The Lucas Museum of Narrative Art, which is moving at light speed toward its Sept. 22 opening, announced Thursday that it will give free annual passes to its South L.A. neighbors living in the 90037 ZIP Code. The 300,000-square-foot, $1-billion museum located in Exposition Park will also host a special community preview day on Sept. 13, more than a week before the general public gets to step inside.

The 90037 ZIP Code has a population of more than 65,000 and is bordered roughly by the 110 Freeway to the west, Slauson Avenue to the south, Central Avenue to the east and Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard to the north. Residents can register for passes at lucasmuseum.org/lm37 and will be alerted in August when the program launches. Pass holders can reserve tickets for themselves and one guest.

Tickets for non-pass holders go on sale July 21. They cost $25 for adults and $21 for seniors. Kids 17 and under are free.

“Storytelling has the power to bring people together and create a sense of community,” said Lucas Museum Chief Executive Tracey Bates in a news release about the program. “Through LM37, we are inviting our South Los Angeles neighbors to make the museum part of their lives and take their own path of discovery through the art, programs and experiences that will help shape this new cultural hub for Los Angeles.”

The community preview day is designed to give local business owners, community partners, civic leaders and registered LM37 pass holders a sneak peak of the 10,000 square feet of exhibition space, as well as the expansive gardens with 11 acres of park space.

The opening programming, curated by co-founder George Lucas, features 20 inaugural exhibitions across more than 30 galleries, including one titled “Star Wars in Motion,” containing vehicle designs, high-speed racers, flying vessels, props, costumes and illustrations from the first six films in the beloved franchise.

More than 1,200 objects will be on display from Lucas’ personal collection of narrative art. Highlights include work by Norman Rockwell and Dorothea Lange, as well as a variety of manga, children’s book illustrations and comics.

Croatia’s World Cup was seconds away from being over and Portugal was seconds away from the round of 16 when Ivan Perisic sent a long, desperate cross into the penalty area. The ball bounced off bodies like a pinball before magically, unbelievably, caroming into the net.

Gooooooallllllll!!!!

Fate had given Croatia a reprieve.

But as pandemonium broke out in the stands and on the pitch, Norwegian referee Espen Eskas stood in the middle of the celebration in Toronto, hand to his ear, listening to a voice half a continent away in Dallas.

The voice recommended a review, via the video assistant referee, or VAR.

So Eskas trotted over to a TV monitor, watched a video replay over and over again, and more than 2½ minutes after the goal was recorded, he took it off the board. Perisic’s cross had brushed the hair of teammate Igor Matanovic, leaving Mario Pasalic in an offside position when the ball reached him near the far post. The contact was imperceptible to the naked eye, but a space-age sensor in the ball had confirmed it.

A VAR review led a referee to overturn a Croatia goal during its 2-1 World Cup loss to Portugal in Toronto, eliminating Croatia from the tournament.

(Dan Mullan / Getty Images)

Croatia’s World Cup was over, another victim of VAR, which has had an outsized influence on this summer’s tournament.

It wasn’t supposed to be this way. When VAR was introduced to soccer nine years ago, its mission was clear: to alert the head referee to potential clear and obvious errors or serious missed incidents. At least that’s what Major League Soccer, one of the first leagues to use the system, wrote in the news release introducing it.

“It was really to stop the headlines,” said Mark Geiger, who helped implement VAR as an MLS referee. “These super-egregious errors in a game that impact the outcome. The mantra for VAR was always minimum interference but maximum benefit.”

Under the VAR system, officials sitting before a bank of monitors in a centralized control room review match footage in real time and advise the on-field referee of potential errors. If the video assistant referees believe a mistake has been made, they communicate that through an earpiece the match referee is wearing. If the match official agrees, they will stop play, signal a review by motioning their hands in the shape of a rectangular TV screen, then watch the play themselves on a pitch-side monitor before either confirming or reversing the original decision.

It is comparable to the Automated Ball-Strike review added this year in Major League Baseball, tennis’ Hawk-Eye line-calling system and long-standing centralized instant replay review in the National Football League and National Basketball Assn., systems that have both corrected errors and stoked debate.

But VAR has morphed into something far greater. In this World Cup, there have been more than 100 VAR interventions, encompassing both confirmed on-field calls and overturned decisions, through the end of the round of 16, according to Antonio Vuksanovic, a publication relations and communications professional at Sofascore, a Croatian technology company and sports statistics website.

“When it comes to actual overturned decisions, we’re looking at roughly 0.5 per match, which is higher than the last World Cup and higher than what we saw across the most recently completed club season,” Vuksanovic said.

Even though the officials have gotten most of those calls right, many of the infractions reviewed have been so imperceptible yet so consequential, it has raised a question: if human error on the part of players and coaches is part of the sport, is allowing a game to be decided by electronic evidence of a touch detectable only through NASA-level technology violating the spirit of the game?

Iran’s Shoja Khalilzadeh shoots past Egypt’s Mostafa Shobeir, but the goal was overturned after VAR review during a World Cup match in Seattle on June 26.

(Maddy Grassy / Associated Press)

Christina Unkel, a former FIFA referee, state referee administrator in Florida and a rules of the game analyst for multiple TV networks, believes it does.

“Football is an art. And that’s why we love it,” she said. “It truly isn’t the referee’s fault. We’re not the ones seeking more advanced technology. We don’t want to look like robots out there. But the stakeholders are like ‘more, more, more.’

“When you do pursue black and white — objectivity is what they’re trying to get to, and I get it; they want to eliminate as much subjectivity as possible — what everyone is hating is this perfection thing.”

FIFA, the major stakeholder in the World Cup, declined multiple requests to answer questions about the officiating, but it has clearly doubled down on the technology for this tournament, introducing the semi-automated offside system which uses player-tracking cameras, computer-generated offside lines and, in some cases, data from a measuring instrument inside the match ball, to identify everyone’s position on the pitch when the ball is played.

“The whole genesis of VAR was not to fix every mistake or to make the referees perfect,” said Geiger, the first American to officiate a World Cup knockout game and now general manager of the Professional Referees Organization (PRO), which oversees referees for MLS and the NWSL. “Is the referee correct? That’s not the right question. They should be asking themselves, ‘is the referee clearly and obviously wrong?’”

Geiger, however, remains a huge proponent of the system and was careful not to criticize how it’s been used in this World Cup.

Belgium’s Youri Tielemans on a penalty kick that sails by Senegal goalkeeper Mory Diaw during a World Cup round of 32 match in Seattle on July 1. The game-deciding penalty kick was awarded after VAR review.

(Manu Fernandez / Associated Press)

Still, the frequent use of VAR and other technologies has clearly robbed the World Cup of much as its drama, with spontaneous celebrations of game-winning goals turning to grief moments later when the referee steps away from the monitor and takes away a score.

Reviews not only ended Croatia’s tournament, but they showed Shoja Khalilzadeh was a toe offside when he scored the goal that would have sent Iran to the knockout stages, one of three goals Iran had disallowed by VAR in the tournament; it gave Belgium a late penalty, based on light contact, that Youri Tielemans converted to end Senegal’s World Cup; and it cost Egypt a goal for a perceived foul that took place nearly 100 yards away from the ball in its 3-2 loss to Argentina.

“What happened to us wasn’t fair,” Egypt coach Hossam Hassan said.

Unkel agreed with that sentiment too.

“Everyone hates it,” she said. “According to VAR, that’s correct to take that goal away. That’s not the spirit of the game. But it’s the correct decision by law.”

What Unkel would prefer — and she believes a majority of officials are on her side — is for referees to have discretion to ignore or even overrule VAR if common sense and their understanding of the game suggest they should, just as judges have discretion to use common sense in applying the law.

“A lot of our game, the majority of it, is very subjective,” she said. “When we’re all sitting there saying, ‘No, that doesn’t gain an unfair advantage,’ then that’s when we have to start reconsidering things back to the spirit of the law. That’s the catchall loophole for saying, ‘Do we want this to be part of our game?’

“And I think everyone’s universally saying there a lot of different kinds of decisions we do not want part of our game. Toenail offsides, hair follicle arguments.”

Without the use of video replays, its unlikely any of those calls would have been made and the World Cup quarterfinals would probably look quite different.

England players react as referee Alireza Faghani shows a red card to England’s Jarell Quansah during a World Cup match against Mexico on July 5.

(Natacha Pisarenko / Ap Photo/natacha Pisarenko)

England coach Thomas Tuchel, upset about a penalty call on captain Harry Kane and a red card given to defender Jarell Quansah, both following video reviews in his team’s round-of-16 win over Mexico, said rulings were being overturned in the tournament “in a very questionable way.”

“The referees can send any team out in any moment,” he added. “It’s just not good enough. It’s just erratic. It’s just unreliable.”

An apparent misuse of the technology also led to the most controversial incident in the tournament. In the second half of an elimination game between the U.S. and Bosnia-Herzegovina, American Folarin Balogun stomped on the ankle of Bosnia’s Tarik Muharemovic, something Brazilian referee Raphael Claus initially decided did not merit even a caution. But after VAR official Juan Soto of Venezuela urged him to watch a replay, Claus flashed a red card at Balogun, expelling him from the game and banning him from the next match in the round of 16.

Claus had watched the replay in slow motion, allowing him to see what wasn’t apparent at game speed. FIFA later intervened by lifting Balogun’s one-game suspension, igniting ever greater controversy because it was just the second time that has happened in a World Cup.

U.S. forward Folarin Balogun steps on Bosnia-Herzegovina defender Tarik Muharemovic’s foot and received a red card after VAR review during the World Cup.

(Robert Gauthier/Los Angeles Times)

The heavy use of VAR has also interrupted the flow of games by halting matches that weren’t meant to be halted, leaving everyone standing on the field while the referee goes off to watch TV, sometimes for minutes at a time.

“When calls are reviewed and when goals are reviewed, sometimes it could take away from the momentum,” U.S. defender Chris Richards said. “Look under anything with a microscope, you could probably find something. But ultimately it was meant to be helpful for the game.”

And it has been. Because if officials have become over-reliant on VAR to review decisions that were not, or could not, be seen in real time, at least they’re getting those decisions right.

“I wish we had it in the 2002 World Cup,” said Bruce Arena, who coached the U.S. in that tournament. “We might have made it to the semifinals.”

In the quarterfinals of that tournament, with Germany leading 1-0 in the 40th minute, an obvious handball by Germany’s Torsten Frings kept out a shot from American Gregg Berhalter. If VAR had been available, Scottish referee Hugh Dallas could have corrected the missed call, awarding a penalty and giving Frings a red card, expelling him for the final 40 minutes.

“Look at every sport now in the world,” said Arena, coach of the San José Earthquakes. “They have some version of VAR. Why not make decisions correct?”

“There are still plenty of opportunities for the referees to control the game and make mistakes and not make mistakes,” he continued in reference to the human element. “It’s not like every moment is evaluated. But key moments are.”

As for interrupting the flow of play, Arena says the three-minute hydration breaks FIFA has introduced each half — ostensibly for player welfare, but in practice to give the TV networks additional commercial breaks — have been more disruptive.

“You don’t want VAR to officiate the game completely,” Arena said. “You have to pick your spots. For the most part, I think VAR is good.”

The leader known as Qatar’s father emir was able to redefine his nation’s position on the political map of the Middle East.

From a tiny state struggling to survive to a country punching above its weight with soft power, wealth and influence felt in the region and beyond, Qatar and its success story were propelled by late Father Emir Sheikh Hamad bin Khalifa Al Thani.

Sheikh Hamad, who died on Sunday aged 74, was able to redefine Qatar’s position on the political map of the Middle East, moving it from the margins of the Gulf to regional prominence in the political, diplomatic, national and humanitarian fields, relying on his vision that transcended the country’s modest size and narrow borders.

Those who knew Sheikh Hamad said he was aware, even before assuming power in 1995, of his country’s lack of traditional elements of strength and understood the need to invest in soft power.

From the early days of his reign, he implemented enormous projects in education, health, scientific research and sports in addition to the vital energy sector, transforming his country’s wealth into international diplomatic weight and not merely a source of prosperity for his own people. The former emir also understood the power of media when he created Al Jazeera, one of the most successful news channels in the Arab world, which later transformed into a powerful media network.

Qatari diplomacy led fruitful mediations in complex disputes and conflicts across a vast geographic expanse from the Eastern Mediterranean to the Horn of Africa.

Doha brought together leaders in Lebanon in 2008, concluding a historic agreement that quelled the risk of another civil war. Qatar sponsored negotiations that lasted 30 months between the Sudanese parties over the Darfur crisis, culminating in 2011 in the signing of the Doha Document for Peace.

Qatar continued to sponsor dialogue between Hamas and Fatah, the two sides in the Palestinian divide, and settled disputes in Yemen and Somalia and between Eritrea and Djibouti in a rare diplomatic model.

During the Father Emir’s era, Qatar established the Al Udeid military base, which hosts the largest United States military force in the Middle East. Not far from it, Doha hosted the leadership of Hamas, a stance that prompted some residents to describe Sheikh Hamad as the “emir of the resistance” when he visited southern Lebanon in 2010 to inspect villages that had been rebuilt with Qatari funding after the 2006 Israeli-Hezbollah war.

He was the first Arab leader to visit the Gaza Strip in the aftermath of the Israeli war in 2012, announcing from there the launch of housing and reconstruction projects with a grant worth $400m.

Qatar’s mediation role remained shielded from affecting its political principles, especially the Palestinian cause, considering it had to maintain open communication channels with all parties to the conflicts, including Israel.

The Gulf state supported the “Arab Spring” revolutions, and it adopted policies that explicitly backed the right of the region’s peoples to freedom and dignified lives.

The Qatari project during the father emir’s era was not focused solely on economic modernisation but also built an independent political identity capable of regional and international influence.

Sheikh Hamad left his post in 2013 after his vision for Qatar became a reality, and during the era of his son and successor, Emir Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad Al Thani, he witnessed Qatar’s transformation into an energy and mediation power.

Four former champions have qualified for the FIFA World Cup semifinals for the first time since 1990. Argentina, England, France and Spain capitalised on the inexperience of lesser-pedigreed foes to reach the final four.

For the Albiceleste, it was an unwise Swiss dive.

For the Three Lions and La Roja, opposing goalkeepers spilled rebounds.

And Les Bleus benefited from an inexplicable, forward-less, Morocco lineup.

Here are the key takeaways from the quarterfinals:

France too good for Morocco in 2-0 route in Boston

What we learned: Nothing works against France, so far.

Morocco tried a unique approach to unsettling the French. Mohamed Ouahbi went with a striker-less lineup, which, predictably failed to threaten.

Post-match, France’s coach Didier Deschamps said what everyone else in the room was thinking: “I was quite surprised by the starting 11. I tried to understand why [Ouahbi] made these choices, no real forwards.”

Part of the reason would have been the absence of injured forward Ismael Saibari, who had a breakout tournament, though the Morocco roster included three other forwards, including Soufiane Rahimi, who entered in the 60th minute. That was just after Kylian Mbappe’s dipping right-footer inside the far post the opened the scoring for Les Bleus.

Ouahbi’s reasoning remains a mystery.

He might have been hoping for a France own goal, which was narrowly avoided as a Dayot Upamecano shank landed on top of the net. Or perhaps the game strategy was that goalkeeper Yassine Bounou would continue to bail out Morocco, as he did earlier in the quarterfinal tie when he saved Mbappe’s first-half penalty kick, following a two-minute-plus VAR review.

Spain snatch late winner to see off Belgium 2-1 in Los Angeles

What we learned: Pau Cubarsi is not in over his head.

A Barcelona teenager’s shot led to the deciding goal for Spain against Belgium – but no, it wasn’t wonderkid Lamine Yamal, who was held to a single score in the tournament.

With the score even, and superb Belgium goalkeeper Thibaut Courtois on the bench injured, Cubarsi advanced and unexpectedly fired from close to 30 metres out.

Reserve keeper Senne Lammens could have been taken by surprise – this was Cubarsi’s first attempt since the first half of Spain’s opening 0-0 draw with Cape Verde on June 15.

In any case, the shot handcuffed Lammens (actually, Lammens handcuffed himself), leaving the rebound for Mikel Merino, who converted from close range to score the game winner in the 88th minute.

So, no, Cubarsi is not there to generate offense. But the fact a 19-year-old is starting on the Spain back line is significant. Few successful World Cup teams have gone with youthful centre backs, an exception being Italy’s Giuseppe Bergomi, who was 18 when he played in 1982, as a substitute for injured Fulvio Collovati.

Cubarsi struggled at times against the Belgians, but was not troubled by imposing substitute forward Romelo Lukaku. Belgium became the first team to score against La Roja in the tournament but the key to Spain’s defending is much less battening it down, but rather Barcelona-style keep-away, and that’s where Cubarsi is most comfortable.

Meanwhile, substitute forward Merino is providing close to instant offense, scoring two minutes after entering against Belgium, and five minutes in against Portugal in their 1-0 last-16 victory.

What we, and France, also learned is that Jeremy Doku’s double-teaming easily shut down 18-year-old Yamal, which means expect more of the same from Desire Doue in the semifinals.

England defeats Norway 2-1 in Miami

What we learned: First off, Norway still has a lot to learn. Also, don’t believe your eyes when it comes to the World Cup “connected” ball, whose “heartbeat” insisted a Orjan Nyland goal kick did not strike a TV camera cable.

During the first round, Norway coach Stale Solbakken let everyone know that his nation was not some “naive country, playing for fun,” when he rested everyone before a 4-1 loss to France.

The idea was to keep stars Erling Haaland and Martin Odegaard in the tournament into the elimination stages. Solbakken’s strategy worked well, until the quarterfinals, when the Norwegians were exposed.

Sure, England’s Elliot Anderson went down as if he had taken a Zinedine Zidane circa 2006 head-butt. But, no, it was only a Haaland shove, leading to a Norway goal being disallowed, following a VAR replay. That would not be the only moment of Norwegian naivety.

Late in the first half, a 2-on-1 ended with Alexander Sorloth failing to square for Haaland, and unable to get past John Stones.

Then, instead of milking stoppage time to protect a 1-0 lead, Nyland sent a long goal kick that appeared to suddenly change trajectory and land at the feet of Anderson, triggering the TV cable-gate accusation from Solbakken to the match officials. Nothing to see here – that’s the FIFA version, anyway. Anderson quickly found Anthony Gordon, on to Jude Bellingham, and an England equaliser ensued before halftime.

It didn’t help Norway’s defending on the wings when Julian Ryerson went out injured. But it took until the third minute of extra time before Bukayo Saka earned a corner against Marcus Holmgren Pedersen. Nyland tipped away Harry Kane’s chip for another corner – and there was Bellingham, again, this time to convert the rebound of a Morgan Rogers shot.

Then, with Haaland on the bench, Norway had a final chance. At least, that is what lanky Norway defender Kristoffer Ajer thought, after England goalkeeper Jordan Pickford and a defender collided, leaving an open goal. Not so, French referee Clement Turpin, who stopped play, and cautioned Ajer for dissent.

Thomas Tuchel said his team got “lucky.” But evidence, and experience, points to the Three Lions making their own luck.

Defending champions Argentina eliminate Switzerland 3-1 in Kansas City

What we learned: Don’t dive.

Switzerland appeared to have momentum against Argentina when Bree Embolo went down near the halfway line just before a drinks break.

Joao Pinheiro cautioned Leandro Paredes, then switched the call to an Embolo yellow card for simulation, following a VAR review. The official call was “mistaken identity,” for the first time VAR invoking a directive to intervene in case of a “potential” red card.

Whatever the justification, the result was Embolo – earlier cautioned for taking down Paredes – was ejected. Embolo’s flop seemed out of character – this was his first red card with the national team, second at the senior level, and first since a 2015-16 Europa League match with FC Basel.

We also learned Argentina doesn’t need Lionel Messi to score.

But it helps when Messi is taking corners – he pinpointed one for Alexis Mac Allister to head in for the opening goal on 10 minutes. The Albiceleste coaching staff celebrated by congratulating assistant Walter Samuel, who, possibly, figured out Mac Allister could find space in the midst of a Swiss team whose shortest player is four centimetres (an inch and a half) taller than him.

“Little House on the Prairie” is the third television adaptation to bear the name of Laura Ingalls Wilder’s 1935 autobiographical novel of life on the Kansas plains in 1869 to 1870. The first, the Michael Landon television series that debuted in 1974, set in Walnut Grove, Minn., is really based on Wilder’s subsequent volume, “On the Banks of Plum Creek,” while a 2005 miniseries, shown as part of “The Wonderful World of Disney,” was generally faithful to the letter and spirit of the text. The record shows that I liked it.

The new “Little House,” created by Rebecca Sonnenshine and streaming on Netflix, is fairly faithful to its spirit, and less so to its letter. At its center is the Ingalls family: father Charles (Luke Bracey), or Pa; mother Caroline (Crosby Fitzgerald), or Ma; serious older sister Mary (Skywalker Hughes), and adventurous Laura (Alice Halsey), whose story this is. They are heading out to Kansas to what they imagine is free land, though they will have a thing or two coming on that account. “This will be our new forever,” says Laura, who doesn’t yet know that her future will be in Minnesota.

To be sure, the character relations remain essentially the same. Pa will play his fiddle. Laura and Mary will dance, when not getting in one another’s hair, or sulking. There will be singing, frequently. Major episodes from the book — when Jack got lost, (Jack is the dog, and he will be found), the incident of Mr. Scott (Maclean Fish) down the well, Christmas, the one about malaria, and all the business of building the eponymous log house — are accounted for, if in some cases expanded upon or altered. So extensive are its innovations that, although I am going to point out certain departures from or additions to the text, because I am that sort of pedant, it may be best just to regard this “Little House” as an original thing, a variation on a theme by Laura Ingalls Wilder, or a reboot of the television show.

Some touches are drawn from Wilder’s own history. Her mother was a teacher before she married Charles Ingalls; her maternal grandfather died from drowning. The black cowboy hat Laura sports is straight from a photograph of Wilder as a girl. Laura is made a sort of mini-Scheherazade to foreshadow the writer she’ll become (though she’ll also ask, “What am I ever going to need in a book?”). Baby Carrie, in the novel from the start, is born, as she really was, in Kansas, meaning that Ma is pregnant through much of the season — a condition that may have seemed too complicated for a 1935 children’s book, but which adds new strains of drama to the miniseries. It also introduces a theme in which Ma, who has lost “so many” babies, is trying to give Pa a boy, though he is not the sort to be disappointed in another girl.

Also new to the story is Independence, Kan., itself, which in the book is an offstage place to which Pa will sometimes go to fetch necessities, disappearing from the story until he returns. Here it’s nearby — a nicely realized little movie town to which the whole family will sometimes repair, to shop, raise a church or join in a Founders Day celebration. It’s dominated by a less than transparent booster, Eli James (Michael Hough), who comes with a self-important wife, Jemma (Mary Holland), and a pair of teenage twin girls who might be described as all dressed up with nowhere to go.

Notably, the series’ treatment of Native Americans feels intended to rectify, or at least deepen, their portrayal in the book — naive or romantic, maybe, though not, I’d argue, negative — with added native characters and discussions regarding the land and treaties and such. While Ma frets about the natives in the neighborhood, for no reason she can articulate — one juvenile delinquent steals her cherished china figurine, but we understand that there are social causes for his behavior — Pa, who has built his house unwittingly on an Osage trail, has sympathy and perspective. (Ma will soften considerably, because this is that kind of show.)

It’s not an issue for guileless, outgoing Laura, who acquires an Indigenous best friend, Good Eagle (Wren Zhawenim Gotts). Her father, Mitchell (Meegwun Fairbrother) will be a friend to Pa and her mother, White Sun (Alyssa Wapanatâhk), will provide a skeptical counterpoint to Ma. Mission-educated, they live in a nice house with a crucifix on the wall and shelves full of literature.

Most every character gets some backstory, some traumatic. The Ingalls left Wisconsin under a cloud. (“Why didn’t anyone come to say goodbye?” wonders Laura.) (Still, it’s good to see Martin Donovan as Pa’s angry father in a fever-induced flashback.) Ma married Pa, her social inferior, against her mother’s wishes. Caleb (Kowen Cadorath), a new character who works for another new character, Emily Henderson (Barrett Doss), at the general store, was abandoned as a small child. Echoing the character played by Victor French in the TV show, Mr. Edwards (Warren Christie) has a drinking problem, brought on by a family tragedy. (In the book he describes himself as a “wildcat from Tennessee”; here he has wild … cats.) Much of the time, someone is sad. Halsey and Hughes, who are very watchable throughout, are especially good with worried looks, and Fitzgerald, perhaps the series’ MVP, is an artist when it comes to expressing concern.

Sonnenshine also invents tentative romances between Edwards and Lacey Aubert (Rebecca Amzallag), who is French, independent, runs the saloon, I guess you’d call it, dresses in black and wears trousers; between Emily and Dr. Tann (Jocko Sims), who is in the book, but much more established here; and between Mary and Caleb. All these storylines sacrifice the centrality of Laura as a character and observer and makes this “Little House” less a story of a family out on its own than a family in the context of community. (That’s for later volumes in Wilder’s nine-book saga.)

It’s very sentimental — which the novel, with its matter-of-fact, if sensually evocative prose, and its child’s-eye view, is not. The dialogue here is ripe with sampler sentiments and weighted with meaning (“Hope is everything,” “What if this is where we finally become who we’re meant to be,” “Life can get away from you if you don’t speak your heart.”) Much of the added material would have easily fit the TV series — temperamentally, it’s very much a case of late 20th century broadcast television — which to some may be a recommendation.

It’s pretty, often very pretty, to look at. The flat expanse of Winnipeg, Canada, where it was filmed, makes a good topographical match for east Kansas. Prairies are prairies.

The largest single piece of federal housing legislation to come out of Congress in at least a generation is is now law.

It happened in the middle of night early Saturday, without fanfare — or even President Trump’s signature — and it might be a while before many Californians notice its effects.

That’s because the bill, though politically monumental — both chambers approved it overwhelmingly — doesn’t do one big thing. Instead, it does a lot of little things. Individually, none of the bill’s 56 regulatory tweaks, pilot programs and low-cost loans and grants are likely to move the needle on the nation’s housing affordability woes, nor on California’s specifically.

Supporters hope that collectively, they just might.

Even the law’s path to enactment had an under-the-radar quality to it. The White House abruptly canceled a planned signing ceremony late last month, with Trump vowing not to sign the bill until Congress first passed his restrictive national voter ID proposal. That bill has stalled out in the Senate.

Still, Trump did not veto the housing package, so it automatically became law Saturday just after midnight, as per the Constitution.

For all that, supporters say this is still a big deal: a major, bipartisan piece of legislation aimed at boosting housing construction from a hyperpartisan legislative body that doesn’t typically touch the topic.

“We don’t often gather to celebrate federal housing legislation,” Stephen Russell, president of the San Diego Housing Federation, said at a news conference Thursday. “I think the last time Congress passed anything of this magnitude, many of you were not even alive. … It is almost a once-in-a-lifetime event.”

That’s thanks in part to a growing caucus of lawmakers aligned with the “Yes In My Backyard” movement that helped push the bill into law. Many hail from California, a state that has had more experience than most contending with wildly unaffordable housing. But the cause of making housing more affordable, and attributing high housing costs to a lack of sufficient supply, has become a national and bipartisan concern. Case in point: The bill originated as a joint proposal by Sens. Tim Scott (R-S.C.), an ardent conservative, and Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.), among the most liberal members of the Senate.

While the constituent parts of the bill are relatively narrow and none is specifically focused on California, experts highlight a few provisions that could leave a notable imprint on the state.

Build now (or else)

For high-cost cities that don’t build much housing, as in much of urban California, the federal bill includes a novel carrot and stick.

This portion of the bill would change the Community Development Block Grant, one of the largest sources of federal funding for affordable housing and local economic development. Pricey cities — defined through a variety of data benchmarks like median prices and vacancy rates — with a track record of under-building that continue to see below-average housing construction will have their grant funds cut by 10%. The savings will go to their municipal counterparts that build at a faster clip.

That’s likely to have “real implications for cities like Los Angeles and San Francisco that have traditionally lagged behind” in adding housing supply, said David Garcia, the deputy director of policy at UC Berkeley’s Terner Center for Housing Innovation.

The city of Los Angeles received $48.4 million in its last award from the block grant program in 2024, according to U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development data. San Francisco received $18.9 million.

Those numbers aren’t enough to make or break the budget of either city.

“I think this will be a small nudge,” said Laura Foote, executive director of YIMBY Action, in an email. “Which taken across the country could still have a good impact! Little nudges add up.”

More dramatic than the number of dollars involved may be the precedent the policy sets. Even in California, where the state government has aggressively incentivized cities to plan for more housing development and penalized those that don’t, lawmakers have never punished municipalities for failing to actually grow — an outcome that may not always be under a city government’s control.

Such an idea would have been “inconceivable in previous congresses,” Garcia said.

Despite that, the provision hasn’t engendered much public opposition from local government groups yet. In an online summary, Michael Wallace, a lobbyist with the National League of Cities, applauded the overall housing bill as an example of the federal government “choosing partnership with local governments over preemptions.” He singled out other provisions of the bill that provide expanded flexibility for Community Development Block Grant spending, new incentive programs for adding supply, and new supports for local urban planning.

Chassis change

Manufactured housing units are often colloquially referred to as mobile homes, but they don’t tend to move around much. Built on assembly lines and shipped to where they’re needed, these naturally affordable houses — the likes of which lawmakers across California and the United States claim we need in droves — are often placed upon permanent foundations where a fewer than 1 in 10 ever move again.

Even so, the federal building code applied to manufactured housing includes a costly, vestigial reference to its mobile origins: a permanent chassis.

A giant steel frame with removable axles and wheels, the chassis ostensibly exists to make it easier to pick up and move a manufactured house by truck. In practice, it serves as a 10- to 12-inch-thick floor beneath the floor. Because it cannot be removed upon delivery, it just serves as “dead space and wasted money,” said Jess Maxcy, president of the California Manufactured Housing Institute, the industry’s trade group. Aside from adding thousands of dollars in added costs per unit, it also makes it harder for manufactured units to be stacked into double story homes or multifamily apartment buildings.

The federal housing bill removes the permanent chassis requirement, something that manufacturers and some housing policy experts have been pushing for since the mid-1980s.

“That relatively minor change will expand access to one of the most affordable forms of home ownership available,” Rep. Scott Peters (D-San Diego) said at the Thursday news conference.
Maxcy said he doesn’t expect the end of the chassis requirement to trigger an overnight building boom in the manufactured home industry. But especially in California, where, due to the high price of land, new single-family homes are more likely to be built stacked on small lots, the regulatory change “provides more opportunities and helps us reduce the price.”

Recovering after disaster

In the months after a natural disaster, long after emergency federal dollars have come and gone, Congress has provided communities with long-term rebuilding grants through the Community Development Block Grant—Disaster Recovery program. Over the last three decades, the program has spent more than $100 billion on the long-term work of recovery, like home construction, infrastructure repair and rental and relocation assistance. That money tends to be reserved for low-income people and communities “who are not going to bounce back without the funds,” said Marion McFadden, who used to run the program under the Biden administration and now works at the disaster preparation and recovery consulting company IEM.

Unfortunately for California, the program only kind of exists. Since the mid-1990s, it’s been stood up and funded on an ad hoc basis, one appropriation bill at a time. That presents a challenge for communities planning in the middle of post-disaster planning. It also means the rules that govern the program — when the money goes out, to whom, under what conditions and for what purposes — are redrafted with each political administration. That’s had the effect of slowing things down considerably. No program funding has gone to Los Angeles in the wake of the 2025 fire storms, according to the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. Congress has yet to appropriate any.

The new housing bill would officially write the program into law for at least three years.

“It creates the ability for HUD to have money on hand before a disaster and then make a decision within 15 days about whether they’re going to provide funding,” McFadden said.

What the housing bill doesn’t do: provide fresh funding. Disaster-prone communities will need to wait for Congress to take that up later.

A ‘bottleneck’ removed

For the last two decades, public housing authorities in Los Angeles and the Bay Area have been turning to the federal Rental Assistance Demonstration program to help repair and upgrade their aging stock of increasingly dilapidated public housing. The program works by switching up funding sources in a way that gives locals more flexibility to borrow money and attract private investment dollars.

Until the new law took effect this weekend, the federal government was only authorized to permit 455,000 of these conversions. The law raises the cap by an additional 100,000.

“This has been a bottleneck in California for years and that bottleneck just got removed,” said Russell with the San Diego Housing Federation.
Not all affordable housing advocates are cheering the development. The National Low Income Housing Coalition has consistently opposed expansion of the program on the grounds that the change in funding source could weaken existing tenant protections. It’s unclear whether and to what extent that might be true. A study from last year found no evidence that conversions under the program lead to more evictions.

Wall Street out of suburbia

If you’ve heard only one thing about this housing bill, it’s that it bans “large institutional investors” from buying up more single family homes.

Caveats apply in the final version of the law. The bill defines “large” as any of a number of business structures with control over more than 350 single-family homes. It doesn’t apply retrospectively, so current investors with portfolios brimming with houses need not divest. Exemptions exist for new construction, renovations and senior housing. In California specifically, where corporations and other major investors do not play a significant role in the housing market, the effect is likely to be muted.

The measure “takes a hyper-salient issue for lots of people across the country and does a pretty modest intervention to address it,” said Chad Maisel, a fellow at the liberal-leaning Center for American Progress and a former housing policy advisor to President Biden.

Even so, the provision has plenty of bipartisan appeal. Earlier this year, Trump called for an even stricter crackdown on so-called corporate landlords. Gov. Gavin Newsom followed suit the same week.

The anti-investor language was considerably watered down from earlier this year, when a related provision threatened to undermine “build-to-rent” projects: well-financed subdevelopments of single-family homes reserved for renters. That prompted a revolt by many developers and YIMBY activists who had otherwise enthusiastically supported the bill, who argued that such communities are one of the fastest growing sources of the U.S. housing stock and provide some of the few opportunities for renters to live in suburban-style, family-sized housing.

After the build-to-rent provision was left on the cutting room floor of Congress, state Sen. Aisha Wahab, a Fremont Democrat who is now running for Congress, introduced a bill that picked it back up again. SB 880 would have banned the bundled sale of multiple single-family homes, striking at the heart of the build-to-rent business model. That bill died in the Assembly Judiciary committee in late June.

Christopher writes for CalMatters.

U.S. forward Christian Pulisic heads to the locker room at halftime during the loss to Belgium.

(Allen J. Schaben / Los Angeles Times)

More Americans are playing for bigger clubs and having more success in Europe than ever before, but that pipeline has yet to produce a true superstar. Many of the teams that have had success in this tournament have at least one player — Mbappé, Haaland, Lionel Messi, Harry Kane — who can change the game on their own.

The U.S. doesn’t have anyone who would be sure to start on any of the World Cup semifinalists and until it does, closing the gap will be difficult.

“We are USA and [we’re] competing against Belgium, Portugal,” Pochettino said last March. “I think for sure Belgium and Portugal have [players] in the top 100. We don’t.”

He is right. When the Guardian published its annual list of the world’s top players last winter, Christian Pulisic, the top American, didn’t make the top 100. And he didn’t play a full game in this tournament, missing one to injury, leaving three early and entering another as a late second-half substitute. He played just 223 minutes — 19 more than Ricardo Pepi — and finished with one assist.

Landon Donovan was arguably the closest thing to a game-changing player the U.S. had, so it’s no surprise he scored key goals in the team’s most important World Cup games in the last 32 years: one against Algeria in stoppage time in 2010 that allowed the Americans to finish atop their group for the first time since 1930, and another against Mexico in the round of 16 in 2002, sending the team to the quarterfinals for the only time.

If those are structural things that have long held U.S. Soccer back, there also were issues specific to this team, a supposed Golden Generation whose core was formed in the wake of the failure to qualify for the 2018 World Cup.

The talent was undeniable, which led to great expectations. But what has this generation accomplished? Two round-of-16 exits in the World Cup, one Gold Cup title in the last four tournaments — the team’s worst stretch this century — a fourth-place finish in the last Nations League and a group-stage departure in the last Copa América.

Impressive wins over Paraguay and Australia to start the World Cup gave the Golden Generation a bit of a shine and suggested progress. But when the Americans met a top-10 team in Belgium, the matchup proved a mismatch.

“We want to have higher hopes,” Pulisic said. “We want to be able to go and compete with some of the best in the world. We just still have that next step to climb.”

Against Belgium, that step looked as steep as Mt. Everest.

Qatar’s Father Emir Sheikh Hamad bin Khalifa Al Thani has died at the age of 74. During his 18 years in power, he transformed Qatar into a global energy, diplomatic and media powerhouse, overseeing the expansion of its LNG industry, the founding of Al Jazeera, and the country’s rise on the world stage.
He stepped down voluntarily in 2013, handing power to his son, Emir Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad Al Thani. Mohammed Jamjoom looks back at his life and legacy.

AFTER a bargain family break? All-inclusive getaways to far-flung sunshine spots are seeing huge price cuts for this summer – so get booking.

The United Arab Emirates boasts the largest price drop, with holiday providers and hotels launching mega deals to entice Brits back after the outbreak of war in Iran, according to data from TravelSupermarket and icelolly.com.

All-inclusive family breaks in particular are looking cheap as chips, with the nightly cost of getaways down 25 per cent on the previous year in the UAE.

The study looked at all-inclusive seven-night family breaks departing in August to popular holiday destinations, factoring in inflation, and found that, on average, a Middle East holiday would set families back just £169pp per night in August this year.

Last year, it would have been £226pp per night.

Chris Webber, Head of Holidays and Deals at TravelSupermarket, said: “Events in the Middle East have made some families think twice about where they travel this summer, and tour operators have responded by cutting prices.

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“The result is destinations like the UAE and Egypt are offering some of the best value we’ve seen in years.”

The Dominican Republic has seen the second largest fall in prices, with dips of around 11 per cent on average from the previous year.

The average cost of a family getaway there would be £228pp per night this year, compared with £257pp per night in 2025.

Mauritius placed third in the price drop table, having seen a 10.9 per cent dip since 2025.

Mid-haul destinations such as Egypt, Morocco and Tunisia are also looking more affordable than they were last year, with reductions of 8.1 per cent, 6.5 per cent and 2.5 per cent respectively.

Malta is the only European destination to see prices drop in 2026.

The average August cost fell from £137pp per night in 2025 to £136 in 2026, a dip of 0.9 per cent.

By comparison, some of Brits’ favourite European holiday hotspots have seen hikes since August last year.

Prices for Greece have risen by five per cent on all-inclusive family holidays.

Spain had the second-largest hike, with average costs rising by 3.9 per cent on the previous year.

But it was still one of the poll’s less expensive destinations for August 2026, with an average nightly cost of £155pp.

Overall, research shows Morocco looks set to be the cheapest destination.

An all-inclusive family holiday there will cost families as little as £120pp per night in August – a proper bargain when you consider flights, accommodation and all food and drink is included.

This was followed by Tunisia, Bulgaria and Malta, where the average August breaks are £124, £126 and £136pp per night respectively.

Chris said: “After a few years of holiday prices only seeming to move one way, it’s encouraging to see all-inclusive prices looking pretty steady for 2026.

“For families who are comfortable travelling further afield, there are genuine savings to be had — and comparing prices across providers is the best way to see where your budget stretches furthest.”

The architect of modern Qatar, former Emir ⁠Sheikh Hamad bin ⁠Khalifa Al Thani, has died at the age of 74.

Fondly known as Father Emir, ⁠Sheikh Hamad, who ruled Qatar from 1995 to 2013, leaves behind a legacy that includes sweeping economic, social and cultural reforms in Qatar, raising the Gulf country’s profile on the regional and global stage.

During his 18-year rule, Qatar’s gross domestic product (GDP) grew more than 24-fold as the small nation of nearly 2.5 million people became one of the world’s largest exporters of liquefied natural gas (LNG).

Sheikh Hamad’s tenure also saw the adoption of Qatar’s permanent constitution and the launch of the Qatar National Vision 2030, a long-term strategy aimed at transforming the country into a knowledge-based economy and achieving sustainable development.

Here is a look at some key moments in the former Qatari emir’s life:

Path to leadership

Born in January 1952 in Doha, Sheikh Hamad was raised and received his early education in the city.

In 1971, he graduated from the British Royal Military Academy at Sandhurst, United Kingdom, and joined the Qatar armed forces, where he reached the rank of major-general. He was credited with playing a pivotal role in developing the armed forces in terms of ordnance, according to a statement by the Amiri Diwan.

On May 31, 1977, Sheikh Hamad was appointed the heir apparent and minister of defence. On May 10, 1989, he was appointed the chairman of the Supreme Council for Planning, where he was tasked with developing Qatar’s social and economic policies.

After a successful career in the military and senior government positions, Sheikh Hamad assumed leadership of Qatar on June 27, 1995. He remained the ruler of Qatar until June 25, 2013, when he transferred power to his son, Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad Al Thani.

Economic transformation

Under Sheikh Hamad’s leadership, Qatar saw rapid economic growth driven by the expansion of its energy sector.

He viewed the country’s untapped North Field, which is the largest nonassociated natural gasfield in the world, as the cornerstone of Qatar’s future economic dominance, and invested heavily in the LNG sector. In 1996, the country began exporting LNG, with the first shipment sent to Japan.

According to the Amiri Diwan, in 2006, Qatar became the largest LNG exporter in the world, and in 2010, its LNG production capacity reached 77 million tonnes per annum. Qatar’s LNG exports currently represent 20 percent of the global market, it said.

Besides the energy sector, Sheikh Hamad also formulated comprehensive reconstruction plans which helped Qatar’s development in the education, healthcare, sports, culture and media sectors.

In October 2001, he established the Supreme Council for Economic Affairs and Investment to oversee the economy, energy and investment affairs and diversify local and foreign investments and sources of income.

Press freedom and launch of Al Jazeera

A few months after taking office as the emir of Qatar, in October 1995, Sheikh Hamad abolished the censorship of the local press, seeking to improve the country’s press freedom status.

In 1996, he launched the Al Jazeera Media Network, which resulted in “a new dawn” in the Arab and international media world, according to the Amiri Diwan.

Since its launch, Al Jazeera has become one of the world’s most prominent media outlets covering global news, geopolitics and underreported topics and giving a voice to minority communities through its stories.

In August 1995, Sheikh Hamad founded Qatar Foundation for Education, Science and Community Development, which helped expand the country’s influence in media, education, and innovation.

Constitution and national vision

Sheikh Hamad played a key role in introducing democratic measures in the country after he assumed power. In March 1999, he introduced municipal elections, in which women were allowed to vote and stand as candidates.

On June 8, 2004, Sheikh Hamad led Qatar to adopt its first permanent constitution.

According to the Amiri Diwan, the permanent constitution sets out the country’s “preamble, the foundations of democratic rule” and lays out the “basic pillar” for society to guarantee the rights and freedoms of Qatar’s citizens.

In 2004, Sheikh Hamad launched “Qatar National Vision 2030” to guide the country’s long-term development and modernisation and help it transform into a knowledge-based economy.

Global profile

Qatar’s political influence today stretches across North Africa, the Middle East and Asia, with the country using its diplomacy to mediate several conflicts.

Sheikh Hamad drove the country’s mediation efforts in conflicts including the Hanish Islands dispute between Eritrea and Yemen in 1995, the Yemen war between 2007 and 2010, the Lebanese political crisis in 2008 and the Darfur peace process between 2010 and 2011, among others.

In October 2012, he became the first Arab leader to visit Gaza, since the imposition of a widespread international boycott of the Palestinian territory, which was spurred after Hamas began its rule in 2006.

Sheikh Hamad arrived with 90 tonnes of aid and pledged $400m to invest in housing and infrastructure, as he embraced the Hamas leadership of Gaza with an official visit, breaking the isolation of the Palestinian movement, much to the dismay of Israel, its allies, as well as the Western-backed Palestinian leaders in the occupied West Bank.

Besides diplomacy, the late former leader also focused on improving Qatar’s international status by projecting the country as a suitable venue for global sports and entertainment events.

In 2022, Qatar hosted the men’s FIFA World Cup, the world’s most-watched football tournament. Sheikh Hamad received rapturous applause from fans when he attended the tournament’s opening match.

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.

As the fight for control of the U.S. Senate grows increasingly competitive, eyes are turning north to Alaska and a contest pitting, among its contestants, Dan Sullivan vs. Dan Sullivan — and, no, it’s not about a candidate living a double life or wrestling demons within himself.

Confused?

That may be the point.

Daniel S. Sullivan is Alaska’s two-term Republican senator. He’s seeking reelection in November.

Daniel J. Sullivan is a retired school teacher and political novice. He calls himself an independent Republican cut from the same polar-fleece lining as the state’s maverick GOP senator, Lisa Murkowski.

Political handicappers give Daniel J. Sullivan little chance of winning the highly competitive race. So is there some other reason he’s running? Is his presence on the ballot intended to draw enough befuddled voters away from the incumbent to elect his Democratic challenger, former Rep. Mary Peltola?

That’s what Republicans think. And you don’t have to be standing on the banks of the Kenai River to smell something fishy.

When Daniel J. Sullivan launched his campaign in May, he did so as plain old “Dan Sullivan,” with a website closely resembling that of the incumbent. The press release announcing his candidacy was written by one “Amber Lee.” There is an Alaska political strategist named Amber Lee who has supported Peltola in the past.

(For such a sparsely populated state, there sure are a lot of doppelgangers in this political saga.)

Election officials say Daniel J. Sullivan asked to appear on the ballot as a Republican, even though he hadn’t previously been affiliated with the party. In fact, over the years he’d contributed money to Democrats, including Peltola. He also asked to be identified on the ballot as “Dan S. Sullivan” before changing his mind, an attorney for the state told Alaska’s Supreme Court, which took up the matter late last month.

“That’s not an innocent mistake, or random mistake,” Chris Murray told the justices. “There’s a lot of other letters in the alphabet that could have been a typo.”

The political consultant Amber Lee declined to comment when reached by the Anchorage Daily News. She did not respond to an email from your friendly political columnist.

For his part, Daniel J. Sullivan denied any malice or mischievous intent.

“This is my choice,” he told the Associated Press. He said he had no contact with Peltola’s campaign — “zero, none, zilch” — and denied anyone from the state Democratic Party or any national Democratic operatives had contacted him to run.

Peltola’s campaign has adamantly denied any involvement. So, too, have the Alaska Democratic Party and the Democrat’s national Senate campaign committee.

After an investigation, Daniel J. Sullivan was removed from the Aug. 18 primary ballot. Carol Beecher, head of Alaska’s Division of Elections, said his candidacy was intended to “confuse or mislead” voters.

Sen. Dan Sullivan (R-Alaska) attends meetings at the U.S. Capitol in 2025.

(Francis Chung / Politico via Associated Press)

But the state’s high court overturned that decision, instructing elections officials to figure out a way to keep Daniel J. Sullivan’s name on the ballot “within the confines of existing Alaska ballot design law.”

It’s been nearly 20 years since the state sent a Democrat to the U.S. Senate, but this election looks to offer the party its best shot in years, thanks to Peltola.

Jessica Taylor, of the nonpartisan Cook Political Report, called her “the ideal recruit,” given Peltola’s fundraising prowess and her ability to outperform other Democrats by avoiding the toxic taint of the national party. (Peltola’s slogan —”Fish, family and freedom” — is about as far removed from the Whole Foods-shopping, Prius-driving Democratic image as it gets.)

Democrats need to win four seats in November to take control of the Senate, from a menu that includes Alaska, Iowa, Maine, North Carolina, Ohio and Texas while, at the same time, hanging on to contested Senate seats in Georgia, Michigan, Minnesota and New Hampshire. The Cook Political Report rates Alaska as one of the few toss-up races in the bunch.

The state has a ranked-choice election system in which the top four vote-getters advance to November. Ivan Moore, who does nonpartisan polling in Alaska, said that system virtually ensures Sullivan and Sullivan will face off against each other in a runoff that includes Peltola. At that point, Moore suggested, the choice to most voters will be clear.

Under the solution devised by state election officials, the senator will be listed as “Sullivan, Dan S.” and as “(Registered Republican) Incumbent.” His challenger will be identified as “Sullivan, Daniel J. Jr.” with no party affiliation.

“I imagine there’s some people out there who don’t know what the word ‘incumbent’ means,” Moore said. “But I find it pretty hard to believe that people who are dead set on voting for Dan S. Sullivan, the senator, are going to go in the voting booth and vote for the wrong person when Dan S. has the word ‘incumbent’ next to his name and Dan J. doesn’t have any party affiliation.”

Political hijinks are nothing new. But the level of partisan gamesmanship seems to be growing as the old saying about all being far in love and war is increasingly applied to campaigns and elections.

It was something of a novelty in 2002 when Democrats meddled in the California Republican primary to promote their preferred candidate. Now it’s common practice.

Redistricting, or redrawing the nation’s congressional lines to reflect changes in population, used to occur once a decade following the national census. But spurred by President Trump, the last year has seen an arms race among states, including California, which gerrymandered their political maps to boost a preferred party and, essentially, decide House races before a single ballot is cast.

Politics, another old saying goes, ain’t beanbag.

But it doesn’t have to be this slanted and cynical. There’s no need for fishy-smelling candidates like Daniel J. Sullivan.

Lauren Bell bowls Jemimah Rodrigues with a brilliant delivery to give England a small glimmer of hope on the morning of day three against India, with the tourists falling to 177-3, their lead just short of 300 in the off-one Test at Lord’s.

FOLLOW LIVE: England v India – Day three

Available to UK users only.

Iran’s Revolutionary Guard Corps released a video of what they say were missiles launched by their naval forces in retaliation of US strikes. US-Iran tensions have been escalating in the Strait of Hormuz leading to its closure and exchange of strikes between US and Iran.

Police investigating the alleged murder of Ann Widdecombe say there is “nothing to suggest it was politically motivated”.

Devon and Cornwall Police added they are not looking for anyone else in connection with her death, following the arrest of a 28-year-old man in Rotherham, South Yorkshire, on Saturday.

The former Conservative MP, 78, was found with serious injuries at her home in Haytor, Devon, on Thursday.

“The Real Housewives of Orange County” star Jennifer Pedranti says that her son was involved in starting a brush fire that burned in Ladera Ranch.

Pedranti posted the admission on her Instagram stories on Thursday, saying that there will be consequences for her son.

“I would like to clear up the rumblings of my son having involvement in the Ladera Ranch fire,” her statement began.

“He and others were involved. My ex husband and myself take this very serious. This behavior is unacceptable and we are deeply sorry to our community. This is a tough learning moment for our son and our family.”

Pedranti continued that she was thankful that there was no property damage and nobody was injured. “The fire and police were absolutely amazing and gave these boys a lesson they will never forget,” she said. “There were no arrests made, but consequences for actions are being put into place.”

According to Pedranti, her son will be taking a fire safety course to “make sure a mistake like this never happens again.”

“There are consequences within our family and we will make sure our son learns from this accident.”

The brush fire originated near Ladera Ranch’s Narrow Canyon Road and Acaster Way on Tuesday afternoon and spread across seven acres before firefighters were able to get it under control.

Orange County Fire Authority Capt. Augie Romo confirmed to The Times that three minors were interviewed in connection with the Ladera Ranch brush fire and that no arrests were made. A full report will be made available in 10 days, but for now, most details of the incident remain under investigation.

The Bravo reality star shares five children with her ex-husband, biotech entrepreneur William Pedranti: sons Harrison, 22; Dawson, 19; Greyson, 16; and Dominic, 12; and daughter Everleigh, 14. She is engaged to “Real Housewives” cast member Ryan Boyajian, who reportedly was formerly involved in real estate and mortgage lending.

WASHINGTON  — The Supreme Court’s conservative justices say they decide cases based on the words and original history of the Constitution — and not on their personal or political views.

Following the lead set by the late Justice Antonin Scalia, they say they see history and “originalism” as a guiding principle to prevent judges from changing the Constitution to adjust to new and changing times.

This text-and-history approach is said to contrast with an evolving or “living Constitution” favored by progressives and liberal activists.

But this year saw a flip of sorts on birthright citizenship.

The foremost conservatives agreed with President Trump that the surge of illegal immigration called for reconsidering the promise of citizenship at birth set out in the 14th Amendment of 1868.

“The number of illegal immigrants in this country exploded” in recent years, Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr. wrote in dissent. The rule of citizenship at birth provides “a powerful incentive to enter or remain in this country illegally,” he added.

“The Constitution is an enduring document,” wrote Justice Brett M. Kavanaugh, but its rules and meaning must adjust to “modern situations that were unknown or unanticipated by the Constitution’s Framers.”

In a concurring opinion, he said that “significant illegal immigration into the United States is a new circumstance that was largely unknown as of 1868.”

There were no federal immigration laws in the mid-19th century, but it was an era when a surge of Irish immigrants had settled on the East Coast and large numbers of Chinese immigrants came to California.

Under the law, their children were deemed to be citizens at birth.

Among the conservative originalists, only Justice Amy Coney Barrett signed the majority opinion that was written by Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. and joined by the three liberals.

The opening words of the 14th Amendment of 1868 say: “All persons born or naturalized in the United States and subject to the jurisdiction thereof are citizens of the United States.”

In 1898, the Supreme Court upheld the rule of citizenship at birth in the case of Wong Kim Ark, who was born in San Francisco to Chinese parents.

In an executive order, Trump proposed to end birthright citizenship for the newborns whose parents were in the country illegally or temporarily.

Writing for the court, the chief justice said the words of the 14th Amendment were clear and were clearly understood at the time. He dismissed the “dramatically revisionist view” that has been cited recently.

Kavanaugh voted with the majority to block Trump’s order from taking effect. He did so because Congress had adopted birthright citizenship in a 1952 law.

“Consistent with the 14th Amendment, Congress could … enact new legislation establishing exceptions to birthright citizenship,” he wrote.

Justices Clarence Thomas and Alito wrote long dissents arguing that the framers of the 14th Amendment did not or would not have favored birthright citizenship.

They pointed to recent scholarship by law professors that raised questions about the accepted understanding of the 14th Amendment and the citizenship rule.

Thomas said citizenship of the child should turn on whether the parents were “domiciled” in this country. Black people who were enslaved were undoubtedly domiciled here, but the same is not true of temporary visitors.

Justice Neil M. Gorsuch agreed in part with Thomas and questioned whether the newborns of temporary visitors should be deemed as citizens at birth.

Many court commentators were surprised by the close 5-4 divide on the constitutional issue.

“Given how clear the language was, I expected it to be 7 to 2,” said Melissa Murray, a New York University law professor. “I really gasped when I saw it was 5-4. This is not settled. We’re not done with this debate.”

Sarah Isgur, a podcaster and SCOTUSblog analyst, said that “originalism is getting more and more muddled. Either the history matters or it doesn’t.”

However, she agreed with Kavanaugh’s approach of leaving it to Congress to reconsider the issue.

Not all originalists are conservative.

Yale Law Professor Akhil Amar, a constitutional historian, argued that the history of birthright citizenship is clear and not subject to revisionist thinking. He said the Reconstruction Congress adopted this principle of citizenship at birth and stated their intent in clear words in the 14th Amendment.

“When a baby is born on American soil and an American flag flies above, that baby is a birthright citizen, as the Reconstruction Republicans across the land understood,” he wrote in February. This rule “has virtually nothing to do with the baby’s parents.”

Last week, he was mostly cheered by the court’s ruling.

“It’s a triumph, but it should have been 9-0,” Amar said on a review of the court term sponsored by SCOTUSblog. “Shame on the dissenters. They didn’t even the address the statute” and its wording.

But the majority led by Roberts “clearly affirmed the plain meaning of the constitutional text and its history. And that’s a win,” he said.

History has a recurring role at the Supreme Court.

Isgur noted the court will hear arguments in the fall on whether the 2nd Amendment of 1791 gives gun owners a right to have “assault weapons” like AR-15 rifles.

She said the court will decide then between history and changed circumstances.

At issue is whether these modern rapid-fire rifles fit within the history of the gun rights protected by the 2nd Amendment or instead represent a new and dangerous threat to public safety that was unknown in 1791.

Scalia’s opinion upholding gun rights in 2008 is often cited as a model of originalism, but it too emerged from a court divided 5-4.

The 2nd Amendment says, “A well-regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bears Arms, shall not be infringed.”

For decades, the Supreme Court had all but ignored the 2nd Amendment, viewing it as a somewhat outdated provision involving militias, akin to the 3rd Amendment. It forbids having soldiers “quartered in any house … in time of peace.”

Four liberal dissenters in 2008 said the court should stand by that understanding of history.

Justice John Paul Stevens said the 2nd Amendment was added to the Constitution to protect state militias from federal interference. Moreover, the reference to “bear arms” suggests it was about militias, he said.

But Scalia’s opinion stands as the landmark precedent, and he said the dissenters had the history all wrong.

The right to have guns for self-defense arose in England and came to the American colonies. “By the time of the founding, the right to have arms had become fundamental for English subjects,” he wrote.

The 2nd Amendment did not establish a new right, he said. Rather, it “codified a pre-existing right [of] having and using arms for self-preservation and [defense],” he wrote.

“There seems to us no doubt, on the basis of both text and history,” Scalia wrote, “that the 2nd Amendment conferred an individual right to keep and bear arms.”

Was this the moment the footballing rivalry between the two sides really developed? Possibly. Probably.

The two teams met in the quarter-finals in a match Argentina, to this day, insist they were robbed in, claiming Geoff Hurst’s winning goal was offside.

That was just the tip of the iceberg when it came to controversy though, with Argentina captain Antonio Rattin sent off after just 33 minutes for two offences in the space of three minutes.

The first was for a trip on Bobby Charlton, the second was for continuing to argue with German referee Rudolf Kreitlein.

The match was delayed for almost eight minutes as Rattin refused to leave the pitch.

England held on, in an incredibly ill-tempered affair, with Three Lions boss Alf Ramsey describing the Argentine side as ‘animals’ and insisting that his players did not swap shirts.

England’s 1966 World Cup-winning defender George Cohen reflected on the match in the Guardian in 2009.

“Tackling is fine,” he said. “But it was some of the snidey things, the spitting and pulling the short hairs on your neck, pulling your ear. They were trying to intimidate us. The trouble was when they found out they weren’t going to get their way they fell into some of the worst excesses I’ve ever seen.

“I just consider it the greatest shame that they didn’t play the game they were capable of. We might even have got beaten but they just should have got on and shown what they could do.

“There was a lot of commotion in the tunnel after the game. Nobody was allowed out so we didn’t see it.”

The match is also believed to have led to the introduction of red and yellow cards, which were first used in the 1970 World Cup in Mexico. Previously, referees had to rely on verbal warnings.

Rattin, who represented Argentina from 1959 to 1969 and played at the 1962 and 1966 World Cups, died at the age of 89 on Saturday.

July 10 (Asia Today) — South Korean Chief Justice Cho Hee-dae appointed Justice Roh Kyung-pil as the new head of the National Court Administration, filling a vacancy that had lasted about four months.

The Supreme Court announced Friday that Roh, 62, will begin his term Tuesday.

The head of the National Court Administration oversees personnel and budgets for courts nationwide. The chief justice appoints the official from among sitting Supreme Court justices, and the justice does not handle trials while serving in the post.

Roh, a native of Haenam, South Jeolla Province, began his judicial career as a judge at the Seoul District Court in 1997. He later served as a Supreme Court research judge, Seoul High Court judge, presiding judge at the Gwangju High Court, and presiding judge and senior presiding judge at the Suwon High Court. He was appointed to the Supreme Court on Aug. 2, 2024.

The Supreme Court said Roh is qualified for the post because of his “leadership of listening and inclusion,” saying he is suited to strengthen public trust in the judiciary by communicating with court members and broader society and working to build a swift and fair judicial system for the public.

The post had been vacant since Justice Park Young-jae tendered his resignation as head of the National Court Administration on Feb. 27. Ki Woo-jong, deputy head of the administration, had served as acting chief.

With the vacancy resolved, attention is turning to whether stalled Supreme Court justice nominations will gain momentum.

The Supreme Court justice candidate recommendation committee in January recommended four candidates to succeed former Justice Roh Tae-ak: Seoul High Court judges Kim Min-ki and Park Soon-young, Daegu District Court Presiding Judge Son Bong-gi and Seoul High Court Presiding Judge Yoon Seong-sik. No final recommendation has been made.

The selection process is also underway for a successor to Justice Lee Heung-gu, who is scheduled to retire in September.

The Supreme Court on July 3 completed its review of public comments on 28 recommended candidates who agreed to be screened by the recommendation committee. If the committee recommends at least three candidates this month, Cho will select a final nominee and recommend the candidate to President Lee Jae Myung for appointment. The nominee would then go through a National Assembly confirmation hearing before final appointment.

The National Court Administration is also tied to one of the ruling party’s major judicial reform agendas. After legislation on three judicial reform measures, including criminalizing distorted application of the law, allowing constitutional complaints against court rulings and expanding the number of Supreme Court justices, a separate bill has been introduced to revise the Court Organization Act and abolish the National Court Administration.

— Reported by Asia Today; translated by UPI

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Original Korean report: https://www.asiatoday.co.kr/kn/view.php?key=20260710010003920