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Pierce College won’t have a football season in 2026.

The community college in Woodland Hills announced it has placed the football program “on hiatus” for 2026.

Players were informed Monday and were told they should look for another program if they wanted to play immediately.

Orange Coast College also has paused its season and won’t play in 2026.

In its official statement, a spokesperson indicated “health and safety concerns” as the reason for the hiatus. The school was monitoring the roster during the summer and delayed a final decision “as long as possible” hoping the roster would expand.

Here’s the statement:

“Los Angeles Pierce College has made the difficult decision to place its football program on hiatus for the 2026 season.

“This decision was made after a careful evaluation of the program and with the health and safety of our student-athletes as our highest priority. While we are disappointed that we will not field a football team this season, our immediate focus is supporting our student-athletes and helping those who wish to continue competing identify opportunities with other collegiate programs. We are working closely with the Southern California Football Association and other area colleges to provide opportunities for student-athletes to compete. Our priority is minimizing disruption to students’ academic progress and while supporting their athletic goals.”

Football teams have always been important contributors for enrollment at the junior college level.

Some Palestinians in Gaza and Israelis have been giving their reaction to the plan to the BBC.

Tala, an 18-year-old who has been living in a tent in Gaza since her home was destroyed in air strikes, said “every time people hear about a possible ceasefire, we hope that it will finally end”.

“But when these promises are broken, it creates more fear,” she told BBC Newsbeat.

The university student said daily life remains “very challenging”, adding: “Every day comes with a new difficulty, and we are constantly thinking about safety and basic needs.”

“What matters most is stopping the fighting, protecting civilians and setting a new chapter of re-building,” she said.

In Israel Jonny said he “prays” that the ceasefire in Gaza can work. “I don’t see an ending to this cycle, but I pray it’s the case,” he told the BBC.

Israel’s ambassador to the UN, Danny Danon, told CNN that Israel is “looking forward to implementing” the deal, but added: “We have to verify what they [Hamas] are doing, not what they are saying.”

UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres described the proposed agreement as “the only good news in recent days”.

UK Foreign Secretary Ed Miliband said the focus must be on implementing the full 20-point peace plan, including “withdrawal of the IDF from Gaza and respect for the ceasefire by all parties”.

He added that conditions “remain appalling” in Gaza and said Israel “must immediately end the unacceptable restrictions on aid”. Israel denies it is restricting the entry of aid.

The war in Gaza was triggered by the Hamas-led attack on southern Israel on 7 October 2023, in which about 1,200 people were killed and 251 others were taken hostage.

Israel responded to the attack by launching a military campaign in Gaza, during which more than 73,290 people have been killed, according to the territory’s health ministry whose figures are considered reliable by the UN.

HEADING off on holiday this year? Then you’ll want to make sure you’re stocked up on all the essentials.

We’ve rounded up 15 of the top travel items you may have forgotten to pack for your holiday.

And with all of them easily available on Amazon, you’ll be able to bag these last-minute buys quickly before you jet off.

From travel products that will save you 50% more room in your suitcase to a gadget that can save you hundreds at the airport, here’s those last-minute buys you won’t want to forget.

Sleep headphones – £12.34 (44% off)

These soft sleep headphones make listening to music much more comfortable, particularly when you are trying to sleep.

Built in are two mini speakers that connect to Bluetooth, saving you that horrible discomfort that comes with traditional headphones.

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Underseat cabin bag – £16.99

This perfect underseat cabin bag will become your best friend on flights.

Plain black, collapsible and barrel-shaped, this bag is designed to slide perfectly into those pesky luggage-sizers at the airport gates.

Save yourself the extra baggage fee and come prepared.

Waterproof mobile phone pouch – £5.98

Keep your phone bone-dry and your hands free with this handy waterproof pouch.

If you’re splashing in the sea or jumping on a paddle board, your tech will stay safe from splashes.

The touch-sensitive screen means you can still snap selfies, too.

Power bank – £16.93 (15% off)

We’ve found the ultimate power bank for travel.

At a whopping 27,000mAh, it can fully charge an iPhone 4.5 times.

It sits right under the 100Wh capacity limit set by the UK Civil Aviation Authority, so you can bring it onboard in your carry-on with no fuss (just double check your airline allows power banks).

Whether you’re bringing it along to a festival, a theme park, camping or on an adventure abroad, it’s well worth having this life-saver power bank to hand.

Eye mask – £5.99 (25% off)

Trying to sleep on a brightly-lit plane is next to impossible, but napping becomes much easier with one of these.

Eye masks can be useful when travelling with kids who need to sleep, as they block out all the light and distractions.

This 3D padded one is ultra-comfortable and blocks out any annoying light.

Car emergency kit – £25.99

Taking your car abroad this year? To comply with European regulations, you’ll need to ensure you’re travelling with all the right equipment.

Luckily, this handy kit has pretty much everything you’ll need.

Included is a warning triangle, hi-vis vest, tow rope, jumper leads, first aid kit and more.

Portable luggage scale – £5.99

This portable luggage scale helps travellers avoid extortionate airport fees by letting you easily weigh your suitcases both before jetting off and on your return trip when you’ve done too much holiday shopping.

Study and simple to use, the handy gadget has earned nearly 27,000 mostly five-star reviews from shoppers.

The scale costs £5.99, but could save you hundreds on baggage fees – making it an inexpensive essential for stress-free travel.

Compression packing cubes – £19.99

These compression packing cubes squeeze your clothes down to save up to 50% of your suitcase space.

Designed with durable double-stitching and smooth zips, they even have a dedicated waterproof section to separate wet gear from dry outfits.

Hailed by reviewers as a ‘game-changer’, they also keep your luggage neatly organised so you’ll never have to rummage through your suitcase again.

Shampoo bar – £2.95

Packing your liquids bag often feels like an impossible challenge of fitting a million skincare and make-up items into one tiny pouch.

And once you’ve got your mascara, concealer, foundation and perfume in there, suddenly there’s no more room for your actual shower essentials.

So instead of trying to squeeze in shampoo from home or buying a large bottle abroad, try packing a solid shampoo bar.

These won’t affect your liquids allowance, which is especially great when you’re travelling with hand luggage only.

Toothbrush head covers – £2.49 (50p each)

If you’re someone who chucks their toothbrush into their bag or suitcase and hopes for the best, you’ll want to check this one out.

There’s nothing worse than a grimy toothbrush. And when you’re travelling, it’s hard to protect those bristles and keep them clean from other items in your bag.

And if you’re getting your toothbrush out on the plane or leaving it on the side in your hotel bathroom, you won’t want to think about all the germs that can get to it.

Luckily, Amazon sell a pack of five toothbrush caps for £2.49, working out to around 50p each.

Prices correct at the time of publication.

The K-pop megastars BTS will not submit music for next year’s Grammys. The news comes despite — or perhaps because of — a new category specifically designed to honor Asian pop.

The seven members of BTS — RM, Suga, Jin, J-Hope, Jungkook, V and Jimin — each shared the same message across their social media Wednesday, announcing the news and saying, “We hope our music can be heard and loved for what it is, rather than being divided by region or language. We thank Army and everyone who has always stood by us.”

The Grammys’ new Best Asian Pop Music Performance category “recognizes artistic excellence in Asian pop music performances originating from or widely recognized within Asian markets, including but not limited to K-pop, J-pop and C-pop, with meaningful use of one or more Asian languages. Awards are presented to the performing artist(s).”

BTS’ comeback album “Arirang,” its first after the band members’ mandatory South Korean military service, was widely expected to compete for the award. The new category came as part of a bevy of added or tweaked awards and nominating rules that will debut at next year’s ceremony on Feb. 7.

BTS has a mercurial relationship with the Grammys, having been nominated five times in various categories since becoming the first K-pop group nominated in 2019, and performing for the live telecast. They have never won.

The band joins the Weeknd and Drake as high-profile artists who, at least for some time, declined to submit their music to the Recording Academy in protest of its policies or nominating processes.

FREDDY Brazier’s dog Pablo will not be destroyed after it attacked him and his nan Jackiey Budden.

Pals said Freddy, 21, was elated after fearing pocket bully Pablo would be put down after the incidents, which left him needing hospital treatment.

The Sun understands 18-month-old Pablo had a urine infection at the time of the three attacks earlier this month, which vets believe may have affected his behaviour.

Freddy was left with a 3cm hole in his right arm after Pablo attacked him, just hours after the dog wounded Jackiey, 68, for the second time last Wednesday.

Just days prior, on July 16, neighbours had raised the alarm after hearing Jackiey’s screams after she was attacked by the crossbreed.

A friend said: “Freddy had seven days to make a case to save Pablo from death and find him somewhere to stay.

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“He has done that and he has now been assured that the dog won’t be destroyed.

“What happened was shocking and very sad, but Freddy knows Pablo isn’t a bad dog.

“He was told a urine infection could have altered his behaviour, and he has not been violent before.

“For now, Freddy has arranged to have Pablo taken by a specialist trainer who will care for him and get him back to his best before they work out what to do next.

“Freddy is absolutely elated.”

On Sunday Freddy made an emotional plea in The Sun On Sunday and admitted he was fearing for Pablo’s life after the police seized him after the attack.

The incident happened last week, with Freddy leaving his dad Jeff’s home in Essex to get to Bermondsey to support Jackiey, who had dialled 999 saying Pablo had attacked her.

Freddy went to take the dog away from Jackiey’s but it then turned on him in the street.

Freddy said of the incident: “I’ve taken him out of the house. I’ve calmed him down. I’m going: ‘Sorry boy I know it’s been so long. I love you. I’ve missed you.’

“I’m scratching his back, but then he hooked on to my arm. The dog was hanging off me.

“I couldn’t feel anything in my right arm. But then I saw blood coming out of my tracksuit.”

He went on to receive treatment at the Royal London Hospital, Whitechapel.

Freddy said: “I have never seen him as my dog — he’s like my son.”

RYANAIR boss has warned Brits not to be late for their flight as planes will takeoff without them.

The news comes after reports of hour-long delays at border control as a result of the introduction of the EU’s new Entry/Exit system (EES).

Talking on The Telegraph’s podcast, Ryanair CEO Michael O’Leary said: “We will not wait for anybody.

“Our priority is to those passengers who are at the boarding gate when boarding starts. If you’re not at the boarding gate when we finish boarding, the plane is going without you.”

He further added that it is the responsibility of the traveller to leave enough time to get themselves through the airport on time.

It comes after reports of up to six-hour long queues at passport control and in some cases, passengers have missed flights as a result.

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At the beginning of June, 150 Ryanair passengers missed their flight from Toulouse to the UK due to the queues.

In another case, British passengers who were still in the airport queuing through passport control missed their Ryanair flight from Athens to London Luton.

One passenger told the BBC at the time that there had been a “mega queue” at Athens International Airport where hundreds of people were waiting at both security and passport control.

The plane took off without around 50 of its passengers.

However, Michael O’Leary said that planes cannot wait for anyone caught up in the chaos.

He added: “We’re not delaying our flights for people who are stuck in passport control queues.

“They have to show up at the airport earlier [and] be at the boarding gate, otherwise they’re not flying.”

Ryanair had previously called for EES to be delayed until September to save the summer holidays – but it has continued to go ahead.

With EES still in place, airlines are advising Brits to leave arrive three to four hours early for your flight to Europe this summer.

New Delhi, India – Blood spots on the walls, overturned barricades, shattered mirrors and sandals strewn across the road. A scarf here, broken glasses and a torn shirt there lie as remnants of the chaos that took over the Indian capital.

The heart of New Delhi – Parliament Street and Connaught Place, a colonial-era square – bears the imprint of Monday’s police crackdown on thousands of protesters, most of them students, who had shut down the capital, demanding that Education Minister Dharmendra Pradhan resign.

A swarm of protesters reached parliament’s doorstep before retreating as the police tear-gassed them. More than 100 students were injured.

“I still cannot believe my eyes that I’m in Delhi,” said Anshul Dev, an 18-year-old who grew up in the capital. “Part of it is because tear gas still stings,” he added, bursting into laughter with his group of friends. One of them had both legs bandaged.

“This government, whom our elders voted to power, is treating us like terrorists and criminals,” Dev said. “This is our country, and we are reclaiming it from their hateful politics. We are here to break the spell.”

Anger among India’s youth, the world’s largest Gen Z cohort, has been simmering for the past two months over a string of compromised entrance exams that affected millions of students. In some cases, exam papers were leaked; in others, students who sought copies of their answer scripts found that they had been wrongly graded. More than 20 students died by suicide, many citing the paper leaks.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi has not addressed the protests, even as he appeared smiling on Monday in parliament, barely metres away from demonstrators at one point.

Analysts said the student protests face formidable obstacles before they can extract concessions from Modi’s government. Yet the protests, the government’s refusal to hold any of its own accountable and the crackdown have also embellished a charge that the prime minister has long faced from critics and opposition parties – that although he is elected democratically, he behaves like an autocrat.

‘Protests will continue’

After dark on Monday, Abhijeet Dipke – the leader of the Cockroach Janta Party (CJP), a political pressure group that called the march – returned to a torn-down stage at the CJP’s main protest site near Jantar Mantar, an 18th-century observatory that is now an important location for protests.

“This barbaric Delhi police has beaten up our students and comrades. We are heartbroken,” he said, addressing about 2,000 protesters who stayed back after the crackdown. “We will continue to resist and demand accountability from the government. We will not back down until Dharmendra Pradhan resigns.”

Dipke told the protesters that the Delhi police “brutally cracked down to crush our hopes” that Pradhan would resign. “It was only our first call to march,” he said. “There will be more. Do not lose hope.”

Volunteers began to pick up rubbish, tie a tent together and sweep the road at the Jantar Mantar site. This is where more than 100 protesters from student unions have been sleeping for nearly a month to join Sonam Wangchuk, a prominent activist, on a hunger strike to seek the minister’s resignation.

The police also rampaged through these student unions’ tarpaulin tents and belongings on Monday.

The movement gained momentum last week after the police forcibly removed Wangchuk from the protest site and restricted him to a government-run hospital, where he remains. His family and the CJP have called it “illegal detention”, but the Delhi High Court has refused immediate relief.

Wangchuk, 59, broke his hunger strike before the march on Monday; however, later he said he would be at it again after “seeing the brutality” against “peacefully protesting students”.

The Delhi police have filed at least five criminal cases against protesters related to violence, stone-throwing and vandalism during the march.

Meeting with government a ‘waste of time’

Before the march, CJP leaders said the government reached out for talks.

As thousands of demonstrators assembled in New Delhi, two CJP spokespeople met JP Nadda, India’s health minister, to convey the movement’s three demands: Pradhan’s immediate resignation, Wangchuk’s discharge from hospital and compensation of nearly $105,000 for the families of those students who died by suicide.

However, they were disillusioned by sunset. “It was a waste of our time,” said Ashutosh Ranka, a CJP spokesperson. “We were made to wait for four hours, and the minister met us for 10 minutes.”

Nadda said he met with the spokespeople “in a cordial atmosphere”, adding that he “requested all the protesters to end their sit-in and assist the administration in restoring normalcy”.

Some students have been calling for the decentralisation of the protests, so they could move beyond the CJP to demand accountability from the government.

And political analysts who spoke with Al Jazeera said maintaining the credibility of the CJP’s leadership remains one of the biggest immediate hurdles for the movement in the face of an unprecedented crowd turnout for the march.

Confronting a ‘strong man’

Since the police forcibly removed Wangchuk from the protest site, the movement and demonstrators have called on Modi to resign. Slogans targeting the prime minister reverberated through central New Delhi on Monday.

The large number of protesters “is itself a big challenge to the prime minister”, said Nilanjan Mukhopadhyay, an author and Modi biographer.

As of now, he told Al Jazeera, “Modi has decided to continue with his instinctive response of not giving any concessions to protesters and continuing to project himself as a strong man with completely unshakeable will.”

The biographer added that the prime minister, who has been in power since 2014, “does not care before crushing a protest or using brute force until it cuts through his voting constituencies”.

“They will go by their gut response of a crackdown. Modi would not want to emerge from this with a bloody nose,” he added, “despite a lot of anger among youth, which shows the undercurrent of anti-incumbency.”

The simmering anger found a vent as Gen Z rallied behind a joke, the Cockroach Janta Party, after India’s chief justice equated government critics and unemployed youth to “cockroaches” and “parasites”.

Memes, online rants and students taking photos in front of police have flooded the internet in India, where they expressed anguish and took digs at the police crackdown.

Meghnad S, a YouTuber, was among the crowd of thousands in front of the Indian Parliament on Monday.

“It was insanity, and the crowd was really riled up due to police actions. It was cruel,” he told Al Jazeera from the protest site on Monday night. “But movements are always messy. This is very difficult to control. We are all cockroaches, after all. And we are still swarming here.”

By Tuesday morning, the crowd had packed the site yet again. The cockroaches had returned.

NEW YORK — The Dodgers don’t know when Shohei Ohtani will take the mound next.

He was tentatively scheduled to start Wednesday against the Phillies, after promising initial reports on his recovery from an injection in his left knee. But after seeing his knee’s response to playing catch, the team decided to give him more time.

“We just want to continue to give it the best chance to kind of get into a good spot,” manager Dave Roberts said. “And as he said, as we feel, it’s the pitching and the torque of landing on that leg that kind of gets it upset.”

It was clear enough from catch play that Ohtani’s start would have to be pushed back that Ohtani did not feel the need to test it by throwing off a mound, Roberts said.

“Where we’re at right now, how we’re proceeding, I would say that it’s going to be some time,” Roberts said. “It’s not going to be a day-to-day thing.”

That left a wide range of timeline possibilities, from days to weeks. Roberts did, however, rule out shutting Ohtani down from pitching for the rest of the season.

“I guess anything is possible, but I just don’t think that’s a possibility,” he said.

To fill Ohtani’s spot in the rotation this week, the Dodgers moved right-hander Emmet Sheehan’s start to Monday. Before the rainout bumped the second game of the series against the New York Yankees, Sheehan was scheduled to start Saturday.

For Sunday’s doubleheader, right-hander Yoshinobu Yamamoto will take the mound in the first game. The bullpen, and potentially multiple innings from the 27th man, will cover the nightcap.

“Honestly, a lot of it is where we’re at and how we’ve put ourselves in a good spot,” Roberts said of the MLB-leading Dodgers. “Could [Ohtani] probably do it? Sure. But right now, the benefits just don’t seem to outweigh the cost at this time of the season. So I think we still have plenty of time to get him to a good spot to then pitch.”

Ohtani, who went hitless in four at-bats as the designated hitter in Friday’s 2-1 win, was set to DH and hit leadoff in Sunday’s first game.

The Prime Video action comedy follows an international assassin whose colleague looks very familiar.

Ride or Die viewers may recognise a familiar face from a major Netflix series.

Ride or Die has just dropped on Prime Video and the action comedy series, which has already gone down a huge hit with fans, stars Hannah Waddingham and Octavia Spencer as two unlikely friends on the run.

Ted Lasso star Waddingham’s character is a secret assassin called Judith, who is forced to reveal her identity to her best friend, Debbie (Octavia Spencer).

Also working in Judith’s organisation is Sam, who is in charge of assigning her tasks and tracking her whereabouts, which is easier said than done.

Sam faces many challenges throughout the series as he also has a close bond with Queenie (Savannah Steyn) – the daughter of one of Judith’s oldest acquaintances.

Here is all you need to know about the star behind Sam and where you would have seen him before.

Who plays Sam in Ride or Die?

Sam is played by Calam Lynch, a 31-year-old British actor with a very famous Irish family.

He was born in Warwickshire to Irish actors Niamh Cusack and Finbar Lynch and studied classics at Oxford University, graduating in 2017.

Initially interested in football, he did not discover a passion for acting until speaking to his cousin, the actor Max Irons.

He went on to star in stage productions during his time at university and landed a role in the war film Dunkirk during his final year.

What else has Calam Lynch been in?

Fans will kick themselves when they realise where they have seen Lynch before, as he starred in one of Netflix’s biggest shows.

He played Eloise Bridgerton’s (Claudia Jessie) love interest, Theo Sharpe, in the second season of Bridgerton.

Theo was working at the print shop when Eloise came looking for information about Lady Whistledown, as she’d figured out his shop was where her pamphlets were being printed.

He denied knowing anything, but the pair shared some sweet moments as Eloise kept returning to the shop.

Sadly, Eloise put an end to it all when she said she did not want Theo to face consequences for her actions.

Away from Bridgerton, the star has also had main roles in Sweetpea, Miss Austen and Outrageous.

Ride or Die is on Prime Video

US President Donald Trump’s nominee to serve as the nation’s top intelligence official, Jay Clayton, evaded directly stating that Trump lost the 2020 election. During his Senate confirmation hearing Clayton said only that Biden had been ‘certified’ as president, adding ‘I am not an election denier’.

The Trump administration’s latest nominee to lead the nation’ top public health agency drew frustrated reactions from some U.S. senators on Wednesday when they pressed her on whether she would protect the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention from political meddling.

Dr. Erica Schwartz told the Senate health committee she “will never betray the science” and pledged to use “radical transparency” in a bid to rebuild public trust in the agency. But several senators questioned how she might handle pressure from Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr., who has repeatedly moved to alter U.S. vaccine and CDC policies. Schwartz repeatedly declined to dissent from some of those actions.

Schwartz, 54, is up for director of the Atlanta-based CDC, which is charged with protecting Americans from preventable health threats.

Her career has largely been spent in military uniform, including in a leadership position at the U.S. Coast Guard where she oversaw the organization’s system of 41 clinics and 150 sick bays — as well as policies promoting vaccinations of service members. She later served as deputy surgeon general, where she helped lead uniformed medical and health professionals posted at the CDC and government health agencies that serve the general public.

The CDC long enjoyed a sterling international reputation but has been in turmoil since Trump returned to office last year. Largely due to layoffs and resignations, the agency has lost more than 3,000 employees, or more than a quarter of its workforce. Morale has plummeted as a succession of mostly temporary leaders have come and gone — the front office filled with political appointees, many of them with little or no training in medicine or public health.

“There’s still really good people who work there (at the CDC). They are doing their best to navigate choppy waters,” said Dr. David Margolius, director of Cleveland’s health department and a leader in a U.S. coalition of big city health departments. But CDC no longer seems to the authoritative and communicative lead that it was on outbreaks and other public health emergencies.

“Basically everybody’s got to kind of choose their own adventure, as opposed to being led by a national public health department,” Margolius said.

CDC has had several leaders

The agency is overseen by Kennedy, who was a leading voice in the anti-vaccine movement before he was tapped to lead the CDC and other federal health agencies. Kennedy had promised not to change the nation’s vaccination schedule. But shortly after taking office, Kennedy said he was going to investigate the childhood vaccine schedule and went on to attempt a substantial rewrite of vaccine recommendations for kids. Some of those efforts were put on hold earlier this year by a federal judge.

The administration’s first pick to run the CDC was former Florida congressman Dr. David Weldon, but his March 2025 Senate confirmation hearing was canceled an hour before it was to begin. Weldon said at the time that he’d been told not enough senators were willing to vote for him.

The White House then moved on to Susan Monarez, who had been serving as the CDC’s acting director. Monarez was confirmed by the Senate, but she was ousted in less than a month. Trump administration officials said she wasn’t aligned with their agenda so they terminated her.

Several key CDC scientific leaders resigned in protest, saying Monarez’s dismissal dashed their hopes that a CDC director would be able to guard against political meddling in the agency’s scientific research and health recommendations.

Since then, there’s been a revolving door in agency leadership, with the short-term role of acting director being passed from one Washington-based HHS official to another. National Institutes of Health Director Jay Bhattacharya has been overseeing the CDC most recently.

Schwartz said she was unaware of actions that hurt the CDC

On Wednesday, some senators suggested Schwartz should follow Monarez’s example, and they asked her about actions Kennedy has taken that have affected CDC.

Schwartz said she was unaware that CDC programs that worked to prevent smoking and promote vaccinations had been curtailed. She declined to commit to taking down a CDC website that suggests there’s a link between childhood vaccines and autism (she said she had not seen it), though she agreed existing medical evidence has not found a link.

Sen. Maggie Hassan, a New Hampshire Democrat, asked if she would — if Kennedy ordered her — suspend promotion of a flu vaccination campaign during a deadly flu season.

“Senator, I don’t speak in hypotheticals,” Schwartz responded.

“It isn’t hypothetical. It happened,” said Hassan, referring to internal CDC emails, released by Sen. Bernie Sanders last month, that documented such a directive from Kennedy to CDC staff last year.

Schwartz said she agreed that CDC should prioritize responding to infectious diseases. “I think over time, the CDC has had some mission creep, and it’s trying to be all things to all people,” she said.

But she also agreed to requests from Republican senators to — if confirmed — look into whether AI data centers cause health problems and into the possibility of establishing a World Trade Center Health Program clinical center in Florida.

Senators also heard from nominee overseeing health emergency preparedness

In April, Trump nominated Schwartz, calling her “incredibly talented.” In a congressional hearing in April, Kennedy said he approved of the choice, but refused to commit to supporting whatever vaccine guidance she might issue.

Last month, Schwartz filed letters with the government that address her finances and potential conflicts of interest. She wrote that if confirmed, she will leave her current job with UnitedHealth Group, where she’s making about $850,000 in salary and bonus money and cash out her stock options. She also will resign from the board of directors of Butterfly Network Inc., a Massachusetts company that makes ultrasound devices; from the board of Atlanta-based Aveanna Healthcare, a medical home care provider; and from the board of the Florida-based Searching for Solutions Institute.

At Wednesday’s hearing, senators also considered the nomination of Sean Kaufman as the Assistant Secretary for Preparedness and Response, or ASPR. That job entails overseeing preparations and response to public health emergencies and disasters.

Last year, the Trump administration announced a plan to bring those responsibilities under CDC, but the dramatic HHS restructuring has not happened.

The assistant secretary’s office is involved in decisions about funding next-generation vaccines against pandemic flu or other infectious disease threats. In postings on LinkedIn, Kaufman has made comments cheered by vaccine skeptics, arguing against hepatitis B vaccinations for newborns and saying he served as an expert witness to advocate for people who refused the COVID-19 vaccine.

On Wednesday, Kaufman faced questions about past social media posts, including one in which he expressed hatred for the CDC. He also repeatedly was asked about his support of a Trump administration decision last year to cancel 22 projects, totaling $500 million, to develop vaccines using mRNA technology.

Infectious disease experts say the mRNA technology used in vaccines is safe, and they credit its development during the first Trump administration with slowing the 2020 coronavirus pandemic. Future pandemics, they warned, will be harder to stop without the help of mRNA.

Kaufman said he supported mRNA technology and believes COVID-19 vaccines are safe and effective, but said it made sense to study work that’s been done so far before, including learning more about any side effects.

Sen. John Hickenlooper, a Colorado Democrat, said such evaluations are the responsibility of other federal offices — not ASPR. He also said it may slow the nation’s ability to respond to emerging new infectious threats.

Stobbe writes for the Associated Press.

Tomi Adeyemi, the author of the bestselling fantasy “Children of Blood and Bone,” isn’t planning to see the forthcoming film adaptation — even though she co-wrote it.

Over the weekend, the Nigerian American author posted a video on TikTok addressing fans who have been asking her the same question, “Why don’t you post about the adaptation of your first film adaptation anymore?”

“There is a reason I will not post anything about the adaptation of my work,” the author wrote in what appear to be screenshots of a group chat. “I have not seen the film, and I will not watch it.”

The adaptation of the first installment of Adeyemi’s “Legacy of Orïsha” fantasy trilogy is slated to hit theaters in January 2027. Gina Prince-Bythewood — who wrote and directed “Love & Basketball” and helmed “The Woman King” — is directing. The film stars Amandla Stenberg, Thuso Mbedu, Tosin Cole, Damson Idris, Cynthia Erivo, Lashana Lynch, Regina King, Idris Elba, Chiwetel Ejiofor and Viola Davis.

Alongside the screenshots of her comments in the group chat, she shared a February 2025 exchange with Stenberg that shows the author severing ties with the actor.

Adeyemi shared only her final message to Stenberg, which reads, “Do not ever use my name in an interview or video again. Do not text me. Do not call me.” That exchange is followed by a notification that she blocked Stenberg, who plays Princess Amari in the upcoming fantasy flick.

The message from Stenberg that preceded Adeyemi’s reply is not shown in full.

Stenberg, who played Rue in “Hunger Games,” Starr Carter in “The Hate U Give” and, recently, Verosha “Osha” Aniseya and Mae-ho “Mae” Aniseya in Disney’s “Star Wars” series “The Acolyte,” had been getting flack from readers of the series, who claimed colorism was an issue while casting the movie.

In February 2025, Stenberg posted a since-deleted nine-minute TikTok addressing the controversy and told followers that Adeyemi had given the actor her blessing when cast as the series’ princess.

“I am four months into training for ‘Children of Blood and Bone’ and I am getting my ass whooped,” Stenberg joked in the video, per BET.

“This year was mostly defined for me, honestly, by contending with what it felt like to receive racist death threats just for existing in the ‘Star Wars’ universe, and that was a really difficult thing for me to move through,” she continued. “But honestly, it feels so much more painful for me to feel like I’m at odds with my own community.”

Stenberg said that she considers her skin tone when navigating her career choices and would “never go after a role” she didn’t feel well suited for. “I know that colorism is an insidious system that relentlessly impacts every facet of entertainment.”

The actor continued that it was actually a meeting with the “Children of Blood and Bone” author that gave her the confidence to pursue the role.

“I had the opportunity to meet Tomi, the novelist, for the first time. … And she goes, ‘Amandla, I want you to know that when you were a little girl and you were cast as Rue in “The Hunger Games,” and people said that Rue’s death wouldn’t be as sad because you’re a Black girl — that inspired me to write this series so that Black girls like you and Black girls of all shades could have a story written about them,’” Stenberg said in the video. “We started crying, and I said to myself, ‘God wants me here.’”

Representatives for Stenberg, Adeyemi and Prince-Bythewood did not immediately respond to The Times’ request for comment.

Edward Pinto, co-director of the American Enterprise Institute Housing Center argues that the new US housing bill is unlikely to significantly ease the country’s housing crisis. He says it’s too limited to address the core issues – like restrictive local zoning. For the full segment, watch Al Jazeera’s ‘This is America’.

Two days after Ukraine said it couldn’t down any Russian ballistic missiles because of a dearth of Patriot surface-to-air missile (SAM) interceptors, President Donald Trump on Wednesday told Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky that he would provide Kyiv with a license to build its own. 

The vow, made during a bilateral meeting at the NATO Summit in Ankara, Turkey, was a rare feel-good moment between two world leaders who have frequently butted heads. However, turning that offer into a reality that can help Ukraine in the near-term isn’t realistic. It would take many months, at least, for the first missiles to roll off the production line for a whole host of reasons we will delve into later in this story.

“That’s pretty cool,” Trump told Zelensky after making his license offer. “This way, you can’t complain that we’re not giving them enough. I said, ‘Make them yourself.’”

Trump added a telling caveat.

“We haven’t informed the company of that yet, but that’ll work out all right,” he said. We’ve reached out to Lockheed Martin and Raytheon, which make variants of these weapons, for more details.

“We don’t have an immediate comment on the president’s announcement,” a spokesperson for RTX, Raytheon’s parent company told us. However, the spokesperson noted that RTX “has a long history of co-producing critical defense systems in Europe, with major suppliers in Poland, Germany, Switzerland and Greece to name a few.”

The American leader also suggested that Ukraine would not need much time before it is able to place domestically produced Patriot interceptors into launchers.

“I think they can produce them pretty quickly,” Trump posited. “They have a great ability to produce weapons.”

As we noted earlier in this piece, that’s unlikely at best, even though Ukraine has been at the forefront of weapons production dating back to when it was part of the Soviet Union.

First of all, such a deal could face bureaucratic and regulatory hurdles, like getting Congressional approval. That’s the least of the issues, however.

For instance, even Lockheed Martin, one of the world’s biggest arms makers, currently produces only about 650 PAC-3 MSE interceptors a year, or just shy of two per day. However, under a contract with the Pentagon inked in January, Lockheed is committed to boosting Patriot annual production to 2,000 in the years to come.

Lockheed Martin Receives Contract to Accelerate PAC-3® MSE Production

“Every PAC-3 MSE interceptor carries a production lead time of 24 months for the missile and 30 months for the solid rocket motor,” the Foreign Policy Research Institute (FPRI) explained in a recent analysis. “Such timelines are due to physical industrial constraints, such as the lengthy curing time required for solid rocket motors and the complex, multi-year process of qualifying any new component supplier.”

The primary bottleneck “sits one level below the prime contractor,” FPRI added. “Boeing produces the active radar seeker for every PAC-3 MSE from a single facility in Huntsville, Alabama, and in 2025 it delivered only around 650 to 700 seekers. Recognizing this choke point, the Pentagon signed a framework in April 2026 to triple seeker production, an admission that final assembly capacity is irrelevant if the sub-tier cannot keep up. The same logic applies to the missile’s solid rocket motor, manufactured by L3Harris’s Aerojet Rocketdyne.”

Leaders celebrate groundbreaking of Boeing’s PAC-3 Seeker Factory

Given those issues, whether Ukraine can obtain these components even if it does have a license to build the interceptors is a huge question. It is one that Kyiv is trying to answer for the line of interceptors it is trying to produce at home. 

Fire Point, the Ukrainian company that makes several drones as well as the FP-5 Flamingo cruise missile, is working on a domestically designed and produced “anti-ballistic shield.” The backbone of this system is the company’s FP-7.x interceptor missile. In February, the company demonstrated tests of the weapon, which is based on its FP-7 ballistic missile.

That shield “is aerodynamically ready, but still not combat-capable without full integration,” the Kyiv Post noted earlier this month. “Chief designer Denys Shtilerman said the system depends on radars, command centers, a secure data link, and a European-developed seeker head. The company is working with partners to combine these elements into a functioning missile defense network.”

You can see the FP-7 missile in the following video.

As we have previously noted, between U.S. usage in recent Middle East conflicts, sustained consumption by Ukraine and commitments to nearly 20 other nations that are facing increasing threats, the supply of Patriot interceptors is a major problem. Even before Ukraine gained the system and the multiple flare-ups in the Middle East, the depth of the global Patriot missile arsenal and the ability to build enough interceptors in a crisis was concerning. Now demand has exploded and rationing is occurring, with some customers being told their orders are going to be diverted to replenish U.S. stocks. This practice even predates the second Trump administration, with the Biden White House telling allies their orders will be diverted to Taiwan and Ukraine.

All of these interceptors for various buyers will need the same long-lead, highly specialized components that Ukraine would need for domestic production of these weapons.

Even if Ukraine can round up all the components, it still needs a place to put them all together into a workable weapon. Given that it faces constant missile and drone barrages from Russia, Ukraine disperses a lot of its weapons production to avoid having one point of failure in the event of a devastating attack. However, that might not be optimal for the production of enough Patriot interceptors to provide an adequate defense against these threats. Any large facility purpose-built or converted for this effort — which could take years — would be a prime target and likely attacked very quickly.

Should Ukraine find a suitable, secure location, perhaps underground, it still needs people to do the work. That raises another level of concern, according to David Shank, a retired Army colonel who served as Commandant of the Air Defense Artillery School at Fort Sill, Oklahoma, and as the 10th Army Air Missile Defense Commander in Europe.

“From my perspective, I am absolutely 100% concerned about the Ukrainians and anyone they let in those facilities,” Shank noted. “And of course that brings into play how much information and capability we are willing to share for the Ukrainians to build Patriot interceptors.”

Shank’s concerns are well-founded. Security around these weapons and their components is very high. The chances that data or hardware could find its way into enemy hands is a problem in a country at war with its neighbor, and those risks are greater with the more advanced variants of these weapons like the PAC-3 family.

As Raytheon noted in its response to our inquiry, licensed production of Patriot interceptors is a concept not without precedent. Japan also has a contract with Lockheed Martin to produce about 30 Patriot interceptors per year. Plans to boost that number hit a snag in 2024 over supply chain issues, Reuters reported at the time. Meanwhile, a new MBDA-Raytheon facility in Europe built to make GEM-T Patriot missiles is due to open later this year, according to the Financial Times.

In addition to that, plans were announced during the NATO Summit to build a European Patriot PAC-3 maintenance facility.

Also unknown is how Ukraine will pay for all this, though it is likely European nations will help foot the bill.

All things considered, it will be a while before Ukraine can defend its skies with homegrown Patriot interceptors.

“I do think there will be bureaucratic hurdles to get over,” Shank surmised. “But ultimately I believe the tech transfer and supply chain will drive the pace. I am sure Ukraine has already identified the big ticket items needed to make this happen. I believe the supply chain of the intricate components, chips, and circuit cards could slow the process.”

In addition to promising he would give Ukraine a license to build Patriot, Trump also said he would provide an undisclosed number of additional ones from existing U.S. stocks.

There’s a long way to go before Ukraine can procure the Patriot interceptors it needs.

According to Ukraine’s Defense Intelligence Directorate (GUR), “Russia’s military-industrial complex plans to deliver up to 700 9M723 ballistic missiles for the Iskander operational-tactical missile system in 2026, the same number as last year,” Ukrainska Pravda reported. “Monthly production rates remain at 55-60 missiles.”

In addition, “the Russians have more than doubled production of RM-48U missiles for S-300PM and S-400 air defense systems, which they use to strike ground targets,” the publication added. “Over 480 such missiles are planned to be delivered in 2026, compared with more than 200 in 2025. The current monthly production rate is up to 50 missiles.”

The number of ballistic missiles Russia builds per year exceeds the current pace of high-end Patriot interceptor production, which is telling when it comes to how many interceptors the U.S. can supply Ukraine on a sustained basis under the current production rates.

So, Trump’s offer, if it comes through, won’t solve Ukraine’s urgent need for interceptors. However, becoming a Patriot producer, even after the war, would be a huge win for Kyiv. Developing its own stockpile would give Ukraine a level of security it does not currently enjoy. Being able to potentially co-export some of the interceptors it assembles would also add a boost to its economy that Ukraine badly needs. In addition, it would cement Ukraine further as a high-end weapons manufacturer. Considering the voracious global appetite for these weapons, there would be no shortage of customers.

Contact the author: howard@twz.com

A new study has named one place as the most expensive seaside destination in the UK, with a day trip costing £38.20 – meaning £100 lasts just over two days

From parking fees to the price of fish and chips or an ice cream — a classic day trip or a longer stay at a UK coastal destination could leave a serious dent in your wallet.

New research has looked at some of Britain’s most popular summer hotspots, calculating the cost of deckchair hire, a ’99’ ice cream, and a fish and chips meal — and one city has come out on top as the priciest of the lot.

The study revealed that £100 in this particular seaside spot will ‘only last just over 2 days’, according to figures drawn from the new UK Seaside Affordability Index. The data has laid bare significant differences around the British coastline in terms of how far your hard-earned cash will actually go.

When taking into account everything you’d need for a perfect day at the beach, all the must-have essentials add up to £38.20 per day in this particular city.

Brand new research from NoDepositRewards.org breaks down the cost of a traditional beach day out at locations across the UK, reports the Express.

The study looked at all-day parking charges (based on current local council rates), the average price of a ’99’ ice cream, a large fish and chips meal (using local chippy prices) and full-day deckchair hire.

The research was carried out with the aim of establishing how long £100 would last on a seaside outing.

Brighton was named the most expensive coastal destination in the country, according to the findings. All-day parking came in at £18, while the classic ice cream was priced at £2.70.

By comparison, in the most affordable spot, Swansea, parking for the day costs just £3 and an ice cream is £1.65. A fish and chip supper in Brighton will set you back £11.50, though it’s not the priciest location for the classic British takeaway — in Bamburgh, Northumberland, the same meal will cost you £14.88.

Renting a deckchair in Brighton will generally cost around £6 for the day — meaning the total ‘seaside basket’ for a day at this popular coastal destination comes to a whopping £38.20 per day for all the essential sunny day basics.

Coming in second was the Cornish town of St Ives, labelled the ‘second priciest seaside destination in the UK’. St Ives was ranked as the second most expensive spot, with visitors forking out an average of £25.30 per day.

In St Ives, holidaymakers can expect to pay around £10 for all-day parking, £12.50 for a large fish and chips, and just over £2.50 for an ice cream.

Swansea was named as the most budget-friendly seaside destination, with the same selection of items totalling approximately £16.71 per day.

Mason Jones, data expert at NoDepositRewards.org, said: “Families are budgeting harder than ever for summer 2025.

“Our Seaside Index shows you can triple the number of beach days simply by choosing a different stretch of coast.

“With parking now topping local cost charts, the North and Wales clearly win on value.”

Dodgers two-way phenom Shohei Ohtani waddled through the clubhouse after the Dodgers’ 4-3 comeback victory against the Padres on Friday night, the bulging ice wraps around his left knee and right arm creating a penguin-like effect to his gait.

That in and of itself wasn’t noteworthy — ice after starts is a regular part of any pitcher’s recovery and arm care. But for Ohtani, the awkward wraps were reminders of one ailment he’s getting over, knee inflammation, and one that popped up Friday night — a right biceps problem.

“More precautionary reason,” Ohtani said through interpreter Will Ireton about being replaced by a pinch-hitter in the seventh inning. “I was a little concerned with my biceps with the last at-bat that I took.”

Ohtani limited the Padres (43-44) to three runs over 110 pitches when he stepped up to the plate in the sixth.

Teoscar Hernández hits a grand slam for the Dodgers against the San Diego Padres on Friday.

He worked a full count and then flew out to right field. Ohtani paused on his follow-through, his lips pursed, before jogging up the line.

“It’s the same location that I felt a couple months ago,” Ohtani said. “It went away relatively quickly, so I expect that to happen again.”

That Ohtani dealt with a biceps problem earlier this season was not disclosed before Friday. Even manager Dave Roberts said after the game that he had just learned about the previous ailment.

Ohtani will take off Saturday to recover, Roberts said. And Ohtani skipping his last pitching start before the All-Star break is “on the table.”

Ohtani was voted the starting designated hitter for the National League, marking his sixth straight All-Star selection. But even before Friday, it seemed unlikely he would pitch in the All-Star Game given his rotation schedule.

“He’s a quick healer, and finds a way to get back,” Roberts said. “But I do think that for us to read and react and hear what his body is telling him is really important, given the toll it takes on his body to be a two-way player.”

The injury concern replaced now-assuaged questions about Ohtani’s pairing with catcher Dalton Rushing with Will Smith (neck) on the injured list. Smith has at least resumed throwing and took swings Thursday, Roberts said, but he isn’t expected to return before the All-Star break.

The last time Rushing caught Ohtani, the pitcher took over pitch-calling after a disastrous second inning against the Twins last week.

“I just overthought last time,” Rushing said in a conversation with The Times on Thursday night. “I was trying to be perfect, and with a guy like that, you don’t have to be perfect. You just need to call the right pitches at the right time and allow his stuff to just beat them naturally. And that’s the plan [Friday]. Whether I call the pitch, he calls the pitch. I want to make sure we’re both convicted in what we’re throwing, and we can execute it to the best of our ability.”

On Friday, Ohtani handed back over pitch-calling duties, communicating with head shakes and nods instead of the PitchCom buttons on his arm.

Ohtani walked the first two batters he faced. But then he struck out three of the next four, escaping the jam down just 1-0, courtesy of an RBI single from Gavin Sheets.

That started a streak of 10 batters who Ohtani retired in order, fanning six of them.

“The best way that I can describe it is, if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it,” Rushing said when asked what he’d learned from following along last week. “That’s the way he pitches. … Trust what you do, trust how good his stuff is, and just go from there.”

Dodgers pitcher Shohei Ohtani, left, gets a fist bump from catcher Dalton Rushing during the first inning of a 4-3 win over the San Diego Padres at Dodger Stadium on Friday night.

(Gina Ferazzi / Los Angeles Times)

Ohtani’s back-to-back strikeouts to end the second inning were a good example. Against left-handed hitting Sung-Mun Song, he threw mostly four-seam fastballs and splitters, finishing off the six-pitch at-bat with a sweeper, according to Statcast.

Against right-handed hitting Rodolfo Durán, Ohtani threw mostly sinkers and sweepers, with one four-seamer mixed in out of seven pitches.

Ohtani eventually relented a second run with two outs in the fourth inning. He fell behind 0-2 in the count to Jackson Merrill, who flipped a strike call with an ABS challenge. Then Merrill hammered a fastball over the plate for a solo homer.

Ohtani successfully navigated traffic to throw a scoreless fifth, but Xander Bogaerts tagged him for an RBI double in the sixth.

“I think I did the bare minimum,” Ohtani said. “To get through six, to give the team the chance to win, keep the game in check. But there were some good and some bad.”

Ohtani gave up seven hits for a quality start that wasn’t his cleanest. The Dodgers (58-31), who had struggled to get anything going against Padres starter Michael King, were trailing 3-0 when Ohtani exited. But Teoscar Hernández took care of the deficit.

Teoscar Hernández hits a grand slam in the seventh inning of the Dodgers’ 4-3 win over the San Diego Padres at Dodger Stadium on Friday night.

(Gina Ferazzi / Los Angeles Times)

Facing reliever Adrian Morejon with the bases loaded and no outs in the seventh, Hernández ambushed a first-pitch slider.

“Knowing him, every pitch is hard,” Hernández said. “I was looking for the hardest one, the fastball, middle-in. But just reacted to that one in the middle of the plate.”

Hernández drifted up the first-base line as he watched the ball fly. When it landed, he launched his bat back toward the dugout, and it made it halfway there.

“I’m just trying to find the same swing that I had before I got hurt,” Hernández said. “And at the same time, just do something for the team. It happened to be a big swing.”

Jakob Davies, 25, suffered severe injuries after falling from a three-storey balcony during a stag do in Albufeira, Portugal, as his family launches a fundraiser to help him

The devastated family of a Brit who plunged from a three-storey balcony during a stag do in Portugal fear his travel insurance may not cover his mounting medical bills because he had been drinking.

Jakob Davies, 25, remains in hospital in Faro after suffering catastrophic injuries in a fall at a hotel in Albufeira earlier this month. His loved ones say they are still waiting to hear whether his insurer will pay out after tests showed alcohol in his system.

The factory worker, who is from Scarborough, North Yorkshire, had travelled to the Portuguese party hotspot with around 30 work colleagues for a stag weekend on June 4.

His mum, Claire Gerrard, fears the family could be left facing huge costs after doctors warned Jakob he may never walk again without urgent surgery.

The 51-year-old woman said: “He’s totally on his own. I need to know what’s going to happen to him. He was told if you don’t have this operation immediately then you won’t walk again.

“He does have travel insurance but because of the alcohol that he’s drunk it’s not looking like they will pay. We’ve contacted the insurance company and they wanted all the reports so I sent the reports.

“The doctor gave Jakob his alcohol levels with his bloods done and it did show alcohol in his system, which unfortunately they will not pay out.

“25 [years old] on a stag party he’s not going to have none is he? They’ve not said no yet, we’re still waiting on information. I think it should be made more clear to people, especially to youngsters. You’re going on holiday to a stag party and you can’t drink, they don’t listen, they just go and have a drink.”

Jakob had chosen to stay behind at the accommodation on June 5 to play football while the rest of the stag group headed out.

But when his friends returned later that day, they were alarmed to see fire engines, police cars and ambulances rushing towards their hotel.

Claire expained: “I think there were about 30 of them and it was somebody from work’s stag party. It’s all really, really vague, Jakob has no recollection of it whatsoever.

“He had been playing football with some other guys, his party were leaving and Jakob had said ‘I’m going to continue to play football’.

“I don’t even think he remembers playing football but that’s what he was doing. When the party was returning back to the hotel there were fire engines flying past and then the police came past and then the ambulances came past and had turned into their hotel so they thought ‘oh gosh something is going on’.

“When they got there Jacob was unconscious on the floor with severe head injuries and broken bones, it looked pretty horrific initially. When they got him in the ambulance, he had regained consciousness and he was speaking but he wasn’t aware of what had happened.”

Believed to have fallen from a three-storey balcony, Jakob was initially taken to a local hospital before being transferred to a larger hospital in Faro.

Doctors later discovered he had suffered a serious head injury, broken feet and ankles, as well as fractures to both his L1 and L4 vertebrae.

Recalling the moment she learned about the horror fall, the worried mum said: “I got a phone call at around 11am on Saturday morning [June 6] to say Jakob’s fallen from a three-storey balcony. My initial feelings from then on were absolute dread.”

As Jakob continues his recovery overseas, family and friends have launched a GoFundMe appeal to help cover medical expenses and the cost of bringing him back to the UK.

Travel insurance experts warn that some policies contain exclusions relating to alcohol or drug use, although terms and conditions vary between providers. Holidaymakers are urged to check the small print of their policies before travelling, particularly if they are planning to drink while abroad.

To donate to the GoFundMe, click this link.

A LESSER-KNOWN European theme park has announced it is getting a major new ride.

Previously named one of the best amusement parks in Europe by the European Star Awards, Nigloland is about two and a half hours from Paris.

And the French theme park will be getting a new £15.5million rollercoaster called ‘Supersonic 1887’.

The ride, which will be the park’s largest investment to date, is a launch shuttle rollercoaster.

At its highest point it will reach 47 metres off of the ground, and it will reach speeds of up to 56.5mph.

Even though the track itself stretches for 355 metres, riders will travel a total of 770 metres thanks to sections where the rollercoaster will travel backwards.

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The rollercoaster will also turn the 32 riders upside down at least six times across three inverted parts of the track, including a loop.

Each of the two carriages also include eight ‘wing seats’ that allow riders to dangle their feet in the air.

And what makes the ride even more fun will be the fact that over half the time riders are on it, they will be suspended over water.

The ride is inspired by World Expositions that took place during the 19th century, according to EAP Magazine.

The story of the ride will follow a character called Emilie Delaroche, an engineer who has developed a steam machine that travels at high speeds.

The rollercoaster is expected to open in 2027.

President and Director of the Park, Rodolphe Gelis said: “Nigoland is set to celebrate its 40th anniversary.

“To mark this milestone, we wanted to create a major attraction that reflects our ambitions.

“Supersonic is a project conceived by our creative and technical teams, which we entrusted to a leading manufacturer renowned for the quality of its work and its wealth of innovations.

“It is the most ambitious project Nigoland has ever undertaken.”

The theme park features more than 40 attractions in total, 27 of which are ideal for younger children.

There are four immersive zones in total including The Canadian Village, The Rock ‘n’ Rock Village, The Magical Village and The Swiss Village.

Rides include Krampus Expedition which is a water coaster based on Alpine folklore.

There’s also Spatiale Expérience, which is an indoor rollercoaster that travels through outer space.

Visitors can also stay onsite at the Hotel des Pirates.

The service says the Warthog will fly to 2030. Evidence shows a lack of commitment and the irreversible loss of A-10 combat capability is instead just months away.

This September, the A-10 “Warthog” Thunderbolt II was scheduled to make its final flight. Instead, the A-10 deployed again, this time supporting combat operations over the Strait of Hormuz, striking Iranian fast-attack craft and maritime threats near one of the world’s most important shipping chokepoints. The A-10 was also the “Sandy” escort that recovered two downed F-15E airmen from inside Iran. Then, later in April, the Air Force reversed course and announced it would keep the jet flying through 2030.

While the Air Force changed the headline, it has yet to follow through with the harder financial commitment needed to preserve actual A-10 combat power. Its fiscal 2027 budget, released shortly after the extension announcement, funds zero dollars of A-10 modernization, cuts depot maintenance below the service’s own stated requirement, and is crippled by “sunset” policy and institution resistance around the aircraft’s “upcoming divestment.” 

In other words, by the end of this year, the A-10 will be without depot support, without a training pipeline, without weapons-school instruction, and without operational-test capacity. To a community that was scheduled for final retirement this October, every month waiting for the promised extension makes rebuilding slower, costlier, and closer to infeasible. Without action, the A-10 will transition from a combat asset to a line item waiting for liquidation.

A-10 combat capacity requires a meaningful shift in priorities that brings back resources and overcomes institutional resistance. Saving a limited number of aircraft is wasteful unless it is matched with resources, personnel, and policy that make it clear the A-10 is a valuable combat asset. The justification for preserving the A-10 is measurable in combat utility and financially sound reasoning. 

I have no sentimental attachment to the A-10. I flew combat fighters as both an F/A-18 TOPGUN graduate and later as a U.S. Air Force F-22 Mission Commander with more than 2,000 flight hours, including combat deployments to Afghanistan, Iraq, and Syria. Since leaving the cockpit, I have worked closely alongside the A-10 community as it reinvented itself around modern warfare and Indo-Pacific priorities. I care about preserving combat capability and making disciplined present-value force-management decisions grounded in operational reality.

The A-10 was not preserved out of nostalgia. It was preserved because recent operations reminded the Air Force that immediate combat power still matters and the A-10 has proven useful in ways many planners underestimated. Today, it provides unique value unmatched by any of its peer tactical aircraft. It operates from austere locations, supports standoff and maritime strike, and validates emerging lower-cost weapons that reduces pressure on more expensive strike aircraft. 

As noted in the opening of this article, the A-10 also fills a critical combat role many have discounted: Sandy missions supporting combat search and rescue. Recent recovery operations over Iran protecting two F-15E airmen demonstrated again that personnel recovery escort, permissive strike, armed reconnaissance, and low-altitude tactical coordination remain critical and complex combat skills. The A-10 community has been supporting these missions for over 50 years. That wealth of knowledge and experience is being displaced. Without a replacement, the Air Force carries a mission requirement it may prove unable to fulfill. 

Why Preserving The A-10 Was The Right Decision 

For years, the Air Force’s divestment logic rested on several assumptions: that future conflicts would prioritize different force packages, that replacement capability would mature on schedule, and that preserving the A-10 generated less value than retiring it. 

Recent events changed that projection. The A-10 has sustained operations in both Europe and the Middle East. Simultaneously, Air Force strategy in the Pacific has benefited from ongoing A-10 support developing distributed combat employment, maritime strike, and advanced weapons integration. The same platform once dismissed as a legacy close-air-support aircraft is now proving adaptable to several emerging operational problems and service priorities. 

The A-10 is not theoretical surge capacity sitting in storage. It remains active combat power supporting real operational demand today. Combat escort, personnel recovery, permissive strike, armed reconnaissance, and maritime interdiction remain ongoing Air Force missions and long-standing A-10 strengths. 

A less known strength of the A-10 is the leverage it provides as a modernization platform. The A-10 community has quietly become one of the Air Force’s most effective rapid integration ecosystems. Because the aircraft relies heavily on government-owned hardware and software architectures, operators and engineers have been able to test and field new capabilities in weeks instead of years. The community has been behind recent breakthrough integrations including AGR-20 APKWS, Small Diameter Bomb, ADM-160 MALD employment, beyond-line-of-sight communications, maritime strike weapons, and network-enabled command and control. 

Nobody is arguing the A-10 is the future of Pacific airpower. It doesn’t need to be. The aircraft has become a low-cost operational laboratory for rapid tactical adaptation fully integrated into real combat capacity. 

The Air Force is trying to solve exactly these problems across the broader force. It has built doctrine around Agile Combat Employment, dispersed basing, rapid combat regeneration, and operations from degraded infrastructure. The A-10 has honed these skills for more than 30 years, proving proficient in these missions as early as Operation Desert Shield, including highway landings, integrated combat turns, austere maintenance operations, and distributed basing experimentation. 

Preserving one of the few communities with real operational experience executing tactics the broader force is still learning is strategically wise. The A-10’s latest life extension was never simply about preserving an airframe. It was about preserving combat capability, operational experience, and one of the Air Force’s few proven rapid-integration ecosystems.

What The Air Force Will Lose 

The current plan has the service preserving a limited number of airframes while allowing the combat system behind the A-10 to collapse. A fleet that numbered more than 280 aircraft just a few years ago, and 162 at the start of fiscal 2026, is set to fall to 54 next year and just 36 by 2030. The cuts land hardest where the expertise is hardest to rebuild: the Air National Guard’s A-10 force, 47 aircraft as recently as last year, goes to zero, its flying hours swapped for a new cyber mission. What survives risks becoming a ghost-fleet. Of the “three squadrons to 2030” the Chief of Staff has promised, the active-duty force shrinks to a single squadron of 17 jets with no spares behind it. 

Combat capability does not reside in aluminum alone. It resides in maintainers, instructor pilots, operational test teams, weapons officers, logistics pipelines, and institutional continuity accumulated over decades. All of that is currently at risk. The capacity to produce, refine and retain this talent and experience is perishable. Airmen face irreversible career decisions. Maintainers transition to other fleets. Weapons instructors leave. Operational test is blocked. Once assignment pipelines close and personnel move on, the impact compounds quickly. To a community that was previously scheduled for final retirement this October, every month of uncertainty adds to the complexity of sustained readiness. Rebuilding later becomes expensive and slow, if not impossible. 

How perishable A-10 specific knowledge is was documented by the Air Force’s own testing. When the Pentagon ran a 2018–2019 flyoff to determine whether the F-35 could replace the A-10 in close air support, forward air control-airborne (FAC-(A)), and combat search and rescue (CSAR), F-35 pilots had no qualification or training requirement for the FAC(A) and CSAR missions. To make the comparison work, the test had to crew the F-35 with former A-10 pilots, aviators who carried their Sandy and weapons-school training over from the very aircraft being retired. The report demonstrated mission performance depended on the aircrew, not the airframe. 

Years later, in 2023 and 2024, the Air Force still had no close-air-support or CSAR training requirement for any F-35 pilot. In April 2026, the formal A-10 training unit at Davis-Monthan, the 357th Fighter Squadron, the schoolhouse that is home to the Sandy qualification, graduated its last class. On the same day, halfway across the world, A-10 flew the combat rescue mission saving downed aircrew inside Iran. The dissonance between real world combat value and misaligned budget politics will be on full display if the 357th schoolhouse and its Sandy training syllabus are allowed to fully inactivate in just a few months. The Air Force has confirmed there is no transition underway to move the Sandy mission to any other airframe, and no successor qualification program in development.

This is not a new concern. In 2021, the Senate formally recorded that A-10 combat search and rescue had been “100 percent effective” in Operation Allied Force, recovering a downed F-117 and F-16 pilot. The Warthog has now done it again over Iran. Congress has consistently levied the concern but the Air Force and its budget still haven’t made this a real priority.

The Air Force has already invested heavily to preserve A-10 viability well beyond 2030: roughly $1.1 billion to re-wing 173 aircraft, completed in 2019, and a follow-on contract worth up to $999 million to put new wings on the remaining 109, about $2.1 billion in total to extend the entire fleet’s structural life into the late 2030s. But even those investments faced similar institutional resistance inside the Air Force. The service repeatedly placed A-10 funding on its “unfunded requirements” list rather than in its base budget, while funding upgrades to other legacy fighters instead. Congress has consistently met Air Force resistance, such as in 2021 when the service spent just $15.6 million of $100 million Congress had appropriated to sustain the fleet into the 2030s. Allowing the enterprise behind those re-winged jets to collapse now would write off an investment the taxpayer and Congress already paid for and has barely begun to recoup.

This is not a theoretical risk. When the F-22 production line closed at 186 aircraft, well short of the original requirement of 750, the assumption was that follow-on capability would arrive to fill the gap. The limited F-22 fleet now bears disproportionate sustainment costs awaiting delivery of the proposed F-47 sometime in the mid-2030s, and even then, the two could serve alongside each other for a period of time. Timing errors in force design can become effectively irreversible, especially once the infrastructure that sustains a capability is dismantled. In the A-10 case, that includes not only the aircraft but also the depot and integration ecosystem that support it. Once those are gone, the option value is gone with them. 

The financial logic behind accelerated divestment is also less straightforward than topline savings figures suggest. Retiring the A-10 does not eliminate operational demand. Combat search and rescue escort, permissive strike, armed reconnaissance, and distributed-operations requirements still exist. Those missions and their costs migrate elsewhere: more flight hours on higher-cost aircraft, additional maintenance burden, increased schoolhouse demand, and greater operational tempo across communities already under strain.

The A-10 offers combat power at a discount through both cost per flight hour and cost per effect on target. Mission specialization means A-10 employing laser-guided rockets, gun, or other comparatively low-cost weapons provides a strong complement to high-end fighter packages and their standoff weapons. 

The Air Force mission, its airmen, and our nation’s combat capacity all stand to benefit from a more complete commitment to the A-10 and its community.

What The Air Force Should Do 

The Air Force must revisit their A-10 commitments to ensure the extension is real. 

Restore and protect the 357th Fighter Squadron at Davis-Monthan. The 357th is the Air Force’s formal A-10 training unit and the institutional home of the Sandy qualification, the schoolhouse where combat-search-and-rescue expertise is produced, refined, and passed to the next generation of aircrew. It graduated its last class in April 2026 and is set to inactivate this year. No successor Sandy qualification program exists across the Department of War, and the Air Force has confirmed none is in development. Inactivating the 357th severs the center of excellence that produces the very capability the service says it values. Reversing that decision is the single highest-leverage action available, and the clearest signal of whether the 2030 commitment is real. The squadron should be retained until a validated replacement for the Sandy mission is stood up and producing qualified aircrew on a replacement platform.

Stabilize the rest of the enterprise through the extension timeline. If the service intends to preserve meaningful capability through 2030, the supporting structure has to survive with it. That means protected funding for depot maintenance, training, operational-test, and maintainer retention. Exempt the A-10 from “sunset” policy where budgets are still being slashed with justification of “upcoming divestment.” Instead, leverage the A-10 operational-test process as a rapid-integration and tactics pathfinder, capturing and transferring those lessons across the broader force before the capability disappears. 

Tie any future divestment to demonstrated replacement readiness, not the calendar. Do not divest the A-10 until there is a trained and capable replacement for each mission it performs. Build a deliberate plan for a clean handoff of mission responsibility and the community knowledge behind it, and gate future retirements on proven replacement capability rather than programmatic timelines.

The case for retiring the A-10 was always a timing argument: accept a measured reduction in near-term capacity in exchange for a better future force. The Air Force already announced the A-10 was back. Now it must fund the decision it already made before the combat capacity disappears anyway.

Paul “Gu$” Garcia is a TOPGUN Navy Fighter Weapons School instructor and graduate who flew combat missions in the F/A-18 across Iraq, Afghanistan, and Syria. He transitioned to fly the F-22 in the IndoPacific as a member of the Hawaii Air National Guard, leading the Homeland Defense mission for the Hawaii and Guam Air Defense Region for Operation Noble Eagle. He retired from the U.S. Air Force as the lead for PACAF modernization and innovation in 2025. He is Managing Partner and founder of Merge Combinator.

The opinions and views expressed in this article are those of the author and do not reflect the views or opinions of the U.S. Air Force, the U.S. Department of Defense, or any part of the U.S. government.

Al Jazeera’s Dominic Kane explains that the EU won’t lift crucial sanctions on Iran until a formal nuclear agreement is reached. The bloc’s foreign policy chief Kaja Kallas also clarified that human rights-related sanctions will continue regardless.

Brendan Sorsby won’t be playing football for Texas Tech this fall after all.

It’s not because the transfer quarterback has been permanently banned by the NCAA for wagering on college sports — an injunction issued by a Texas judge last week appeared to clear the way for Sorsby to play for the Red Raiders in 2026.

That ruling, however, was being challenged through separate court filings by the NCAA and the Big 12 Conference. Facing that uncertainty over his final season, and with the deadline to enter the NFL supplemental draft quickly approaching, Sorsby opted to leave the Red Raiders without playing a down.

Sorsby’s decision was announced Monday night in an open letter by Cody Campbell, chairman of the Texas Tech board of regents.

“This decision was made with Brendan and his family and is purely an output of practical analysis of the situation,” Campbell wrote. “Brendan and Texas Tech stand on very solid and legitimate legal ground, but he faces a June 22nd deadline to be eligible to enter the NFL’s supplemental draft, and there is no practical way to resolve all the various pending legal disputes and ensure his eligibility prior to this date. This is the only viable and fair path for Brendan and his future, as well as for his teammates, and our university.”

Sorsby posted a statement Monday night on Instagram.

“I am grateful for the support from my family, my Tech coaching staff, teammates, the community, and so many others who have encouraged me to address and learn more about this important issue,” Sorsby wrote. “As my journey continues, I remain fully committed to and focused on being the best I can be, both on and off the field.”

Sorsby transferred to Texas Tech this offseason, after two years each at Indiana and Cincinnati, for a reported multimillion-dollar deal. In late April, he and Texas Tech jointly announced that he had entered a residential treatment program for gambling addiction. Sorsby completed the 35-day program in May.

Court records show that Sorsby has admitted to wagering at least $90,000 during his time as an NCAA student athlete, including 40 bets on Indiana football games he was not participating in while a freshman backup with the Hoosiers in 2022.

“Texas Tech will continue to provide the support and recovery resources Brendan requires on this journey,” Campbell wrote. “Furthermore, Texas Tech will not seek return of any amounts already paid to Brendan through his NIL agreements.”

In May, Sorsby filed a lawsuit in Lubbock County District Court asking to have his eligibility restored because the NCAA “failed to comply with its contractual commitments” to him as a student athlete and therefore “is precluded from enforcing its gambling bylaws against Mr. Sorsby to deny or withhold his reinstatement.”

Last week, judge Ken Curry granted a temporary injunction that would have allowed Sorsby to play for the Red Raiders in 2026. He would have had to miss the first two games of the season as one of the conditions of the ruling.

Without the injunction, Curry wrote in his ruling, Sorsby would “suffer a probable, imminent and irreparable injury” by missing out on the “elite coaching, training resources, camaraderie, and regimen that only being a member of a Division I college football team can provide.”

The final hearing had been scheduled to begin Feb. 8, nearly two weeks after college football’s national championship game.

Following the ruling, several teams and conferences discussed a ban on playing Texas Tech in any sport. After appealing the decision last week, the NCAA filed an emergency motion on Monday to stay the injunction and asked for the case to be resolved before the start of the Red Raiders season.

Also on Monday, the Big 12 filed for a judgment from a U.S. District Court in Dallas protecting the conference’s ability under its bylaws to sanction Texas Tech, a member school, if Sorsby played this season.

“An athlete with an extensive, documented history of wagering on intercollegiate athletic contests — especially his own team’s games — presents a reputational and integrity risk to the conference and its championship competition that the conference has both the right and the responsibility to address,” attorneys for the Big 12 wrote in the filing.

Soon after Campbell announced Sorsby’s decision, Texas Tech president Lawrence Schovanec and athletic director Kirby Hocutt issued a joint statement on the matter.

“When Brendan’s lawsuit resulted in the granting of a temporary injunction, we found ourselves in a difficult situation,” they wrote. “With his health and wellness as our top priority, we supported him in spite of very different perspectives and opinions. Our position was challenged by many but our support for him never changed.

“We will continue to extend all available resources that Brendan had as a student and athlete to ensure his transition is as successful as possible.”

The Associated Press contributed to this report.

One code can mean it takes longer to get through security. Here’s the code many travellers dread seeing on their boarding pass and what it means for their flight if they get it

Navigating the airport can be an exhausting ordeal. In an ideal world, we’d sail through the security queue to give ourselves time to browse the perfumed duty free outlets or enjoy a relaxed coffee, but there are many bottlenecks where you can find yourself delayed.

One indication that your journey through the airport might not run as smoothly as you’d hope can be identified once your boarding pass has been printed. Check-in personnel will often add codes to your ticket alerting airport staff to watch for particular things, and there’s one code travellers really won’t want to encounter if they’re jetting off to the World Cup.

Those flying to or from the United States may notice SSSS on their boarding pass, which stands for Secondary Security Screening Selection or Secondary Security Screening Selectee. Essentially, this code indicates you’ve been chosen for extra inspection, and this can be for a wide range of reasons.

Certain airlines won’t print SSSS, but may have their own method of flagging that a passenger requires additional screening. For instance, Southwest Airlines reportedly uses a chequerboard pattern which appears on boarding passes.

Citizens of particular countries, such as those with sanctions or political tensions with the USA, may be more likely to encounter SSSS on their boarding pass. But the Transportation Security Administration (TSA) remains tight-lipped about the precise criteria that could see your name flagged in this manner, reports the Express.

The ACLU (American Civil Liberties Union) has previously claimed that “TSA maintains a “Selectee List” (sometimes called the “Automatic Selectee List”) of people who are automatically and intentionally selected for enhanced screening every time they fly.”

However, there are other factors that could see passengers flagged for additional screening, including making one-way bookings and purchasing tickets with cash. Travellers who have previously passed through high-risk countries, regularly visit ‘unusual’ destinations, or display other flight patterns deemed suspicious may also find themselves subjected to extra screening.

Having a name similar to someone on a Department of Homeland Security watch list could be yet another reason you end up with additional security checks, and could even result in you being denied boarding. Passengers who are repeatedly flagged for extra screening can apply for the DHS Traveler Redress Inquiry Program (DHS TRIP), and if approved they’ll receive a Redress Control Number to use when booking flights, which should make their travels considerably smoother.

If you do spot SSSS or a similar code on your boarding pass, there’s no need to panic. More often than not, it simply means you’ll require some additional time to clear security.

Typically this involves an enhanced pat-down, a manual inspection of carry-on bags, and possibly the use of a handheld metal detector as you pass through the security lane. Travellers should make sure they adhere to their airline’s advice on when to arrive at the airport, as this will guarantee they have sufficient time to clear any additional security checks.

In the USA, the TSA advises arriving a minimum of two hours before domestic flights and three hours ahead of international departures.

Have a story you want to share? Email us at webtravel@reachplc.com