get swept up.

“They don’t want to deport their uncle or their wife or their brother-in-law,” Woolford said. “… Some of the language people have used is: ‘I joined to defend my country, and that’s really important to me — but No. 1 is family, and this is actually a threat to my family.’ ”

Although active-duty soldiers are largely restricted from publicly commenting on their orders, veterans’ advocates who are in direct contact with troops and their families say they are deeply concerned about the morale of the roughly 4,100 National Guard members and 700 U.S. Marines deployed to Los Angeles amid protests against immigration raids.

In interviews with The Times, spokespeople for six veterans’ advocacy organizations said many troops were troubled by the assignment, which they viewed as overtly political and as pitting them against fellow Americans.

Advocates also said they worry about the domestic deployment’s potential effects on military retention and recruitment, which recently rebounded after several years in which various branches failed to meet recruiting goals.

“What we’re hearing from our families is: ‘This is not what we signed up for,’ ” said Brandi Jones, organizing director for the Secure Families Initiative, a nonprofit that advocates for military spouses, children and veterans. “Our families are very concerned about morale.”

Horse riders make their way past U.S. Marines near the Paramount Home Depot during the Human Rights Unity Ride on June 22, 2025.

(Carlin Stiehl/Los Angeles Times)

Janessa Goldbeck, a U.S. Marine Corps veteran and chief executive of the nonprofit Vet Voice Foundation, said that, among the former Marine Corps colleagues she has spoken to in recent weeks, “There’s been a universal expression of, ‘This is an unnecessary deployment given the operational situation.’”

“The fact that the LAPD and local elected officials repeatedly said deploying the National Guard and active duty Marines would be escalatory or inflammatory and the president of the United States chose to ignore that and deploy them anyway puts the young men and women in uniform in an unnecessarily political position,“ she said.

She added that the “young men and women who raised their right hand to serve their country” did “not sign up to police their own neighbors.”

Trump has repeatedly said Los Angeles would be “burning to the ground” if he had not sent troops to help quell the protests.

“We saved Los Angeles by having the military go in,” Trump told reporters last week. “And the second night was much better. The third night was nothing much. And the fourth night, nobody bothered even coming.”

The troops in Los Angeles do not have the authority to arrest protesters and were deployed only to defend federal functions, property and personnel, according to the military’s U.S. Northern Command.

Task Force 51, the military’s designation of the Los Angeles forces, said in an email Saturday that “while we cannot speak for the individual experience of each service member, the general assessment of morale by leadership is positive.”

The personnel’s “quality of life,” the statement continued, is “addressed through the continued improvement of living facilities, balanced work-rest cycles, and access to chaplains, licensed clinical social workers, and behavioral health experts.”

U.S. Marines guard the Federal Building at the corner of Veteran Avenue and Wilshire Boulevard in Los Angeles.

(Genaro Molina/Los Angeles Times)

It is unclear whether the National Guard troops, federalized under Title 10 of the United States Code, had been paid as of this weekend. Task Force 51 told The Times on Saturday that the soldiers who received 60-day activation orders on June 7 “will start receiving pay by end of the month” and that “those that have financial concerns have access to resources such as Army Emergency Relief,” a nonprofit charitable organization.

U.S. Rep. Derek Tran (D-Orange), an Army veteran and member of the House Armed Services Committee, said he has asked Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth “for his plan to manage the logistics of this military activation, but he has failed to provide me with any clear answers.”

Tran said in a statement to The Times that “the pattern of disrespect this Administration has shown our Veterans and active-duty military personnel is disgraceful, and I absolutely think it will negatively impact our ability to attract and retain the troops that keep America’s military capacity the envy of the world.”

Diana Crofts-Pelayo, a spokeswoman for Gov. Gavin Newsom, said in an email that the governor is “worried how this mission will impact the physical and emotional well-being of the soldiers deployed unnecessarily to Los Angeles.”

On June 9, Newsom posted photos on X depicting National Guard soldiers crowded together, sleeping on concrete floors and what appeared to be a loading dock. Newsom wrote that the president sent troops “without fuel, food, water or a place to sleep.”

Task Force 51 told The Times that the soldiers in the photos “were not actively on mission, so they were taking time to rest.” At the time, the statement continued, “it was deemed too dangerous for them to travel to better accommodations.”

Since then, according to Task Force 51, the military has contracted “for sleeping tents, latrines, showers, hand-washing stations, hot meals for breakfast, dinner and a late-night meal, and full laundry service.”

“Most of the contracts have been fulfilled at this time,” the military said.

Abigail Jackson, a White House spokeswoman, said in a statement to The Times that Newsom “should apologize for using out-of-context photos of National Guardsmen to try and make a political argument.”

“Under President Trump’s leadership military morale is sky high because our troops know they finally have a patriotic Commander-In-Chief who will always have their backs,” Jackson wrote.

Troops have been posted outside federal buildings in an increasingly quiet downtown Civic Center — a few square blocks within the 500-square-mile city.

Their interactions with the public are far different from those earlier this year, when Newsom deployed the National Guard to L.A. County to help with wildfire recovery efforts after the Eaton and Palisades fires.

At burn zone check points, National Guard members were often spotted chatting with locals, some of whom brought food and water and thanked them for keeping looters away.

But downtown, soldiers have stood stone-faced behind riot shields as furious protesters have flipped them off, sworn at them and questioned their integrity.

Members of the California National Guard stand by as thousands participate in the “No Kings” protest demonstration in downtown Los Angeles on June 14.

(Genaro Molina/Los Angeles Times)

During the boisterous “No Kings” protests on June 14, a woman held up a mirror to troops outside the downtown Federal Building with the words: “This is not your job. It’s YOUR LEGACY.” On a quiet Wednesday morning, a UCLA professor, standing solo outside the Federal Building, held up a sign to half a dozen Guard members reading: “It’s Called the Constitution You F—ers.”

James M. Branum, an attorney who works with the Military Law Task Force of the National Lawyers Guild, said that, in recent weeks, the task force has received two to three times more than the usual volume of referrals and direct calls. The upward trend began after Trump came into office, with people calling about the war in Gaza and increased military deployment to the U.S. southern border — but calls spiked after troops were sent to Los Angeles, he said.

“A lot of these folks joined because they want to fight who they see as the terrorists,” Branum said. “They want to fight enemies of the United States … they never envisioned they would be deployed to the streets of the United States.”

In his June 7 memo federalizing the National Guard, Trump called for their deployment in places where protests against federal immigration enforcement were occurring or “are likely to occur.” The memo does not specify Los Angeles or California.

California officials have sued the president over the deployment, arguing in a federal complaint that the Trump administration’s directives are “phrased in an ambiguous manner and suggest potential misuse of the federalized National Guard.”

“Guardsmen across the country are on high alert, [thinking] that they could be pulled into this,” said Goldbeck, with the Vet Voice Foundation.

Jones, with the Secure Families Initiative, said military families “are very nervous in this moment.”

“They are so unprepared for what’s happening, and they’re very afraid to speak publicly,” she said.

Jones said she had been communicating with the wife of one National Guard member who said she had recently suffered a stroke. The woman said her husband had been on Family and Medical Leave Act leave from his civilian job to care for her. The woman said his leave was not recognized by the military for the domestic assignment. He was deployed to Los Angeles, and she has been struggling to find a caregiver, Jones said.

Jones said her own husband, an active-duty Marine, deployed to Iraq in 2004 with the 2nd Battalion, 7th Marine Regiment based at Twentynine Palms — the same infantry unit now mustered in Los Angeles.

The unit was hard hit in Afghanistan in 2008, with at least 20 Marines killed and its high rate of suicide after that year’s deployment highly publicized.

Jones said she was stunned to learn the battalion — nicknamed the War Dogs — was being deployed to Los Angeles.

“I said, ‘Wait, it’s 2/7 they’re sending in? The War Dogs? Releasing them on Los Angeles?’ It was nuts for me,” Jones said. “To hear that unit affiliated with this — for my family that’s been serving for two decades, it brings up a lot.”

The Los Angeles deployment comes at a time of year when the California National Guard is often engaged in wildfire suppression operations — a coincidence that has raised concerns among some officials.

On June 18, Capt. Rasheedah Bilal was activated by the California National Guard and assigned to Sacramento, where she is backfilling in an operational role for Joint Task Force Rattlesnake, a National Guard firefighting unit that is now understaffed because roughly half its members are deployed to Los Angeles.

“That’s a large amount to pull off that mission … so you have to activate additional Guardsmen to cover on those missions,” said Bilal, speaking in her capacity as executive director of the nonprofit National Guard Assn. of California.

National Guard members are primarily part-time soldiers, who hold civilian jobs or attend college until called into active duty. In California — a state prone to wildfires, earthquakes and floods — they get called into duty a lot, she said.

Many of the same National Guard soldiers in downtown Los Angeles are the same ones who just finished a 120-day activation for wildfire recovery, she said.

“You have the state response to fire and then federal activation? It becomes a strain,” Bilal said.

“They haven’t complained,” she added. “Soldiers vote with their feet. We’re mostly quiet professionals and take a lot of pride in our job. [But] you can only squeeze so much of a lemon before it is dry. You can only pound on the California Guardsmen without it affecting things like retention and recruiting.”

Darrell Doucette didn’t mean any disrespect. All the U.S. flag football star wanted to do in an interview that went more viral than any of his numerous highlights was to fight for his sport.

So when he told TMZ in 2024 that he is “better than Patrick Mahomes” at flag football for his IQ of the sport, the generally soft-spoken Doucette wasn’t trying to issue any challenges. Watch the two-time world champion throw touchdowns, catch them, snap the ball and play defense all in the same game and it’s clear he prefers to let his game speak.

“It wasn’t about me vs. them,” said Doucette, who is known in the flag football world by his nickname “Housh.” “It was about flag football, putting eyes on this game.”

With preparations ramping up for the 2028 Olympics, flag football just wants its respect.

Respect for the sport that is no longer just a child’s stepping stone to tackle football.

Respect for its established players who have already won every tournament there is and have eyes for more.

U.S. wide receiver Isabella “Izzy” Geraci runs with the ball during a game against Australia at the USA Football Summer Series at Dignity Health Sports Park on Sunday.

(Carlin Stiehl / Los Angeles Times)

“It’s not your mom’s flag football anymore,” said Callie Brownson, USA Football’s senior director of high performance and national team operations.

Flag football has graduated out of backyards and into the Olympics, where the sport will debut in L.A. More than 750 athletes from 10 countries from the youth level to senior national teams gathered at Dignity Health Sports Park last weekend to preview the Olympic future at USA Football’s Summer Series, where the U.S. men’s and women’s national teams played friendlies against Canada, Australia, Germany and Japan.

The sport’s growth domestically and internationally came in part through major investment from the NFL, and the league could play a major role in the Olympics: NFL players are allowed to participate in Olympic competition. Buffalo Bills quarterback Josh Allen was among the NFL stars who immediately took notice as the NFL most valuable player said he would “absolutely love” to play if given the opportunity.

Doucette loved hearing the conversation. The New Orleans native grew up playing the sport when seemingly no one else bothered to care. To hear NFL players taking an interest now? It feels like all he ever wanted.

“We’re welcoming those guys,” Doucette said. “We don’t have no issue with it. We just want a fair opportunity. We want those guys to come out and learn because there’s things that we’re going to need to teach them … and there’s things that they can teach us. They can teach us how to run routes and how to cover and do other different things. So it’s not us vs. them or them vs. us. It’s us together as one teaching each other.”

U.S. wide receiver Ja’Deion High evades an Australian defender during the USA Football “Summer Series” at Dignity Health Sports Park on Sunday.

(Carlin Stiehl / Los Angeles Times)

Olympic flag football is played with five players per side on a 50-by-25-yard field. Teams have four downs to reach midfield and four more to score from inside midfield. The basic tenants of offensive football remain the same from its tackle counterpart: throw, catch, run.

But players don’t juke the same way their tackle counterparts can, wide receiver Ja’Deion High said. When the former Texas Tech receiver was learning the sport, he was stunned when defenders still pulled his flag after what he believed were his best moves. He had to learn flag football’s unique hip dips and flips to keep his flags away from defenders.

The adjustment on defense could be even more difficult. Defenders cannot hinder an opposing player’s forward progress. The NFL’s most mundane hand-check would draw a penalty in flag football.

“The athletic ability [of an NFL player], I’m not questioning,” said defensive back Mike Daniels, a former cornerback at West Virginia. “But the IQ aspect, the speed of the game is completely different.”

USA Football, the governing body of U.S. flag football responsible for selecting the national team, has not outlined how NFL players will fit into the tryout process for the 2028 Olympic cycle. But with the Games scheduled for July 14 to July 30, the one-week flag competition could overlap with the beginning of NFL training camps. Even preparations to learn the new sport and practice its unique schemes would take valuable offseason time away from NFL players.

U.S. wide receiver Laval Davis, left, attempts to catch a pass as an Australian player defends during the USA Football Summer Series on Sunday.

(Carlin Stiehl / Los Angeles Times)

Chargers linebacker Daiyan Henley was ready to burst into patriotic song at the mention of representing the United States in the Olympics, but when reminded that he might have to miss part of training camp for it, he backed off immediately. He spoke directly into a video camera to assure Chargers coach Jim Harbaugh that the job that pays him $5.4 million on a four-year rookie contract is all he needs.

USA Football has remained in contact with the NFL about how to integrate professionals, said Brownson, who worked for the Cleveland Browns for five seasons, including three as the assistant wide receivers coach. With the Games still three years away, USA Football is focused on keeping doors open to all prospects and offering educational opportunities for potential players to become familiar with flag football.

“The cool thing about our process is when you come out to trials, there is no name on the back of your jersey,” Brownson said. “You get a number and you have the same opportunity to try out as the person next to you. … We’ll just be excited to have the best team that we could but I always do and will always stand up for who we currently field.

“They’re the best flag football players in the world, both men and women, and they deserve their flowers, too.”

The U.S. men’s national team is the five-time defending International Federation of American Football (IFAF) world champions. Since Doucette made his national team debut in 2020, the U.S. men are undefeated in international tournaments with gold medals at two world championships (2021, 2024), the 2022 World Games and the 2023 continental championship.

U.S. wide receiver Amber Clark-Robinson scores a touchdown against Australia at the USA Football Summer Series at Dignity Health Sports Park on Sunday.

(Carlin Stiehl/Los Angeles Times)

Led by quarterback Vanita Krouch, the women’s team is 33-1 in the last six years. The U.S. women have won three consecutive IFAF world championships and the 2023 continental title while finishing second at the 2022 World Games.

Krouch has become an international flag football star after a four-year basketball career at Southern Methodist. Examining talent transfers from other sports has helped strengthen the USA Football athlete pipeline as the organization researches the best qualities for flag football.

Baseball and softball players who can whip passes from odd arm angles can thrive in a game that features multiple quarterbacks. The U.S. national teams have former basketball, soccer and track and field stars.

The sport values agility and elusiveness. While the NFL’s 40-yard dash is the premier test for speed, it may be less valuable in flag football, Brownson said. The perfect flag football player combines that straight-line speed with quickness.

“There’s such an art and a craft and a different style of dance that we do,” Krouch said. “I say tackle football is like hip hop, krump dancing. … We ballet dance. It’s finesse, it’s clean, it’s creative.”

The quarterback served as an offensive coordinator in the 2023 NFL Pro Bowl, the first version of the All-Star game to feature a flag football format. Leading the NFC team to victory, Krouch loved sharing flag football’s unique route combinations. She noticed how the NFL’s best showed their respect for her sport by enthusiastically learning the different nuances.

The Pro Bowl experience was one of many surreal moments for Krouch in her nearly two-decade career of playing flag football. From playing in a local league, the 44-year-old has become a multi-time gold medalist. She never thought this sport she sometimes teaches in her elementary physical education classes could become this big.

U.S. defensive back Laneah Bryan, left, tries to pull a flag off an Australian player during the USA Football Summer Series on Sunday.

(Carlin Stiehl / Los Angeles Times)

The announcement that flag football would officially debut in the 2028 Olympics brought it to even greater heights. No question Krouch wants to play in the Games.

But the competition at tryouts every year gets 10 times harder, two-time national team member Ashlea Klam said. The 19-year-old plays flag football on a scholarship for NAIA-level Keiser University and recognizes no one is guaranteed a spot each year as the talent pool grows. It will be even more difficult to make the 10-person Olympic roster.

As each year’s tryouts get more competitive, Doucette sees his hope for the sport coming true. He knows the better prospects are a sign that more people are paying attention to flag football. If in three years at BMO Stadium, the eyes are fixated on another quarterback leading the United States at the Olympics, Doucette will consider that still mission accomplished.

“No matter if I’m a part of the team or not, I will still be around the game,” Doucette said. “That’s my goal is still to be there, in general, no matter if I’m playing or watching.”

Emily Jansson, 34, was on a flight from Canada to Dubai for a girls’ trip when she suddenly began experiencing ‘weird chest pains’ and coughing fits

A terrifying mid-air medical emergency has been recounted by a woman who suffered a life-threatening blood clot in her lungs during a long-haul flight. Emily Jansson, a 34 year old mother of two, was on her way from Canada to Dubai International Airport for a getaway with friends on February 5, 2025.

However, the lengthy journey took a nearly fatal turn when she started to experience “weird chest pains” alongside uncontrollable coughing.

Jansson had just awoken after sleeping for a significant portion of the 13-hour flight and was waiting to use the bathroom when she lost consciousness and collapsed, remaining out for about five minutes. “I was waiting for the bathroom and I got this really deep, dull aching pain in my chest out of nowhere,” she recalls of the ordeal.

In the fall, Jansson sustained injuries as she knocked her head, resulting in a bruised eye and arm, and afterwards found herself grappling with confusion and fragmented memories.

READ MORE: Qatar Airways plane diverted back to UK after Iran opens fire on US baseREAD MORE: Jessie J gives ‘honest’ cancer surgery update as she shares hospital bed picture

Upon landing, which luckily occurred only two and a half hours later, she was swiftly taken to Rashid Hospital Dubai where urgent medical scans revealed a chilling diagnosis. A bilateral saddle pulmonary embolism.

This is an extensive blood clot situated within the primary artery of the lung which divides into branches for each lung.

The seriousness of her condition meant that any delay in treatment could have been catastrophic, reports the Mirror US. Doctors were astonished at her survival, admitting that given the circumstances, “it was essentially a miracle” she didn’t succumb to cardiac arrest.

In hindsight, Jansson identified multiple risk factors that contributed to her in-flight emergency. These included prolonged immobility despite wearing compression stockings, and the estrogen birth control pill Zamine, both posing substantial threats to her wellbeing during the flight.

This combined contraceptive pill, containing both progestogen and estrogen, can increase the likelihood of blood clots. She is currently on anticoagulant medication to prevent further clotting and will remain on this treatment for a minimum of six months.

She explained: “I was restricting my body’s blood flow, which contributed to my clot developing. I had little idea about the danger I was in. After taking estrogen birth control for six years before consistently, I didn’t know my risk of blood clots was so high.”

A saddle pulmonary embolism, a condition where a blood clot obstructs the artery feeding the lungs, only represents 2 to 5 per cent of all pulmonary embolism cases. If not addressed promptly, it can result in heart failure and cause sudden death in approximately 30 per cent of instances.

“I was terrified and partly in denial when they told me what I had. I knew someone who had the same thing and how serious it was and I was just freaking out,” Jannson admitted.

Jannson spent six days in hospital receiving thrombolytic therapy and clot-dissolving medication. She recuperated with a friend in Dubai for three weeks post-treatment.

“It’s important that people know about the risks of this particular birth control, Zamine, and the safety of flying. If you’re on a long-haul flight, make sure you move around and let your body breathe,” she cautioned.

Jannson elaborated: “I was fortunate that there was a doctor on board and some very amazing, competent flight attendants. They essentially saved my life when it shouldn’t have been possible.

“I’m still recovering from this episode, and my body has been through a lot. But I’m hopeful my experience can educate people about the risks of blood clots. And just as a reminder that life is so precious and to just really appreciate it.”

There is no single figure in television history whose longevity and influence match Barbara Walters’.

She became a star on NBC’s “Today” in the early 1960s, raising the stature of the morning franchise. She opened doors for women as a network anchor and turned newsmaker interviews into major television events — 74 million tuned into her 1999 sit-down with Monica Lewinsky. She created one of daytime TV’s longest-running hits with “The View,” which evolved into a major forum for the country’s political discourse.

“The audience size that Barbara was able to capture and harness is unmatched in today’s world,” said Jackie Jesko, director of the new documentary “Barbara Walters: Tell Me Everything,” debuting Monday on Hulu after its premiere at the Tribeca Film Festival earlier this month. “Everything she did sort of made a difference.”

Jesko’s feature — produced by Brian Grazer and Ron Howard’s Imagine Documentaries and ABC News Studios — is the first in-depth look into Walters’ storied career. The film also serves as a sweeping historical review of the decades-long dominance of network news that made figures such as Walters a gatekeeper of the culture, as Jesko describes her.

Before the advent of social media and podcasts that allowed celebrities to control their messages, going through the X-ray machine of a Barbara Walters interview delivered exposure on a massive scale. David Sloan, a longtime ABC News producer who worked with Walters, recalls how the screen images of her specials flickered through the windows of Manhattan apartment towers.

“Tell Me Everything” came together not long after Walters died at the age of 93 in 2022. Sara Bernstein, president of Imagine Documentaries, approached Betsy West, executive producer and co-director of the Julia Child documentary “Julia,” about taking on a Walters project. Sloan, who oversaw an Emmy-winning tribute after Walters’ death, also wanted a deeper exploration into the impact of her career. West, also a former Walters colleague, and Sloan became executive producers on the film. “Tell Me Everything” taps deeply into the ABC News archives, which contain thousands of hours of interviews Walters conducted over her 40 years at the network.

Former President Richard M. Nixon during an interview with Barbara Walters in 1980 for ABC.

(Ray Stubblebine / AP)

Imagine not only gained access to program content but also outtakes that give parts of the film a cinema vérité-like look at Walters on the job. The newly unearthed footage provides some surreal moments, such as Walters — in a pink Chanel suit — exploring the damaged palace of Libya’s deposed leader Moammar Kadafi.

“The archive gave us a the perfect canvas to relive her scenes and her moments,” Bernstein said.

Walters’ story also gives a guided tour of the obstacle-ridden path women faced in the early days of TV news when it was dominated by patriarchy and self-importance. Female reporters were relegated to writing soft features and kept at a distance from hard news. But Walters shattered those barriers through her grit and wits. She toiled as a writer in local TV and a failed CBS morning program before landing at NBC’s “Today” in 1961. (“They needed someone they could hire cheap,” she said.)

Walters went from churning out copy for the program’s “Today Girl” to doing her own on-air segments, including a famously beguiling report on a Paris fashion show and a day-in-the-life look at being a Playboy bunny. More serious assignments came her way.

The morning viewing audience loved Walters even though she didn’t believe she was attractive enough to be on camera. Her career trajectory was slowed down only by male executives unwilling to embrace the idea that a woman could be the face of a network news operation.

Harry Reasoner with Barbara Walters during her first broadcast as co-anchor of ABC Evening News on Oct. 4, 1976.

(Associated Press)

By 1971, Walters was the main attraction on “Today” when she sat alongside host Frank McGee every morning. But she was denied equal status.

A respected journalist with the demeanor of an undertaker, McGee insisted to management that he ask the first three questions of any hard news subject who appeared on “Today” before Walters could have a chance.

The restriction led to Walters going outside the NBC studios to conduct interviews where her subjects lived or worked. The approach not only gave her control of the conversations but added a level of intimacy that audiences were not getting elsewhere on television.

Walters also had written into her contract that if McGee ever left “Today,” she would be promoted to the title of co-host. NBC brass agreed to the provision, believing McGee was not going anywhere.

But McGee was suffering from bone cancer, which he had kept secret. He died in 1974 and Walters was elevated to co-host, making her the first woman to lead a daily network news program. (Or as Katie Couric candidly puts it in the film, “She got it literally over Frank McGee’s dead body.”)

Walters made history again when she was poached by ABC News in 1976. She was given a record-high $1-million annual salary to be the first woman co-anchor of a network evening newscast, paired with Harry Reasoner, a crusty and unwelcoming veteran. Walters was mistreated by her colleague and roasted by critics and competitors such as CBS News commentator Eric Sevareid, who, with disgust in his voice, described her as “a lady reading the news.”

The evening news experiment with Reasoner was a short-lived disaster, but Walters found a supporter in Roone Arledge, the ABC Sports impresario who took over the news division and had an appreciation for showmanship. He recognized Walters’ strengths and made her a roving correspondent.

Barbara Walters arranged a joint interview with Egypt’s President Anwar Sadat and Israel’s Prime Minister Menachem Begin in 1977.

(ABC Photo Archives / Disney General Entertainment Con)

Walters scored a major coup in 1977 when she was the first TV journalist to speak jointly with Egyptian President Anwar Sadat and Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin during Sadat’s historic visit to Jerusalem.

“She was a household name in the Mideast,” Sloan said.

Over time, Walters would become known for her prime-time specials, where lengthy interviews with world leaders aired adjacent to conversations with movie stars. She could be a blunt questioner in both realms, asking Barbra Streisand why she chose not to get her nose fixed and former President Richard M. Nixon if he wished he had burned the White House tapes that undid his presidency (“I probably should have”).

News purists clutched their pearls, but the audience welcomed it. “She had a vision back then that celebrities are news,” said Walt Disney Co. Chief Executive Bob Iger in the film. “She was practicing the art of journalism when she was interviewing them.”

The film explains how Walters developed an understanding of celebrities after growing up around her father’s nightclub, the Latin Quarter, a hot spot in Boston. Sitting in the rafters above the floor show, she observed how audiences responded as well.

Barbara Walters with Barbra Streisand, whom the journalist interviewed for a special in 1976.

(ABC Photo Archives / Disney General Entertainment Con)

Even though Walters’ programs earned significant revenue for ABC News, she still had detractors, including the network’s star anchor Peter Jennings. A clip from the network’s political convention coverage in 1992 shows Jennings surreptitiously flipping his middle finger at her following an on-air exchange.

But Walters was unstoppable, and as the 1980s and 1990s progressed, she became a mother confessor for perpetrators and victims of scandal. During a memorable jailhouse meeting with the Menendez brothers in which Eric describes himself and Lyle as “normal kids,” a stunned Walters replies, “Eric, you’re a normal kid who murdered his parents!”

As always, she was speaking for the person watching at home.

“She always wanted to ask the question that was percolating in the brain of someone who didn’t have the opportunity or was too afraid to ask,” said Meredith Kaulfers, an executive vice president at Imagine Documentaries.

Walters became a pioneer for women broadcasters out of necessity. While in her 20s, her father’s nightclub business collapsed and she became the sole source of financial support for her family, which included her mentally disabled older sister. The terror of the insecurity she felt during that period never left.

President Barack Obama speaks to Barbara Walters during his guest appearance on ABC’s “The View” in 2010.

(Pablo Martinez Monsivais / Associated Press)

“There was a survival instinct in her that drove her,” said Marcella Steingart, a producer on the film. “Not necessarily on purpose, but in her wake, she opened doors for people.”

“Barbara Walters: Tell Me Everything” is not a hagiography. The film explores her fraught relationship with her adopted daughter Jacqueline, who did not sit for an interview. Walters’ unhealthy obsession with colleague and rival Diane Sawyer is covered, too, as is her willingness to use the social connections she developed through her career, and not just to land big interviews.

Walters had a friendship with unsavory lawyer Roy Cohn, who pulled strings to make her father’s tax problems go away. She carried on a secret romance in the 1970s with a married U.S. senator — Edward Brooke — while she was a fixture in national political coverage.

While the film draws on interviews where Walters laments not being able to have both a successful career and a family life, Jesko sensed no regrets. “I think if she could live her life over again, she wouldn’t change anything,” Jesko said.

On a humid, late afternoon in November, Edith sits giggling loudly and bantering with two older members of her team during a lull between heavy rain showers. They watch as younger staff members dodge puddles and sweat through a daily aerobics routine in the muddy courtyard.

As energetic pop music blares across the compound made up of three single- and double-storey buildings, seven-year-old Diego, who has cerebral palsy, heads up a concrete ramp towards a therapy room. His wrists twisted, he crawls forward slowly until Edith spots him.

“Diego, my boy!” the 49-year-old calls out with a wide grin.

She runs over to him, her loose dress billowing as she scoops him up and swings him quickly onto her hip. He gives her a high five, and the two laugh before turning their attention to the workout.

The warmth and affection between Edith and her staff and the children at the orphanage make the place feel like it belongs to a very large family.

Edith’s own journey as a disability rights figure in Uganda began in 2000 with the birth of her first child, Derrick, in Jinja.

When Derrick was two days old, he turned yellow and cried excessively. So Edith and her husband, Richard, took him to a hospital where he was misdiagnosed with malaria. For two weeks, their son suffered convulsions, and upon seeing another doctor, he was found to have complications with his spinal cord after contracting meningitis.

“When he made three months, this is when I realised that my son was not growing as a normal child. He had poor head control. He had a curved spinal cord. He was very floppy,” Edith recalls while sitting in her office. Its walls are adorned with certificates of appreciation and merit, and a portrait of President Yoweri Museveni hangs above the door.

As she looks out a window onto a playground full of children, Edith recalls how she and Richard struggled to get information about their son’s condition and were ostracised by their friends and family who were fearful of them and Derrick.

“We started coming into the hospital, in and out. Home, hospital, home, hospital. And with his situation, especially with convulsions, people were like, ‘He has got epilepsy. He has demons.’ And this is where I was rejected by the community,” she says.

“They were like, ‘She gave birth to a demon-possessed child.’”

Historically and until today, education about disabilities has not been promoted through government-run schools or local clinics, leading many Ugandans to resort to traditional healing. Without a diagnosis and feeling helpless, Edith succumbed to social pressure and took her son to traditional healers.

“I tried to take him to different witch doctors. They were cutting him all over the body, smearing him with their herbs, washing him with blood of the chicken, the blood of the goat. They could take us in at night to shower us with the blood of the chicken, but still, Derrick didn’t change,” she recalls. “It was just worsening.”

But then an elderly couple at her church encouraged her to return to the hospital and supported her family. So Edith returned with Derrick to the hospital. After 12 months, he was diagnosed with permanent disability. The prolonged lack of treatment for meningitis had led to severe brain damage and cerebral palsy, leaving him nonverbal and unable to walk or feed himself for the rest of his life.

Ryanair has responded after Scott McCormick, 33, and his girlfriend Helena Boshwick, 33, said they were ‘kicked off’ a flight to Majorca from Birmingham

A couple have been slapped with a £100 fine by Ryanair after the girlfriend refused to leave her boyfriend at the airport.

Scott McCormick and his partner Helena Boshwick, both 33, were set to jet off from Birmingham Airport on 1 May to Palma de Mallorca, Spain, for a week-long holiday. Scott explained they hadn’t forked out to reserve seats – which usually costs between £4.50 and £33 per seat – as it was only a brief two-hour flight and they weren’t bothered about sitting separately.

Everything seemed to be going smoothly, with the pair being first in line for boarding. However, a Ryanair staff member approached them and asked them to step aside while the rest of the passengers got on board. The couple were reportedly told by the staff member that the flight was full and there was only one seat left.

Have you had a flight experience that’s gone pear-shaped? Email [email protected]

READ MORE: Tourists hit with €750 fines for buying illegal souvenirs in Spanish hotspot

The couple were then faced with a decision – either Helena went on the early flight by herself and left Scott to get a later flight, or she turned down her seat on the plane to join him. The loyal girlfriend decided to stick with her man. She soon found out that she’d have to fork out a big chunk of cash for doing so.

When the couple returned to the check-in desk, they were reportedly told they still had to pay for one of the tickets, while Scott insists he never received a refund.

The pair claimed they had to shell out an additional £100 for a new ticket and endured a four-hour wait for the following flight to Palma. The ‘angry’ traveller feels that they faced discrimination, believing they were singled out for being a young couple without children.

The Mirror contacted Ryanair, whose spokesperson explained: “This flight from Birmingham to Palma de Mallorca (1 May) was not ‘overbooked’ – it was scheduled to operate on a 737-8200 (197 seats) but for operational reasons had to be swapped to a 737-800 aircraft (189 seats). As a result, one passenger was unable to travel on this flight, and was reaccommodated onto the next available flight to Palma de Mallorca.”

“Mr. McCormick’s travel companion was not refused boarding but chose not to board and travel on this flight from Birmingham to Palma de Mallorca and was required to pay a Missed Departure fee (£100) to be booked onto the next available flight. Mr. McCormick was notified by email on the day of travel (1 May) that he was entitled to claim back reasonable receipted expenses, however Mr. McCormick has yet to submit any expense receipts to Ryanair.”

READ MORE: One of UK’s busiest airports unveils brand new £100 million upgradeREAD MORE: Brits avoid Spain after protests and warn ‘we won’t go if we’re not wanted’

After recounting his experience on social media, many suggested that Scott and Helena were targeted because they hadn’t reserved seats – implying that a common strategy used by many to keep fares low could end up costing more.

Scott, hailing from Birmingham, West Midlands, explained: “We checked in the night before and we didn’t reserve a seat but you normally just get a random one. Me and my partner thought it’s not that much of a problem if we’re not sitting together for a two-hour flight, we’re adults here.

“We arrived, everything proceeded as usual, went through security as normal, went to the gate after waiting a couple of hours and we were the first ones at the gate ready for boarding. The lady scanned our boarding passes and told us to step to the side for a second. That moment was a red flag, I thought, ‘there’s something happening here’.

“We stepped aside and watched all the people board the flight. I asked her to tell us what is going to happen and she said ‘no’. When everyone boarded, she said, ‘the plane is full, there’s only one seat remaining and we will have to reimburse you for the other seat or you’ll have to get on the next flight.'”.

“We were having a meltdown at this point. There was no compassion or care whatsoever. After going back and forth we said we’re not going to take separate flights and be in separate countries for hours. We said we wanted to get on the next flight together. They said ‘you can do that, we will fully reimburse both tickets and put you on the next flight for free’.”

A common practice among airlines is to overbook flights, understanding that not all passengers will show up. In situations of excessive overbooking, where passengers face boarding denial or are offloaded, the airline usually calls for volunteers.

However, if there are no takers, each airline follows its specific policy in deciding whom to deny boarding to. If you’re a solo traveller, don’t have bags, snagged the cheapest ticket or were last to check-in, your odds of being bumped up might rise. Airlines must cough up compensation if they boot you off an overbooked flight.

The series: “Ginny & Georgia.”

The setting: A women’s healthcare clinic.

The scene: Ginny, 16, is carrying an unwanted pregnancy. She’s seeking an abortion. During a preconsultation, a clinic provider asks if she needs more time to decide. No, says the teen, she’s sure.

There’s no proverbial wringing of hands around the character’s decision. No apologizing for her choice. Why? Because it’s not for us to judge. It’s a personal matter, despite all the politicization around reproductive rights that might have us believe otherwise.

Opinions, debates and legislative fights around abortion have raged since Roe vs. Wade was adjudicated by the Supreme Court in 1973, then overturned in 2022. It’s no secret why such a lightning-rod issue is rarely touched by series television. Alienating half the country is bad for ratings. Exceptions include breakthrough moments on shows such as “Maude,” “The Facts of Life” and “Jane the Virgin,” but even those episodes were careful to weigh the sensitivity of the political climate over a transparent depiction of their character’s motivations and experience.

Another pitfall is that subplots featuring abortion storylines are hard to pull off without feeling like a break from scheduled programming for an antiabortion or pro-abortion-rights PSA, or worse, a pointless exercise in bothsidesism.

Season 3 of Netflix dramedy “Ginny & Georgia” dares to go there, unapologetically making the political personal inside a fun, wily and addictive family saga. The series, the streamer’s No. 1 show since it returned two weeks ago, skillfully delivers an intimate narrative that defies judgment and the fear of being judged.

The hourlong series, which launched in 2021, follows single mom Georgia Miller (Brianne Howey), her angsty teenage daughter Ginny (Antonia Gentry) and her young son Austin (Diesel La Torraca). This formerly nomadic trio struggles to forge a “normal” life in the fictional Boston suburb of Wellsbury.

Flamboyant, fast-talking Southerner Georgia stands out among the fussy, provincial New England set. Born in Alabama to drug-addicted parents, she fled her abusive upbringing as a teenager. Homeless, she met Zion (played as an adult by Nathan Mitchell), a college-bound student from a good family. Soon into their relationship, she fell pregnant, giving birth to their daughter Ginny, kicking off a life on the run and in service of protecting her children.

Georgia (Brianne Howey), left, had Ginny as a teenager, and history appears to repeat itself in Season 3 of the show.

(Amanda Matlovich / Netflix)

Now in her 30s, the blond bombshell has relied on her beauty, innate smarts and countless grifts to endure poverty and keep her family intact. The hardscrabble lifestyle has made Ginny wise beyond her years, though she’s not immune to mercurial teen mood swings and the sophomoric drama of high school.

But history appears to repeat itself when Ginny becomes pregnant after having sex just once with a fellow student from her extracurricular poetry class. Overwhelmed, he’s the first person she tells about their dilemma. “That’s wild,” he responds idiotically, before abruptly taking off, leaving her to deal with the pregnancy on her own.

Episode 7 largely revolves around Ginny’s decision to have an abortion, a thoughtfully paced subplot that breaks from the perpetual chaos and deadly secrets permeating the Millers’ universe.

Ginny is painfully aware that she is the product of an unwanted pregnancy and her mother’s choice not to have an abortion. Georgia has repeatedly said her kids are the best thing that ever happened to her. But when counseling her distraught daughter, Georgia says the choice is Ginny’s to make, and no one else’s.

Here’s where “Ginny & Georgia” might have launched into a didactic, pro-abortion-rights lecture cloaked in a TV drama, or played it safe by pulling back and highlighting both women’s stories in equal measure.

Instead it chose to bring viewers in close, following Ginny’s singular experience from her initial shame and panic, to moving conversations with her mom, to that frank counseling session at the women’s health center where she made it quite clear she was not ready to be a mother. We watched her take the medication, then experience what followed: painful cramping, pangs of guilt, waves of relief and the realization she now bore a new, lifelong emotional scar that wasn’t caused by her mother.

By sticking to Ginny’s intimate story, through her perspective, the series delivers a story that is hers and hers alone, partisan opinions be damned.

“Ginny & Georgia” has offered up many surprises over its three seasons. Georgia has emerged one of the more entertaining, cunning and inventive antiheroes of the 2020s. As such, she attracts men in droves, schemes a la Walter White and doesn’t believe in therapy: “We don’t do that in the South. We shoot things and eat butter.”

But therapy might be a good idea given Season 3’s cliffhanger ending: another accidental pregnancy.

Members of the Italian soccer team Juventus visited with President Trump in the Oval Office on Wednesday afternoon.

Exactly why the gathering took place remains largely a mystery.

Six of the team’s players (Weston McKennie, Timothy Weah, Manuel Locatelli, Federico Gatti, Teun Koopmeiners and Dusan Vlahovic), their coach Igor Tudor, a handful of team executives and FIFA president Gianni Infantino stopped by hours before Juventus’ FIFA Club World Cup game against United Arab Emirates’ Al Ain that night at Audi Field.

Trump was presented with a Juventus jersey and one for next year’s World Cup, which the United States will be co-host with Canada and Mexico. But as Trump took questions from the media for about 15 minutes during the event, very little soccer was discussed.

Instead, the players stood behind him patiently — fidgeting now and then, their faces mainly expressionless — as Trump answered questions that mostly related to the potential of U.S. involvement in Israel’s war against Iran.

Later that night, speaking to a different group of reporters after his team’s 5-0 victory over Al Ain, Weah called the White House experience “a bit weird” and implied he and the other players weren’t given the option of declining the visit.

“They told us that we have to go and I had no choice but to go,” said Weah, a U.S. men’s national team member whose father George is a past winner of the prestigious France Football Ballon d’Or award and was the president of Liberia from 2018-2024. “So [I] showed up.”

FIFA declined to comment. The White House and Juventus did not respond to requests for comment from The Times.

While Weah said he thought his first White House visit “was a cool experience,” he added that “I’m not one for the politics, so it wasn’t that exciting.”

“When [Trump] started talking about all the politics with Iran and everything, it’s kind of like, I just want to play football, man,” Weah said.

Fellow USMNT player McKennie had made critical comments about Trump during the Black Lives Matter movement in June 2020.

Juventus players Weston McKennie, left, and Tim Weah take a selfie outside the White House after they and other team members met with President Trump in the Oval Office on Wednesday.

(Alex Brandon / Associated Press)

“I don’t think that Trump is the right one for the job as the president,” McKennie said at the time. “I think he’s ignorant. I don’t support him a bit. I don’t think he’s a man to stand by his word. In my eyes, you can call him racist.”

Still, during his introductory comments, Trump briefly singled out Weah and McKennie as “my American players” when he mentioned that night’s game.

“Good luck,” he said while shaking both of their hands in what had the potential to be an awkward moment. “I hope you guys are the two best players on the field.”

That’s not to say, however, that there weren’t any awkward moments. Because there were — none more so than when Trump brought up “men playing in women’s sports,” then looked over his right shoulder and asked: “Could a woman make your team, fellas? Tell me. You think?”

When no players answered, Trump said, “You’re being nice,” then turned to face the other direction and asked the same question.

“We have a very good women’s team,” Juventus general manager Damien Comolli replied.

Trump asked, “But they should be playing with women, right?”

When he got no response, Trump smiled and turned back toward the reporters.

“See, they’re very diplomatic,” he said.

Trump made a couple of other attempts to involve the soccer contingent in the discussion. At one point, the president used the word “stealth” when discussing U.S. military planes, then turned around and remarked, “You guys want to be stealthy tonight. You can be stealthy — you’ll never lose, right?”

The players did not seem to respond.

For the final question of the session, a reporter favorably compared Trump’s border policy to that of former President Biden and asked, “What do you attribute that success to?”

Trump looked behind him and stated, “See, that’s what I call a good question, fellas.”

Once again, the players did not appear to respond.

Leave it to Megan Abbott to tap into the American zeitgeist and play on her readers’ fears like a conductor leading a doomsday orchestra. As high school and college graduates across the country celebrate the completion of a major milestone, they — and their nervous parents — are looking ahead to a future marked by political uncertainty and economic insecurity.

In an eerie echo, Abbott begins “El Dorado Drive,” her 11th novel, with a graduation party at the beginning of the Great Recession. Though the party is not a lavish affair — just a gathering for friends and family in the backyard of a rental property on El Dorado Drive in Grosse Pointe, Mich. — it’s more than Pam Bishop can afford, and every one of her guests knows it.

Any party, no matter how modest, reminds Pam and her two older sisters, Debra and Harper, of all that they’ve lost. Born into a world of wealth and privilege thanks to Detroit’s automotive-fueled postwar prosperity, the Bishop sisters — along with their parents, their peers and their children — watched it all disappear during the decline of the American automobile industry.

Pam’s ramshackle rental on El Dorado Drive, though several steps down from the home she grew up in or the mansion she moved into when she got married, is a symbol of the reckless pursuit of wealth that destroys those who can’t see through the illusion.

“When you grow up in comfort and it all falls away — and your parents with it — money isn’t about money,” Abbott writes. “It’s about security, freedom, independence, a promise of wholeness. All those fantasies, illusions. Money was rarely about money.”

For Pam’s ex-husband, Doug Sullivan, money is a game to be played in order to get what he wants, and he will stop at nothing to get it. But when Pam is brutally murdered in the opening pages, he emerges as a prime suspect. The first half of the novel backtracks from the discovery of Pam’s body to the graduation party nine months prior, when each Bishop sister is struggling with serious financial hardship.

Locked in an acrimonious divorce with no end in sight, Pam doesn’t know how she’s going to pay her son’s college tuition or handle her rebellious teenage daughter alone. The oldest sister, Debra, is buried under a mountain of medical bills while her husband suffers through another round of chemotherapy and her son slips away in a cloud of marijuana smoke. Harper, the middle child, struggles to make ends meet while rebounding from a relationship that ended in heartbreak.

The solution to their money problems arrives in the form of a secret investment club called the Wheel. Run for and by women who have fallen on hard times, the program is simple but sketchy. It costs $5,000 to join, but once the new members recruit five new participants, they are “gifted” five times their initial buy-in.

If this sounds too good to be true, you have more sense than the Bishop sisters. Such is their desperation they don’t quite allow themselves to see this is a fairly basic pyramid scheme that depends on fresh blood — and their bank accounts — to keep the Wheel turning.

The novel follows Harper, the outsider in the family, due to the fact that she’s never married nor had children. She’s not part of the community, either, because she’s recently returned to Grosse Pointe after time away to mend her broken heart. The first half of the novel concerns the Bishops’ dynamics and their found family in the Wheel, which operates like a combination of a cult and a recovery group for women who’ve lost everything.

At a moment of vulnerability, Harper is buttonholed by an old classmate named Sue. “It’s called the Wheel because it never stops moving,” Sue said. Twice a month, we meet. A different member hosts each time, and the meetings were just parties, really. And at these parties, they took turns giving and receiving gifts to one another. To lift one another up. As women should, as they must.”

Behind the rhetoric of sisterhood lurks avarice and greed. When Harper asks Pam if anyone ever left the group after just one turn of the Wheel, Pam — a true believer — can’t fathom backing out of the group. “Why would anyone do that?” she asks.

The answer proves to be her undoing, and the second half of “El Dorado Drive” follows Harper as she tries to solve her sister’s murder. It’s a classic whodunit story with Harper — who has plenty of secrets of her own — playing the role of the reluctant detective.

Despite the book’s suggestive title, the landscape is anything but illusory for Abbott, who grew up in Grosse Pointe and spent the first 18 years of her life there. Evoking a rich setting has never been a weakness of Abbott’s stories. Her novels have a hyperreal quality and are often populated by characters churning with desires they cannot manage.

Abbott is especially adept at rendering the hot, messy inner lives of young people and at making a book’s backstory as suspenseful as the narrative engine that drives the plot. In “El Dorado Drive,” however, the focus is on adults, and the past mostly stays in the past. The result is a novel in which the story is straightforward and the stakes are low. Nevertheless, true to her penchant for shocking violence, Abbott delivers a revolting revelation that sets up a series of twists that propels the story to its inevitable, but no less satisfying, conclusion.

But then there’s the matter of the Wheel. When we watch a video of people in a boat who are drinking, carrying on and disobeying the rules of the road, we don’t feel badly for them when they end up in the water, no matter how spectacular the crash, because they brought it on themselves.

The same logic applies to the participants in the Wheel. We can empathize with the calamities that prompted these characters to take such foolish chances, but we would never make those choices ourselves.

Or would we?

One could argue that our era will be defined not by whether the American dream lives or dies but by the questionable choices of our political leaders and, by extension, the people who elected them. We may not know where we’ll be tomorrow, but Abbott knows wagering that the wheel of grift, greed and corruption will keep on turning is always a safe bet.

Ruland is the author of the novel “Make It Stop” and the weekly Substack Message from the Underworld.

Bee had to strip off when she got onto the plane but says it was worth it, and she’ll do it again

A holidaymaker wore seven pairs of trousers to avoid paying a £70 easyJet baggage fee. Bee Solman, 31, and her partner Ben, 32, had paid £280 for the return flight, including extra to choose their seats.

When the pair went to board the plane, Ben’s bag wouldn’t fit inside the luggage sizer. They were told by staff they’d have to pay a further £70 to take it with them. The nanny went to the toilet where she unpacked her clothes and layered herself in multiple T-shirts, jackets and seven pairs of trousers.

They were flying from Bristol Airport to Mercia International Airport, near Torrevieja, in Spain. “We got unlucky because the staff picked us out randomly to check our bags,” said Bee, from Bristol. “My bag fit in the sizer fine but Ben’s didn’t even when we tried to squeeze it in.

“They said we’d have to pay £70 but I wasn’t paying that. Flying gets expensive when the extra bits start racking up. I said I’d wear the clothes so we went to the toilet and I put on all of my trousers.

“I had seven pairs of trousers on, two tops and a denim jacket Ben wore two pairs of shorts, a T-shirt and three shirts – and he had his laptop mouse in pocket.”

Bee claims that staff at the gate found the trick hilarious and let her board the flight on 20 April. Once on the plane, Bee stripped off and put the clothes back in her hand luggage bag. She said: “We went back to the gate and they took a photo of us and said we’d go viral.

“She said it’s fine for now but we’d have to pay next time. When we got on the plane, I took it all off and put it back in the bag.

“I wore them from the airport to the plane. It was ridiculous. One woman said ‘you look lighter than when you got on’.

“The trousers were thin so it just looked like I had thick trousers on. I’ll be doing it again if I need to.”

easyJet has been approached for comment.